Jared White Photo of Jared

Expressively publishing on the open web since 1996.
Entranced by Portland, Oregon since 2017.

#website (pg. 2)

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I’ve decided (for the umpteenth time!) to resume daily microblogging. The plan is to post to my website once a day and syndicate to Twitter and Mastodon. I’ve really been enjoying other daily bloggers such as Seth Godin and Dave Winer for a while now, plus the folks I follow on Twitter who essentially use that platform for blogging. To aid me in this quest, I’m using Things to remind me every day at 11am Pacific to post something. We’ll see how it goes. 😃
#website #writing

Big news! I purchased the domain name openweb.social, which I’m simply thrilled was still available. I’m mulling over a few ideas of what to do with it. One possibility is that I’ll install Mastodon to power a new #openweb themed social network where people can discuss building a better community of content publishing and engagement via open protocols.

Another possibility that I’m just starting to tinker with is starting a what-if #website that deep-dives into the question of what it would take for #Facebook to adopt open protocols. What if you could take your “social graph” to another service (even one you built yourself!) and post content there, and your Facebook friends could still see your posts? And you’d still see your friends’ Facebook posts and even reply to them? It would make social networking more akin to email, where all email clients and servers are compatible even though they’re run by different companies and on different infrastructure.

Got any thoughts? Just click Message above (or reply to this email if you’re reading my newsletter) and let me know what you think I should do with openweb.social!

I’m afraid I’ve neglected posting much here in the past few days, but it was all for a good cause. After over a year of false starts and tinkering, I have finally launched a brand new website for my company Whitefusion. My “day job” is designing websites and building software for startups, non-profits, and forward-thinking organizations, and for quite a while I had been suffering from the “shoemaker’s children have no shoes” syndrome. Everyone else was getting shiny new work, and my own business was suffering. Well no longer! I’m extremely proud of how the site turned out, and I’m excited about what’s in store for this new chapter of Whitefusion. #website

Jekyll’s Hidden Depths
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As anyone who has used Jekyll for a while knows, it’s capable of so much more than first meets the eye. Jekyll is an amazingly powerful content system right out of the box. But with a few added plugins or creative uses of existing features, it can do almost anything imaginable. I’ve built a wide variety of websites on top of Jekyll over the last couple of years and I still feel like I’m learning new tricks every day.

If you’re curious about the technical aspects of how I used #Jekyll to build this #website, you’ll want to read this article.

Two days after the relaunch of my #website and I’m still feeling the afterglow of excitement. The real challenge of course is being consistent in writing and keeping things fresh over time. But I feel like the new formats available to me make that job easier than in the past.

Next up: I watched the live stream of #Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s congressional hearing yesterday and took quite a few notes, so expect some detailed analysis to drop tomorrow. Everyone else is rushing to get their “take” out the door, but I feel these issues are weighty and nuanced enough that I want to say something well considered.

I’ve been up for the last several hours getting all my #Jekyll build scripts and #Rails editor UIs working for the new #website. I could go into all the geeky details of the problems I’ve had to work through and how everything is put together, but I’ll save some of that for later installments. Suffice it to say…I’m very excited about how it’s turning out. 😁

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