Making the IndieWeb Beginner-Friendly
Keep in mind that this is still a Work in Progress.
Why the IndieWeb? Why make it easier?
Software has been getting increasingly complex, which includes making websites. However, there has been a recent move to make it easier or to strip it down to its bare essentials.
The IndieWeb comes partly from the idea that we should own our content
How?
Creating Easy-to-Use Tooling
If we use GitHub Pages + Jekyll, we can easily publish static-sites.
- Ease of publishing is a key part of this, we want people to have something published on the Internet
- Jekyll is easy because it’s Markdown to start with and then you can go heavier if you want (HTML, CSS, JavaScript, Liquid)
Jekyll and Git/GitHub are not the most user-friendly, but I think that there can be tooling built to abstract the setup and command line and provide some assistance with source control and publishing then it’s a pretty easy tool to have for kids or adults to start learning with.
The easiest and potentially most high-impact way I can think of doing this is by creating a VSCode extension.
- VSCode already has Git/source control integration so just teach how to use that and doesn’t need to learn command line unless they want to
Features:
- Jekyll Theme Marketplace where you can download and use Jekyll themes
- Setup syntax highlighting for Markdown, HTML, and Liquid (sometimes all in the same file)
- Run rebuilding process in background with toggles for live reload etc
- Handle Ruby installation and other Gems and add-ons
Education
Use IndieWeb resources like the wiki
Create more a curriculum so that people can understand the massive number of things that you can do with your own website
What IndieWeb concepts should be taught?
IndieWeb Pages
- /uses
- /now
IndieWeb Concepts:
- Blogrolls/Directories
- Digital Gardens
- Feeds (RSS, h-feed)
- Personal Data Ownership (POSSE, PESOS)
- Stream
General Web Concepts:
- Analytics
- Webrings
Blog Posts: Tagging and Categories