Webmentions are the glue that sticks all the bits in all the sites together.

That’s my one-liner about one of the core ideas about the #IndieWeb, but it doesn’t actually tell you very much if you want to know how the glue works. I’ve kind of absorbed a moderately high-level abstraction over the past little while of playing with webmentions, but a friend asked for more:

Do you know of any diagrams that explain how this stuff works without all the … words that web communities seem to enjoy creating? I keep coming back to this topic every so often, and every time I return things just appear more complicated and broken than before …

I don’t think that last opinion is merited, but then I would say that. And right now I don’t have the time to write up my understanding. I’m pretty sure I saw something clear and to the point a little while back, but I’m blowed if I can find it now. So here are four pieces I have found.

• Implementing Webmentions, which contains a good verbal description of the flow.
• Adactio: Journal—Parsing webmentions, which explains some the technology too.
• So long Disqus, hello Webmention has a go at why webmentions are a good idea and some of the nuts and bolts of implementation.
• Webmentions · Rudiger Meyer is another good verbal description of the how, along with the why and the what.

These may not answer the question fully, but they are a start. And they might inspire me to write my own version, especially if I could have a synchronous discussion about it with my interlocuter.