Microblog

Why does the Labarum theme not have a header

If you’ve come to my site, you’ve seen it. Or rather, seen that it isn’t there. Most site have them, whether it’s a big banner or image that lets you know that you are on a webpage. I’m referring to the header; usually the first h1 element in the html. Open any book on HTML and it’s one of the top five elements that you learn about.

But, if this element is so basic and used so often, then how why do I not use this in my theme?

No guarantee on structure

There are different tools that you can use to write posts for micro.blog. You can post from the website, MarsEdit, Ulysses, drafts, etc. These tools usually allow the end user to write in some form of Markdown syntax. If you look up the syntax for Markdown on Markdown Guide Basics Syntax or on the DaringFireball Markdown Basics page, you will see that the first thing they point out is the # used to make a heading. The tools will use the convention of taking the first # header and using it as the title for a post.

Most of the websites that I’ve come across will use title of a post as an h2 in order to denote that its semantically lower than the h1 they would have in the header of the page.

But, what about posts without a title? What about the person who isn’t familiar or not thinking about these details as they type away on their keyboards on that great post that will finally prove that whether pancakes or waffles are the superior breakfast item1.

Other than testing whether the content has a title, the theme does not make any adjustments. It can’t automatically change all the headers and assume that the writer meant ### instead of ## for the sub-header.

Also, If we only navigate by headers and headers are only on titled posts, then what about the micro posts that micro.blog uses?

I’m not an accessibility expert, I just hope that whoever is using the theme, will be able to navigate using the different articles and aria-labels. I really hope that not having the headers isn’t a deterrent from reading the site. If you know of someone, please send me their information so that I can improve this site.

What would it take to change?

I was thinking about changing the structure of the theme to match the convention that I had seen with other themes. I’d make the articles have h2 and just go through all my posts to make sure everything had the proper heading.

In my local testing, I found that I ran into another problem where the built in table of contents feature of Hugo defaults to using h2 and h3 tags to create its content.

It’s documented on how to change the start and end levels but this would mean that users of the theme would see a change after an update. I can’t count on them reading the readme, being able to test it before hand, or going back to a previous version.

Ten Times the Technical Transform

About a month ago, I asked @help how many people were using this theme. Manton said 10.

I was shocked!

That’s 9 more than I was expecting.

I hope these people are happy with the theme - or so I imagine - and I don’t want to change that.

Withdrawn on the World Wide Web

The last reason is more personal.

I’m on the web, but I would rather you start reading what I wrote than read about me. Based off of my own web-surfing habits and the site traffic I get, I assume that when someone comes to the site they are coming from a direct link to an article. If that is the case, I want you to get to reading as quickly as possible.

The website has a title that is read by accessibility readers and shows up in the tab of your browser.

I don’t know how much of my traffic is people new to the site, but I do have an about me at the bottom of the page. It’s kind of a “find out more from this author” that you would see in the back of a book.

For me, this is more comfortable because I have trouble writing about myself. Ask anyone who has written a resumé, and they might say its easier to express how you think of feel about different things than it is to write about how you are really good at TPS reports.

Let’s head this off

This is not an attack on sites that use h1 for the title and have it at the top. I love those sites and the people that make them. This is just me explaining the theories of my own site. It’s not conventional and sometimes I look at it and want to start over.

It’s because of that burning feeling, I continue working on it.

Just running forward.

Without a head.


  1. It’s pancakes. ↩︎

Categories:

Spent some time fiddling with code that I said that I wasn’t going to touch. Very satisfying as I see the pile of work piling up in the distance.

Categories:

The 100

For years, I would hear people say that it takes 100 days to develop a new habit. I didn’t set out to do that. I wanted to write on a more regular basis and just started writing on November 1st of last year. I was determined to write something every day and post it.

What was the experience?

Sometimes it was actually pretty stressful coming up with something to write about. Some days were just one-liners that I would have just tweeted. Sometimes Many times, it was a picture of my dog; who I think deserves her own blog.

What if I annoy people who were reading my site and they go away? Well, I didn’t have that many readers anyway, and my pieces are typically very short.

The benefit of being semi-anonymous was that I honestly couldn’t tell if people liked it or not. It was kind of freeing and let me think about how I was writing.

I started exploring more into what it means to be the first audience for my writing. That doesn’t mean that I spent a lot of time agonizing over making things perfect, but it did mean that there were a couple of posts that took more time to write.

What’s next?

I plan on stopping the daily post for a couple of days and working through some of my post ideas that I’ve been putting into Drafts. The more ideas you capture, the more ideas you make.

I also want to start highlighting some post from other people on the internet. I love the web when it connects us with cool ideas.

Categories:

New version of Hugo offered with Micro.blog

Added Hugo version 0.117 as an option on the Design page for your blog.

I've been seeing differences between my current home setup and what's on Micro.blog and always attributed it to some difference in my environment and what is on the server. Some kind of secret sauce.

Unfortunately, it looks like something changed in the way that Hugo (or maybe goldmark) handles code blocks.

Code blocks in newer version of hugo

I’ve got it running on my test blog and have a post that I can refer to so that I can tweak the CSS to go with this newer version.

Table and Gist

Still, I’m excited because this release has a lot of cool things since the v.91 that I’ve been targeting. Such as…

92 Removes depreciated .Page methods

93
Markdown diagrams and code block render hooks

94
20% reduction in build time and memory usage

99
Error handling release

101
Gif image processing

103
Updates to 404 support

104
$image.Colors

107
Update to code highlighting

108
Change to the render hook so that you can have it make it so that stand alone images are placed in a

tag. When I look at my blog, I see that you have something there to handle this behavior.

You can checkout the release notes here: github.com/gohugoio/…

Categories:

What deserves to be shared

I’m self aware enough to know that some of what drives me to write on this blog is to communicate and share my thoughts and feelings on various things. Some would call it a little narcissistic.

That being said, I do come across things that I would like to share. For instance, I came across a post by my friend Adam on Mastodon and I want to put it on my blog. I sometimes wouldn’t know how I should go about doing that. Should I just put the link into Micro.blog? Apple Notes? What about a third party application?

I took a step back and remembered that I had put sometime into saving bookmarks into drafts1.

I took a fair amount of time reading over the IndieWeb during the creation of the labarum theme but I’m still having trouble getting it absolutely “correct” because some of the examples that they point to for replies, likes, and articles are returning 404 pages.

Still, I’m pretty confident in the site as it stands and will continue to use the Microformats Parser as part of the process.

My current Web Capture Template will be the following until I get some time to rethink things.

# [[title]]

<blockquote>
[[selection_html]]

<footer>
<cite>
    <a class="u-in-reply-to" rel="in-reply-to" href="[[url]]">
        [[title]]
    </a>
</cite>
</footer>

</blockquote>

<p class="p-summary">Begin response here</p>

I’m planning on making it so that I can select some text and get the draft ready to send to my blog. Otherwise, I’d just send the link directly to someone2 who is interested it.

I think the second hardest part was getting it to stop making the smart quotes.

We solved the “how” but now “what”

This will be an ongoing question. Everyone’s blog is a personal platform and when we put something on it, we are broadcasting a little bit of who we are.

With the recent turmoil of what used to be twitter and reddit, I feel that user created content needs more avenues for discovery.

People used to call it the social graph.

As my site is a node in the social graph, I’m going to post more stuff that interests me.

Sure, you are going to see repeats from other places, but that’s ok.


  1. Drafts does have a tag line that it’s where text starts. ↩︎

  2. This is usually via text message to my family and friends or to my favorite discord. ↩︎

Categories:

I was experimenting with webmentions a lot today. Still have a couple questions, but I think I’m done for the time being.

Webmentions processed on another person’s site.

Categories:

Testing Webmentions one last time for the day

Webmention is one of the fundamental indieweb building blocks. It enables rich interactions between websites, like posting a comment or favorite on one site from another site.

I hope this works.

This is really the example that everyone links to.

Categories:

Testing Webmentions again

Webmention is one of the fundamental indieweb building blocks. It enables rich interactions between websites, like posting a comment or favorite on one site from another site.

I’m hoping that this all works properly from the clipping to drafts to micro.blog.

Categories:

I’m spending sometime with iA writer

I’m spending sometime with iA writer.

Pitbull with cone on her head.

It’s definitely a nice interface for writing things.

I just wonder how I’m going to add the descriptions to the images.

iA writer with this draft.

Categories:

An IndieWeb Webring 🕸💍