David Peach

From the very beginning of its creation, WordPress has been all about empowering people to publish online.

It now has a huge user base and a community that is always working to update, improve and extend it.

That’s not to say that you need WordPress to become Indie, in fact many people use a whole range of CMSs — some even custom-built, but WordPress is a great solid foundation to start from.

When deciding to move towards the IndieWeb, I was already using WordPress and began in the simplest way I could think of — publishing status updates on my site and then simply pasting them into a Tweet or Facebook update.

Although the idea was there, I was missing the link between the original and syndicated copies. I had the desire. All I needed now was guidance.

Indie Web Camp

The Indie web camp site has been — and continues to be — an invaluable resource for me and many others. All the people I have spoken to in the IRC channel have been super friendly and guided me through certain areas that I found tricky.

If you need any help whatsoever, just ask in the IRC channel, or ask me and I’ll do my best to help. The first thing I did when I discovered the IndieWebCamp site, was follow the getting started guide.

I couldn’t do a better job of guiding someone through the process of getting their website indiewebified, so I will simply link to it. Because of the fact that the IndieWebCamp site is the best resource out there, my own posts on the subject will be specific to my own implementations and any gotchas that I found.

As you level up, you can track your progress on the IndieMark page.

An IndieMark is a set of metrics that show how ‘IndieWeb’ your site is. At the time of writing this post, I am half-way into level 2. One thing to always keep in mind is that it is okay — and encouraged — to implement each thing one step at a time. Just have fun with it!

WordPress Indie Web Plugin 2.0

The WordPress indie web plugin calls itself the IndieWeb version of WordPress’ Jetpack plugin and it really is. Once installed, it provides you with direct links to download and install recommended plugins for getting your website on the IndieWeb path.

I installed all of them at once without reading what each one did and so got myself into a bit of a muddle. However as I work through each one I shall be writing it up under the tag IndieWeb and share what I learn from them.

Sharing to Social Networks with SNAP plugin

SNAP is a WordPress plugin that enables the automatic posting to your chosen social networks when you create new content. I have forked SNAP in order to add extra features that I find I need.

For example, I have added the ability to post to twitter as a reply to another tweet and have it link the newly created tweet as a direct reply to the targeted tweet.

I have also made it easier for myself to write quick status updates and post them out to silos as duplications of the content.

And that concludes my first steps in transitioning to the IndieWeb. As I accomplish more, I will write it up and post it under the tag IndieWeb.