How I view WordPress

[scripting]

This is a place for comments and questions about yesterday's podcast and comments this morning on Scripting News..

There are comment guidelines, please respect them. 😄

[interstar]

So how should we understand the ecosystem you are building?

AFAICT :

1. wpIdentity is a node server to forward OAuth to WordPress.com servers? So a user would need a Wordpress.com id for it to work? Or can it use any hosted WP as an identity provider?

2. textcasting is a server which can forward messages to other services through their custom APIs (when they have them)?

3. wordland is going to be an editor which you host as a service, that can post to WP and other places? And presumably uses wpIdentity?

Let's say I have the following use-case. I want to write a medium length post somewhere which gets published both on a WP I host myself, AND on LinkedIn. And then I'd like to write a short message with a link to the post on my blog, which would be posted to both Twitter and Mastodon. Could Wordland and your ecosystem be used for this?

How would I get up and running with it?

[scripting]

I'll answer the questions I can, at this time.

1. wpIdentity does a lot more than that. it also handles storage, for example. and more or less completely covers their REST api, and implements simplified access to that api via JavaScript.
2. I'm far from an expert on identity in wordpress, but -- as i understand it, you must have an account on wordpress.com, but the sites you edit can be on any Jetpack-enabled wordpress server.
3. textcasting is an idea, not technology. i do have a server named for that, but it does not connect to wordland or wpidentity.
4. wordland can only post to wordpress. access to other networks comes through work that the wordpress community is doing. it's basically a free ride for any content published in wordpress, as i understand it. i keep saying that because i am a newbie in this community, but i am getting advice from people who are deep into it.

hope this helps.

[scripting]

BTW, there are exceptions to the rule that wordland can only post to wordpress.

for example, the storage system that's part of wpIdentity has the concept of public files, some of which are accessible directly through the HTTP server in wpIdentity -- namely the RSS 2.0 feeds it maintains for stories written in WordLand and published through WordPress. might be a bit confusing because wordpress already supports RSS 2.0, very nicely -- but i wanted to support Markdown encoding of text in RSS, because I want to use that in FeedLand and have encouraged others to do the same. it's documented in the source namespace.

there are other uses for public files in wpIdentity storage, i just implemented one in Bingeworthy for the public profile pages. there's prefs you can edit in bingeworthy that are then accessible publicly. it's a long story, but if this stuff catches on will probably be a pattern other apps will use.

[pylimitics]

What are the advantages of using the wordland editor? I have a Wordpress-hosted blog, and the writing-in-a-box system works OK for me...but my posts are pretty short. It's easy to add links, images, and inline emphasis, which are the things I do.

I am a professional technical writer, and use much more elaborate tools for writing that much more elaborate content, but I haven't found the need to do things like multi-level outlines, annotated infographics, cross-references, etc. for my blog posts.

However, throughout my career (I'm about the same age as you) I've tended to adapt my writing workflow to the tools I have at the time. So I may be completely missing what I could do with my Wordpress blog if I had a better tool. How can I find out more about wordland? (Actually if it only stops trying to autocorrect "wordland" into "woodland" that would be a step in the right direction!)

[scripting]

I’d like to keep the focus of this thread on what’s in the podcast, but there is a brief backgrounder on the product here.

https://this.how/wordland

[pylimitics]

Thanks!

[jeherve]

2. I'm far from an expert on identity in wordpress, but -- as i understand it, you must have an account on wordpress.com, but the sites you edit can be on any Jetpack-enabled wordpress server.

That's correct. wpIdentity allows you to authenticate to a WordPress.com account via oAuth. Once you're authenticated to WordPress.com, you can use the WordPress.com REST API to interact with any site that ships with the API endpoints. Those endpoints are available on all sites hosted on WordPress.com, as well as sites hosted elsewhere but that have installed the Jetpack plugin.

[scripting]

@jherve -- i'm starting to figure it out. ;-)

related question. is there a way to find a user's account on wordpress.com?

suppose someone wanted to find out my username on wordpress.com only knowing that my name is "dave winer"?

[jeherve]

No, there is no user search functionality for WordPress.com.

WordPress.com does offer public profiles (these days also known as "digital passwords", "link-in-bio pages", "linktree"), but it is not a searchable user directory and not everyone chooses to make their profile public.
Once you know someone's profile though, you do know their WordPress.com account.
Here is yours, because your WordPress.com account is quite easy to guess :)
https://gravatar.com/scripting

Also worth noting that those public profiles can list sites that are connected to the account, but the account owner must decide what sites to display on their profile. In practice, that means you cannot use those profile pages to know what sites are linked to an account. This is obviously info that is private by default.

[scripting]

@jeherve -- thank you -- this is very helpful.

i'm sort of feeling my way through this. but it's actually good that wordpress.com doesn't do much to publicize profile pages, because then there's no confusion when we use the wordpress.com id to link to our own profile pages from within our app.

consider bingeworthy. here's a screen shot of a profile page for a program.

it shows how various users have rated the program.

if you click on scripting it takes you to my profile page, which (for now) lists the programs they've rated starting with best-first. it'll have more info on it coming soon. ;-)

we'll do more with this by connecting bingeworthy to wordland -- then it will work very well that they both use wordpress.com identity.

[scripting]

@azizhp -- sorry this is not what i talked about in the podcast.