All my attempts to implement them have failed. The vision of webmentions was to build connections, but the only connections seem to be between people with a high level of tech know-how. On the plus side, it looks like Bubbles uses this technology in the background for its commenting system.
I don’t care about Webmentions. As far as I’m concerned, they’re an attempt to reinvent trackback and pingback that requires that personal website operators either turn their sites into a personal web app, or depend on a third-party service like webmentions.io.
The only reason Webmentions haven’t become a spam vector is that hardly anybody implements them.
If it matters, I had opinions about the IndieWeb.org project in general back in 2024.
1 Like
No clue what they are, I read a bit about it, and it seems cool. People can do what they want if it’s fun. But yeah seems like u need to know people in the scene to have a webmention, idk.
1 Like
I like webmentions! They’re the independent version of Wordpress pingbacks, and pingbacks were a formative influence for me and my appreciation for links, so I’m glad to have a way to do the same thing with my personal website. This goes in both directions for me: I like hearing about where my stuff was linked by others, and I like having an automated way to notify other people that I linked their stuff, too.
I do not do all the legwork to make anything display automatically on my site. I don’t care about that. I’d rather vet the received mentions and decide which ones are worth linking to manually.
In terms of setup, I use webmentions.io and followed this guide to IndieAuth and Webmentions on Neocities. This takes a few lines of HTML, which I think is very doable for a beginner.
What took me longer to figure out was how to send them correctly, which is why I created The Lazybones Guide to H-entries in order to help me put the markup in the right place. These days I generally prefer Telegraph for doing the outbound part.
2 Likes
I’m largely disinterested in them. They’re another whole system I’d have to learn and manage and maintain. My website has been constructed for easy updating and low maintenance. Even if I spent the time to understand and implement it, I’d likely forget to check it.
And when I get right down to it, I’d much rather have someone email me than use a webmention. To me, that’s a proper venue for conversation, and that’s what creates connection. IMO.
2 Likes
There are sites where you can send a webmention simply by pasting the URL of your blog post or whatever into a text box.
I never used one of those. The people I care to talk to use more human-oriented modes of communication.
Take it from a programmer who did pro web development for 15 years: there are better things to do with one’s time. Like manually maintaining an RSS feed on a static site. It works with already existing tools for a change.
2 Likes
For what it’s worth, I recently wrote a guide on Webmentions that might help if you use a static site generator.
I like the concept of webmentions, especially as a system for displaying other websites that link back to your pages, but in practice I feel it’s too complicated to set up for most people, which significantly limits the usefulness. Any time you’re asking users to pull from an API themselves you’re significantly raising the barrier to entry.
I also think the extreme centralization around webmentions.io isn’t the best, but there aren’t many other services that stand in for it.
1 Like
Email does seem to be the obvious way to get in touch. Everyone has it, everyone knows how to use it.
This is precisely why I ended up not implementing webmentions. I don’t have the technical knowledge nor the desire to implement them directly on my site, and I don’t want to rely on an external service.
They’re a great idea in theory, but in practice, it’s easier for someone to just send an email. The alternative I settled on was providing links to other places I posted my pieces so people can comment there, because people are averse to sending emails and spam filters can be very aggressive.
(Also, I’m reading through your article right now and it’s voicing so many issues I had when I started learning about the IndieWeb.)
1 Like
Welcome to the cafe, and I hope the “slightly more humane version of Maddox” vibe isn’t putting you off.
1 Like
While email has its uses, it also has some distinct downsides for me, personally speaking, regarding the “I linked your thing” use case.
The first problem with email is that when you open your email inbox, there’s emails in there. The very ubiquity that makes it reliable common ground also makes it susceptible to drawing too many different things into its orbit. Even as someone who maintains four different email addresses for different purposes and sets up folders and filters and tries to keep them all specialized, I still end up with inboxes overladen with more than I care to deal with. An overstuffed inbox is a black hole of a cognitive burden and I hate it. Hate hate hate hate hate hate.
Fortunately I’ve gotten some good use out of my 32bit.cafe email address, which I’ve tried to keep narrowly specialized to blogging and indie web concerns. It feels good to look at the inbox for that one because I’ve managed to keep it clean. And even then! I feel the gravitational pull of using that address for more things! Which I know would ruin it! And yet! It is a persistent battle of the will.
So even though I personally am willing to tango with email under select circumstances, I am also aware that I am not unique in terms of the cognitive burden it can impose, and since I am a greedy little goblin who wants More, I like to provide my visitors with another, easier option.
The second big problem with email is that in order to send an email, you have to write an email. While this is fine if you have a letter-type message in mind and know exactly what to say, I have not always enjoyed such certainty.
Here is the basic script I have sometimes resorted to in the past:
Hello,
Just letting you know that I linked to your blogpost in my new blogpost, Blogpost Title.
Thanks,
Coyote
Writing an email like this feels awkward. Communication preferences vary from person to person, and emails being private necessarily means I can’t look to anyone else’s example, so unless someone actually states outright “you can email me just to let me know that you linked to my post,” I don’t actually know if they give a darn about being notified about that kind of thing or if they’d expect me to say more than that or what. Too much opacity of social expectations. For me this does not hold a candle to an option which saves me time and resolves the uncertainty.
In summary: while I appreciate email for letter-type activities, I like how webmentions fit my personal preferences for their own specific use case, in a way that email cannot match for me.
@brennan Since some folks have mentioned Webmention.io as a centralization issue, I’m wondering, would it be possible to add some kind of webmention service to Folk.zone? Just curious. I’m personally all set with what I have for now, but I figure it makes sense to make contingency plans.
Also, hi @mrnnki! Good to see you here.
Unfortunately the way that folks talk about webmentions can be a problem sometimes… It’s part of a broader issue where some folks like to define “the indie web” according to optional/unnecessary technical stuff – which is comparable to that thing where people treat the indie web like it’s a retro aesthetic movement.
4 Likes
This is a very smart idea, Coyote! I will look into trying to make this happen 
Edit: This was easier than I thought! I just forked and turned the original repo into a docker container, it’s now online! https://webmention.folk.zone
Avatars don’t work at the moment as they require a storage solution I don’t have configured yet, but it essentially should work just like webmention.io where you just replace:
<link rel="webmention" href="https://webmention.io/username/webmention" />
with:
<link rel="webmention" href="https://webmention.folk.zone/username/webmention" />
3 Likes
I recall trying to figure out what the point of the IndieWeb was, and to find some clearcut definition of ‘IndieWeb building blocks’ and giving up after an hour of reading wiki pages and blogposts - I think it’s just occupational therapy for LinkedIn geeks.
2 Likes
Oh cool! Glad it wasn’t too onerous to get that set up. I’ve made a note to add that to the wiki page, although… looking at that page again now… it’s a mess, isn’t it? I’ll have to think about how to approach some more significant structural edits.
1 Like
That is as harsh as it is delightful.
2 Likes
You owe me an apology for that. Genuinely weirded out by the petty hostility here.
1 Like
I don’t know about hostile - maybe more pithy than is helpful, I’ll concede that. I just think this IndieWeb stuff feels more like a technical exercise for people who are into building little interlocking components, and less like a project that has a real impact on how we connect online. And god knows I am part of a lot of projects that fit that description, but this is not one of them.
1 Like
Calling it pithy is self-flattery. As much as I dislike webrings, you don’t see me talking about the people who use them like that.
For what it’s worth, I’d imagine there is a valuable conversation to be had about shortcomings with the clarity of writing on various wiki pages and instructional guides – a subject I have a lot of thoughts about, to the point that I’ve even thought about putting together a writing guide for programmers, an idea I’ve been leaving on the backburner because I’ve been under the impression that nobody cares – and that’s a conversation I would be open to having with you, after you apologize.
3 Likes
I’ve never really tried to implement Webmentions on any of my websites, as the process seems a little too daunting for me. I’m sure I could figure it out eventually, but I don’t really feel much of a pressing need to, I guess? I’m glad it exists for people who want to use it, but I’m also glad that it’s entirely optional.