Syndicating conversation: bringing comments to RSS feeds

Showing all posts about self publishing

Syndicating conversation: bringing comments to RSS feeds

28 September 2026

Vladimir Campos, posting on Masterdon last week:

Catching up on my RSS reader today, I came across really nice posts from @ellane [Ellane], @disassociated, and @dcbuchan [David Buchan], and had the same thought I’ve been having for so long: why isn’t there an easy way to reply to articles when using an RSS reader? rss.chat, created by @davew [Dave Winer], is the closest to that idea I have seen so far.

In the twenty-plus years I’ve been reading RSS feeds, I’ve never once given thought to the prospect of being able to directly comment on them. Mainly, I imagine, because it simply has not been possible. Is not RSS but a glorified push notification, after all?

Like everyone else, if I’ve wanted to respond to something I’ve seen on an RSS feed, I click through to the source website, and leave a comment if there’s an option to do so.

But the notion of commenting on a blog’s RSS feed isn’t all that far fetched. Many of us read blog and website content through RSS, but wouldn’t it be great if we could stay put, in our RSS reading apps, and comment on the posts we see from there?

Really Simple Syndication

RSS, for anyone unfamiliar with it, is an initialism of Really Simple Syndication.

RSS is a format that allows a website or blog to republish, or syndicate, its content to a separate channel. Someone reading a blog’s RSS feed (or channel) is able to see the blog’s content without the need to visit the website where the content was originally published.

The RSS feed for disassociated can be found at disassociated.com/feed/ but if you type that URL into the address bar of your browser, what you see may not make much sense. Subscribe to that feed in a RSS reader such as Feedly though, and everything will be far more coherent.

The beauty of subscribing to multiple, maybe hundreds or more, of websites by RSS, means the person reading all that content can stay in one place, their RSS reader, without needing to visit numerous blogs individually. Think of RSS as centralising the blog reading process.

Content pushes through to the RSS reader soon after a blog publishes a new post, in the same way for instance, a photo or video appears on the page of someone you follow on Instagram.

Interactive RSS feeds are possible

Dave Winer, who played a significant role in developing web syndication technologies such as RSS, thirty years ago, recently launched RSS.chat, a social network built on RSS, where participants can chat in real time. If RSS technology can power a social network, surely then it is possible to comment directly on RSS feed posts.

For this to happen though, there needs to be significant cooperation between the parties involved in publishing RSS content, and those facilitating the means with which to read same, says Winer:

There has to be cooperation between the products that generate the feed and the ones where you read the feed. And cooperation has never been the priority for the developers.

Developers of blog publishing applications generating RSS feeds will need to make provision for comments to be appended to existing RSS posts. Producers of RSS readers will to add an option that lets a subscriber write a comment, possibly a “reply to this post” button. And that’s just for starters.

Winer though says he is working on a system that achieves these requirements:

My approach is going to be to provide products that do both ends, and then, if it becomes popular, the others will compete.

RSS comments a boost for RSS, blogging?

I’m all for people who read my website via RSS being able to comment on posts from their RSS reader, even it there are still a few things to think about.

Moderation and spam filtering, among them, even though that sounds obvious. Many more issues are covered in this in-depth post by David Buchan. But there would be answers to most concerns that RSS commenting might raise.

I’m hopeful, along with Winer, that RSS commenting would catch on. Who knows, it might generate more interest in the syndication format, and even blogging, although that seems like a big ask with the way things are. But I look forward to finding out.

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blogs, RSS, self publishing, technology

Personal websites, not fun anymore?

22 September 2026

Winnie Lim:

It takes spiritual energy to create, maintain and produce personal projects. At the core, these projects exists because there is a belief in some sense of shared humanity. I write because I believe someone out there resonates with my experiences. But when everything starts to be about speed, utility and power, life becomes a dehumanising experience.

It’s always disconcerting to read these sorts of posts, all the more so when they’re written by someone who’s been around for a long time.

Lim has been publishing online since 1996. I’m surprised I’ve not seen her work sooner, though maybe I have, one of her archived sites, defragment.me, seems like it sounds familiar.

Maintaining a website is probably far more challenging today, than it was in earlier days. I have the feeling the people who host my website do far more than I realise when it comes to keeping the experience for myself and visitors smooth.

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blogs, self publishing, technology

Everyone has a book in them, more so bloggers

4 September 2026

I’ve been reading Josh Ellis’ blog for a couple of years maybe, since finding a link there on Dense Discovery once. Ellis has been at it since 2004, so achievement unlocked. In his latest post, he ruminates about writing a book. Acquaintances of his have made the suggestion over the years.

I’ve had the same. “You blog; you should write a book,” people have said to me. And, in the recesses of my HD I have a WIP manuscript sitting there, waiting.

For what, I’m not wholly sure, possibly forty-eight hour days. I continue to rein in my impulse to write/publish though. For now. Like Ellis, I too fear anything I might get published may end up in a bookstore bargain bin. What a way to go.

But Ellis wasn’t just pondering the notion of writing a book; he has written a book, called Jaunty Hair. Congratulations Mr. Ellis, and achievement unlocked again.

Blogging for twenty-plus years however, is not his only claim to fame, Ellis has been writing a column for the North Dakota Burke County Tribune for over twenty-years.

Perhaps then I should shelve my ambitions, as a mere blogger, to write a book, given I lack the appropriate gravitas. Even if I did write a few articles for the Sydney Morning Herald, back in the day.

But here’s the thing. Ellis didn’t so much write a book, more so he realised he already had; in the form of twenty-plus years of blog posts and Burke County Tribune articles.

He complied a selection of his past works, and there was Jaunty Hair. It was a great idea. This is what I mean when I say everyone — well, specifically everyone who has a blog — has a book in them.

There’s a book publishing idea for bloggers, particularly those with a considerable volume of work behind them. The idea of curating previous of my blog posts — which I would refer to as a collection of essays — and publishing them in a book, is appealing. How about you?

But in a sense, publishing a book seems at odds with what I’ve been doing here, online, all this time.

Because there I was, back in the late 1990’s, embracing the web, and believing it would bring about the end of print. In my defence, I wasn’t the only one. Thankfully though, this paperless eventuality did not, or is yet to, come to pass.

Still, there is an allure to seeing one’s name on a book, on a bookshop shelf, even it is bound for the bargain bin. I may yet dust off the aforementioned manuscript, and feed it into a printing press.

When those forty-eight hour days arrive…

WordPress.com Education, supporting, encouraging younger bloggers

21 August 2026

WordPress.com Education, is an initiative launched earlier week, designed to give school students across the world resources to setup and maintain their own blog:

This isn’t a stripped-down classroom version of WordPress.com. The Student Plan includes plugin support, 6 GB of storage, backups, staging sites, SFTP/SSH, phpMyAdmin, and Studio Sync. Students learn and build with many of the same tools they’ll encounter working with WordPress professionally.

The student plan, which includes everything that comes with the free WordPress.com blogs, together with the subscription personal and premium plans, is free for the first year.

For sure, WordPress has its naysayers, but anything that encourages people, particularly school students, to give social media a rest, and engage more fully with the web, can only be a good thing.

Getting started as a blogger, which is the main thing, is simplified with out-of-the-box products like WordPress.com. Once someone has reached a certain level of proficiency they can always look into other options for publishing blogs and websites.

Good Internet magazine pauses publishing

18 June 2026

Good Internet only started publishing, both online and in print, about a year ago.

News that the founders have decided to cease publication indefinitely is sad for for the IndieWeb/SmallWeb community, whom the magazine supported.

Running an online magazine is a major undertaking on its own. A print version is another matter all together. An independent publisher I know in Australia, did something similar several years ago.

Whenever I asked how it was going, their first response was to say they were making no money, only breaking even, and that the venture was entirely a labour of love. It sure isn’t easy.

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IndieWeb, self publishing, SmallWeb

WordPress 7 shipped with new AI features, where are they hiding?

25 May 2026

The latest version of WordPress (WP), seven, which shipped a few days ago, comes with, according to the accompanying release notes/marketing copy, a number of AI features.

I’m yet to see even one of these, despite installing version seven last week now. The only noticeable difference I can discern — to date — is a change in some of the hyperlink colours on the dashboard.

I’m not interested, by the way, in activating these AI “enhancements”, just curious as to why I can’t see them. I was expecting the interface to look all new when I logged back in after running the update, but as I say, barely anything has changed.

Presumably the powers that be are leaving WordPressers to opt-in to the AI features themselves — the way it should be — rather than foisting them upon us. Works for me, I have no use for them.

On the other hand, it might be some combination of plug-ins, or edits to WP code I’ve made (though that’s rare for me) that are somehow blocking out the AI options.

Whatever is happening: long may it last. And if this is all a dream I’m having — and the AI features are there, but I just can’t see them — then no one wake me up.

UPDATE: Jeff Bridgforth addresses changes to hyperlink colours on the WP dashboard. These can be adjusted in the Administration Colour Scheme area, located on the WP profile page.

How many friends, family, co-workers, know about your blog/website?

2 May 2026

Half the web might know about your blog, but how many of your in-person acquaintances, people in your household, community, or workplace, know you blog?

Do you even tell them? Do you want to?

The question came up at Forking Mad this week, and started me thinking. When I uploaded the first version of disassociated in 1997, I told just about everyone I knew. At that point I aspired to be a web designer, so telling the whole world of my online presence made perfect sense. I ended up working in the industry for a few years, with a role coming about after a design studio in Sydney spotted my website, and contacted me.

Over time though disassociated became more blog than personal website/design portfolio. Having said that, I just about never posted screenshots or links to the work I did commercially, I was happy to let quirky old disassociated do the talking. But after a stint in web design, I decided it wasn’t for me. Somehow, building commercial websites just wasn’t as fun, or satisfying, as the personal work.

That’s when I started doing more writing. In 2007, after years of running this website with static HTML files, I migrated to WordPress (WP) — where, for better or worse — I remain. As a web publishing platform, WP works for me, does what I need, and that’s fine for me for now. I moved to a web publishing platform partly because I wanted to have a go at earning money as a blogger.

And in 2007 I wasn’t alone.

That ambition was achieved, though not quite in the way I envisaged, a story for another time maybe. But somehow moving to a web publishing platform brought disassociated into the limelight, even if I was an actor to the side, the far side, of the stage. Visits skyrocketed, and my in-box was full of messages from people interested to some degree in what I was doing.

At that time also I resided full-time in Sydney, and was often out and about meeting people. I would drag introvert me out to networking events, art show openings, and film screenings.

I had business cards featuring my URL, and handed them out indiscriminately. I most certainly told people about my website then, including family and friends. Once, more as fun, I made up, and printed out, flyers with my URL on tear-tabs, and posted them on noticeboards on the campus of a Sydney university. I wasn’t relying solely on online methods of blog promotion.

But blogging was an all encompassing passion and experience, and, back in those heady days, so much more than merely writing a few blog posts. The picture in 2026, however, couldn’t be any different. Blogs were pushed aside by social media, and the party was over. Actually, strike that. The party isn’t over, it’s just a lot smaller than it was before.

More to the point though, blogs are no longer the talking point they once were. Outside of Indie/SmallWeb circles at least.

When I talk to people I meet in-person and discussion turns to online presences, they expect me to share my social media handles. A blog, or personal website, sounds positively quaint. To the point I sometimes feel awkward even mentioning it. On the few occasions I might say, tell the barista at the cafe that I blog, I end up changing the subject, when I realise their eyes have glazed over.

It’s too bad, because the question has me yearning to supplement my part-time day job by reprising my role as CEO of the disassociated online one-person in-my-dreams publishing behemoth. Even if it is a website/blog, not a social media page. But if you have a website you want the world to know about, spreading the word to more of the people you know in-person is the go I think.

The Indie Internet Index, another new directory of independent websites

8 April 2026

Hot on the heels of Monday’s link to indie/independent blog post aggregator Blogosphere, comes the Indie Internet Index. The importance of these sorts of resources cannot be understated at a time when the independent, open web, is under increasing threat.

Blogosphere: an algorithm free blog post aggregator

6 April 2026

The new (to me at least) aggregator of blog posts aptly and cleverly titled Blogosphere, is the creation of engineer and writer Ramkarthik Krishnamurthy:

But it’s really about something bigger: rebuilding a thriving community of independent writers and thinkers who share their thoughts freely, without waiting for an algorithm to decide who gets to see them.

A list of recent blog posts can also be viewed in a more simple text style format. In addition, both listings of posts have their own RSS feeds.

Blogosphere joins other fine IndieWeb/SmallWeb blog post aggregators including Blogs Are Back, Blogroll Club, Blogroll, Feedle, powRSS, Oceania Web Atlas, and ooh.directory, to name but a few.

Font Awesome cans renaming plans for Eleventy static site generator

17 March 2026

Proposals were afoot to rename Eleventy — often styled 11ty — a blog publishing platform favoured by some Indie/Small Web bloggers, as Build Awesome.

The awesome part of 11ty’s would-be new name derives from Font Awesome, producers of a wide range of icons website publishers can make use of. I’ve used their icons in the past, in place of the text menu items presently in the animated colour bar above the title of this post.

11ty was acquired by Font Awesome in September 2024.

To accompany the renaming, a Kickstarter campaign was, from what I can tell, launched to fund development of a more commercial “website builder” version of 11ty, while the original blog publishing platform would remain free to use.

But both the fund raiser, and renaming plans, have been paused after Font Awesome claimed only a handful of emails promoting the Kickstarter campaign had reached intended recipients.

A backlash by 11ty publishers against the renaming proposal however seems the more likely reason.

Even though 11ty creator Zach Leatherman joined Font Awesome at the time of the acquisition, the company appears to have completely misunderstood the veneration in which the blogging platform, as 11ty, is held by publishers. Why even consider changing the name of such a highly regarded product in the first place, and worse still contemplate something like Build Awesome?

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