1. There is value to seemingly insignificant atoms of personal content (e.g. the stereotypical what I’m eating/doing/feeling right now) — providing context for more significant pieces of content; self reflection and the creation of new content molecules

  2. I’m beginning to think that I want to store two broad categories of content on my site, content which is defined by the time it occurred/is published and content which is primarily defined by some other attribute.

    Examples of content defined by time, which at the moment I’m using notes for:

    • short, tweet-like notes
    • (often) ideas
    • checkins
    • bits of personal data like , , sleep or other quantified self-type things
    • replies
    • photos
    • some longer written pieces
    • assorted other location data e.g. journeys, runs, walks

    Examples of content primarily defined by things other than time:

    • essay-like articles
    • experiments and tools
    • venues
    • profile data
    • contacts/people — although this is a tricky one which requires further experimentation
  3. Ben Werdmuller: I don't get why you'd use markdown to blog on your own site. Markdown is useful: an easy-to-use notation system that allows you to mark up your text in a safe, fast way. Because you're never letting your users write raw code, there aren't any worries about them posting malware or exploit attempts, or accidentally writing bad markup. At the same time, simple lines and dashes are converted to valid HTML. Everybody wins. But when you're writing your own site, you don't need to worry about those things. You don't care about you posting malware or exploit attempts. (Either you want to, or you won't.) You also don't need to worry as much about bad markup - and if you're not proficient in HTML, you can install a WYSIWYG editor, like the one in WordPress. Unless you're a Dr Jeckyll who morphs into an id-like alter ego without warning, you don't need to worry about your own trustworthiness as a user of your own system. On a self-hosted #indieweb site, all #markdown does is restrict what you can do. It has a syntax to learn, just like basic HTML does, and because you actually have to keep in mind which HTML tags it uses when you write it, it's actually a little bit more complicated to remember. I like a lot of the goals of new publishing platforms like Ghost (I backed it on Kickstarter) but this feature sticks out like a sore thumb to me. I'm not at all sure this is the best writing experience on the web. And I don't see what's wrong with HTML. Updated to add: I've had lots of feedback by people who point out that they just want to write text, not HTML, which is more than fair enough. But surely this shows demand for a smarter, context-sensitive rich text editor rather than another syntax to learn. Why couldn't an editor know to start creating bullet points when you type an asterisk and a space at the beginning of a new line? 13m

    @benwerd I use markdown for initial authoring purely for speed, esp. when typing on mobile devices. After that I just edit the HTML. I’ve yet to come across a WYSIWIM editor which satisfied my semantic, well-structured HTML needs, any suggestions?

  4. One fail I’m seeing more and more is the “we’ve got a different version of this site for your locality! Would you like to go to it?” whole-page overlay on permalink pages. So many problems:

    • Why do you have multiple versions of the same site if the content is equally valuable on either one (e.g. recipe sites)?
    • If language is the reason (I have never seen this) exactly why can’t you internationalize the UI and offer some sort of auto-translation of the content? Or leave the translation to me/my browser whilst having a small, unobtrusive banner letting me know I might be able to find similar content in my native language.
    • If I’ve followed a permalink, I want to see that content. Offering me a redirect to a generic homepage is useless