During the virtual IWC tonight, we were discussing third-party clients for publishing to websites, essentially Micropub clients and MarsEdit. And it occurred to us more or less simultaneously, that I do not use Micropub for the site that supports it out of the box, whereas I do use a client for the site that does not support Micropub out of the box. And that is because the post-creation UI is nice and simple for Known, and a right mess for WordPress.

So, just to be difficult, I'm using Quill for the first time in a long while to create a Post in Known.

#IndieWeb

More good help from Manton, cleverdevil and others, but alas no nearer (although I may have eliminated some possibilities).

1. I was allowing both HTTP and HTTPS. There could have been some kind of mismatch, I suppose, but after editing .htaccess to force SSL, it made no difference to micro.blog's OS X app.
2. Then thought that possibly a different endpoint would help (despite the fact that I know all the same details are on the home page). 
3. Pointed micro.blog first at /profile and then at /profile/jeremy; still no good.

At this stage, given that Manton managed to get everything working from a clean install of Known out of the box, I think I need to try the same. If that works, well, if nothing else, it works.

I had been fretting about losing data, but if I install into a new sub-domain and it works there, I can always edit the config.ini to point back at the old database. It will be a good opportunity to see how good the instructions are to install at Dreamhost. Last time I managed without any instructions, and I also didn't write up my experiences. This could be an opportunity to pay back.

#indieweb

I have never yet been able to post from my micro.blog to this stream, although the feed from here is reliably picked up there, and brid.gy reliably pulls replies from there to here. @manton suggested we move my complaints to help@micro.blog, but I can see no way of actually engaging with that account. So this afternoon, I decided to attempt to go back to the beginning.

It was a miserable failure.

Here's how it went:

1. Revoke all current authorisations for micro.blog
2. There were four of them, two from yesterday when I last tried.
3. Launch OS X app
4. OK!
5. “If you’re using WordPress or another server, first open the preferences window and enter your web site URL to set it up for posting within the app.”
6. Roger that. But the old website was still there. Is that going to be a problem?
7. Start a new post; the old website is there at the bottom. This is going to be a problem.
8. Same old Same old; Error sending post.
9. Post does not arrive at micro.blog
10. Post does not arrive at WithKnown
11. WithKnown Error log is empty.
12. Access log shows no sign of anything from recent attempt to post from micro.blog
13. Check to make sure I have up to date micro.blog app
14. “Micro.blog can’t be updated when it’s running from a read-only volume like a disk image or an optical drive.” Move Micro.blog to Applications folder using Finder, relaunch it from there, and try again.
15. Strange. Check path to micro.blog.
16. Path is “/Applications/Micro.blog.app”.
17. Check the App Store; disappointed but also content that there is not an update.
18. Delete web site URL from preferences; quit micro.blog, mostly for superstitious reasons; launch micro.blog.
19. Very strange; web site URL is still there. Or back? Maybe the app pulls it from micro.blog?
20. Repeat; same outcome. Superstition justified. Go to my account at micro.blog.
21. See I have three App tokens. The one for MarsEdit is definitely pointless, as I am not hosted at micro.blog. Remove it.
22. Throw caution to the winds; remove the tokens for IOS and OS X
23. OK, IOS now says “Internal Server Error” on attempting to connect. I think I ought to sign out now and then sign back in.
24. Phew. All is good. And I have a new app token.
25. On iOS, try to write a new post; insert my Known site; authorise micro.blog; write a test post. Post it.
26. “Error sending post”. Tear hair out, as now I do not seem to be able to post to micro.blog from iOS app.
27. Go back to 22; remove iOS app token and authorisation token at WithKnown.
28. Log back in. Can no longer post without adding WithKnown, and posting gives an error, as at 26.
29. Try again from OS X; same error as at 8.
30. Post to WithKnown; feed is picked up.

Any and all suggestions gratefully received.

#indieweb

Playing Lyle Lovett singing Texas River Song, even though I know it's a stretch, to celebrate having eaten a giant bowl of my own dogfood.

A couple of weeks ago I followed Chris Aldrich to reading.am, which is a neat little spot for just putting down a marker for something that you're reading. I wanted more. I wanted to be able to save links to the things I marked. And now, a little over two weeks later, I've done it.

I have a PHP file that fetches the RSS feeds of things I've marked in reading.am, looks for any that are new since the last time the program ran, and then POSTS the results to Known's micropub endpoint. #IndieWeb PESOS for my bookmarks!

There is no way I could have done it without amazing help from people on the IndieWeb IRC, and it isn't perfect by any means. There's more work to be done, for sure, before I even think about sharing the code.

But hey, it works.

And, as my main helper said, "Launch early and iterate often".

I'll be doing that.