Discrete replies

Earlier this year, at Indie Web Camp Düsseldorf, I got replies working on my own site. That is to say, I can host a reply on my site to something on another site.

The classic example is Twitter. In fact, if you look at all my replies, most of them are responding to tweets (I also syndicate these replies to Twitter so they show up there just like regular tweet replies).

I’m really, really glad I got replies working. I’ve been using this functionality quite a bit, and it feels really good to own my content this way.

At the time, I wrote:

So I’m owning my replies now. At the moment, they show up in my home page feed just like any other notes I post. I’m not sure if I’ll keep it that way. They don’t make much sense out of context.

I decided not to include them on my home page feed after all. You’ll still see them if you go to the notes section of my site, but I decided that they were overwhelming my home page a bit. They also don’t show up in my RSS feed.

I’m really happy that I’m hosting my replies, and that I’ve got URLs for all of them, but I don’t think I want to give them the same priority as blog posts, links, and regular notes.

Responses

Aaron Parecki

+1 I also decided to not show replies on my home page. I feel like they’re not as relevant to the broader audience that follows my content. If people want to find them they can.

Previously on this day

8 years ago I wrote Exploring web technologies

From the very basics to the cutting edge.

11 years ago I wrote The dConstruct 2012 website

A little retrospective.

11 years ago I wrote August in America, day five

Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

15 years ago I wrote dCapsule

Add a memento to the dConstruct time capsule.

16 years ago I wrote Finding five numbers

Off-site Pownce metadata for my future self.

17 years ago I wrote Wordage

Go forth and coin.

18 years ago I wrote BarCamp London

A slumber party for geeks.

19 years ago I wrote Rocking out

If you’re in Brighton and you’re wondering what to do with yourself on a Tuesday night, why night come along to the Hanbury Ballroom to watch my band Salter Cane raise the very ornate roof.

19 years ago I wrote Web design and cultural identity

Andy "Malarky" Clarke penned an editorial a while back entitled Look out Johnny Foreigner in which he talked about web design and national identity.

20 years ago I wrote PDFs with PHP

Not all of the functionality I’ve been adding to this site recently involves JavaScript and the DOM. I’ve also added a new PHP script.

22 years ago I wrote Private And Public

I like this a lot.