... and what to do about it.

[mdlbear]

In previous post I described the recent unpleasantness and suggested that I had the beginnings of an answer. This article gives a little more information, and notes that many are jumping ship to LJ clones like JournalFen and GreatestJournal. But I don't think that's the answer.

As I said before, we need to take back our content.

There are some details I haven't worked out -- I'd like to have a simple, complete out-of-the-box package, but all I have are pieces. Here are the basics, though, and a few tools to get you started:

You need a place on the web where you can host static web pages, preferably in a domain that you own and without anyone else's advertising. But your ISP will do to get started. You do not need to be able to run scripts or a database. If you have a DSL or cable connection you could even host it at home -- I think that's where we're heading, but we're not there yet.

You do that, if you want to, on your computer at home. A program like Blosxom or ikiwiki will let you format and organize your own web pages offline, and construct the RSS and HTML summary pages you need to make a proper blog. I'm working on a more geekish solution based on the Unix utility make. You don't really need either. Just make a subdirectory of your main web page called "blog", and make entries with paths like "/blog/2007/0530/2150.html" or maybe ".../2150/title.html".

In other words, every entry is either a web page or a directory (which lets you put any images the page uses together with the text). Now all you have to do is run a little script to generate the RSS and HTML summaries and upload any new pages to your public website using a program like rsync or a web-based version-control system like Subversion or git.

Now, here's the part that will require a little more hacking on my part: there needs to be a script that parses the page for tags, builds the tag indices, and cross-posts to LJ or some other blogging site -- or sites -- based on the tags. That way, you can use LJ as your comment aggregator. The other missing piece is the little script that screen-scrapes LJ's email comment notifications and puts them back into your working directory. (You could run your own comment CGI script, but it seems like a lot of hassle. I stole this idea from ohiblather, by the way -- she has multiple blogs elsewhere on the web, and posts pointers to them in her LJ, which is also where she directs most of the comments.)

That takes care of the mechanics of blogging. I like the way Blosxom and ikiwiki let you integrate blogs and comments seamlessly into a website that might have much more in it. There's no reason, for example, why you can't allow comments on every page, or make a "changeblog" out of your version-control changelog entries to point your readers to new or revised pages.

The next thing you need is a "friends" page. Probably the easiest thing to use for that is Planet, a simple feed aggregator that generates a web page. Check out their list of planet-powered sites. But you don't have to publish your friends page at all if you don't want to; you can keep it on your own computer at home. And you'd better not if it has private or friends-locked posts on it, like you might acquire by reading your LJ friends page.

The thing I really don't have a good handle on is the community-building aspect of LJ. The rest of the blogosphere does this using things like trackbacks, pings, and blogrolls. I suspect that the FOAF project may be a large part of the answer: you put a machine-readable profile on your home page, and let FOAF-aware search engines do the rest.

What I'm really advocating is a move away from centralized services controlled by faceless corporations, back to a world where everyone (oops! ETA: runs their own node in the peer-to-peer network that is the Internet. Remember that TCP/IP is a peer-to-peer protocol -- which machine is the client and which the server depends entirely on what they're doing at any given moment.)

Comments

Unintended consequences

[smalltowndad.livejournal.com]

Good ideas for serve-it-yourself web presences.

And, congratulations on being (at least partly) responsible for LJ paying attention to what they were doing.

There's a News Update today (2007-05-31), where LJ gives an explanation.

This is one of the reasons that I don't use 'parental controls' or other filters for Web browsing. The last time I checked, the automated systems blocked some inoffensive sites, and let some offensive ones through.

Viva human intelligence!

When you want it done right ...

[smalltowndad.livejournal.com]

I like your idea of people setting up their own content, and organizing themselves.

There's a long history, here in England's North American colonies, of folks getting together to solve problems instead of relying on outsiders.

Looks like that attitude has gone online.

I'm a bit inconsistent in my own approach. I set up my own domain, www.brendans-island.com, but let a 3rd party handle the technical details of maintaining a server.

Of course, my content isn't likely to get caught in the cogs of the corporate gear chain.

[chatworthy.livejournal.com]

This is what I've wanted to do for years. Give me a permanent IP address and I'll run the box. There's a minor problem: this has been against the terms of services for every internet provider I've had at home. Suggestions?

[mdlbear]

I've been using a grandfathered PacBell account with 5 static IP addresses for several years, and am in the process of switching to sonic.net. They're local, so you may not be able to get them in your area. speakeasy also has good terms of service.

Another alternative is a cheap hosting service like dreamhost.com, which I'm also experimenting with. Much more bandwidth than I can cram down my DSL; not much risk as long as I keep local backups. (Actually, of course, it's the other way around: the real working directory is at home on my fileserver, and the hosted site just mirrors it.)

[ravan.livejournal.com]

*grin* rsync over ssh... *grin*

[mdlbear]

Yup. Locally, anyway. For remote backup I'd want to compress and encrypt first, so rsync's somewhat pointless, though I may well start out with it and without the encryption.

How To - "Blog Key"

[ravan.livejournal.com]

This concept involves a plugin. Each type of blogging software would have the plugin(s) ported to it, but is otherwise platform agnostic.

Plugin: "Blog Keys" - This plugin:
A) generates a public/private key pair, and integrates it into the viewing setting for your blog. No accepted key, no blog see.
B) provides easy distribution of public keys.
C) authenticates against given public key(s) that you've accepted, allowing the key generator(s) to read a protected entry.
D) provide an authentication layer by which you would be able to read the blogs of others who had accepted your key, and enabled you to read that entry.

If I want to be be involved in a blog key group, I enable access to my public key.

A blogger who want to let me read and comment on their blog transfers my public key to their plugin "Add my key!" type button. Thenthey add me to their general reader group, and additionally any subgroups that they wish. They would not, however, be able to read *my* entries, until I added their key to my plugin.

Essentially, the plugin becomes a keychain. I can read any journals that have accepted my key, and enabled my authenticated viewing of the particular entry.

Both commercial (6A) and open source blogging software could implement this. It would still allow public (no key required) posting, could be set up to require key authentication to comment, or be "friends only". All you'd need to participate would be a blogging platform that had the plugin available.

I can't program this, but I'm sure that an open project like WordPress would be glad to have it.