WordPress

WordPress is open source CMS software used by many on the Indieweb as well as a blog hosting service.

There are two "flavors" of WordPress (.org and .com):

• WordPress.ORG hosts the open source software that one can self-host on their own (or a rented) server and freely configure to set up their website
• WordPress.com is a for-profit company that provides a blog hosting (SaaS) service using the code available on WordPress.org and because it is less flexible (compared to the WordPress.org version) could be considered a silo. In particular, themes aren't as easily customizable, javascript isn't allowed, and no additional plugins are available.

Current estimates are that WordPress powers approximately 25% of sites for which the content management server is identifiable. Some of this is due to the fact that it is very backwards compatible.

In most of the documentation presented on the Indieweb wiki, it's presumed that users are using the self-hosted version from WordPress.org, but this doesn't mean that one can't utilize WordPress.com to build an IndieWeb site. Users should use care to distinguish which version they're using and which instructions they're following.

Because the wiki page for WordPress has become relatively large, for ease of use it has been broken up into several sub-pages which include specific information on the following topics

Getting Help

If you need help getting your WordPress site set up for the Indieweb, try the WordPress Outreach Club or the #indieweb channel in IRC.

Getting Started

If you're interested in jumping into the IndieWeb, and you've chosen WordPress as your tool of choice, great!

If you do not have a site... We'll assume you already have your own personal-domain. After that, you'll need web hosting. There are plenty of good options. WPEngine is one of the best for both beginners and advanced hackers. #WordPress.com hosting service is solid and easy to use, but limits you to pre-approved plugins and themes.

Once you've got a domain name, hosting, and installed WordPress head over to Getting Started on WordPress for a simple summary on getting started with Indieweb on your WordPress site.

Articles

Individual articles bloggers have written about setting up their sites with indieweb support:

• 2014-08-30 http://techlifeweb.com/using-wordpress-for-indieweb/
• 2014-10-02 david.shanske.com
• add yourself

Keep in mind that in late 2015/early 2016, the workflow for adding Indieweb plugins changed relatively drastically with the introduction of the Indieweb Plugin, so use care in following details written prior to that time. Novice users should be aware that one may also find Indieweb related plugins on github which can conflict with or duplicate functionality in the plugins included in the Indieweb Plugin.

Plugins

There are many good WordPress plugins. The plugins link above outlines some recommended for Indieweb use and by Indieweb people.

Indieweb Plugin

The Indieweb Plugin is a plugin that helps you establish your IndieWeb identity and helps you install various Indieweb-themed plugins. It is designed for newcomers to quickly get up and running.

Themes

One of the benefits of WordPress is a huge variety of pre-made and customizable themes available as well as the ability to create your own from scratch. For security, it's recommended that one use the official Wordpress Theme Directory.

Presently, many IndieWeb technologies, functionalities, and other services rely on microformats 2 support, which not many themes currently have. There are many methods to get around this temporary problem. For ease-of-use out of the box, many sites use either the SemPress theme or the Independent Publisher theme.

For a more comprehensive discussion of WordPress themes for use in IndieWeb, please see WordPress/Themes.

Bookmarklets for Desktop

One big IndieWeb raison d’être is using your own web site to easily reply, like, repost, and RSVP to posts and events. You do this by annotating links on your site with simple microformats2 HTML. Having said that, most people don’t want to write HTML just to like or reply to something. To make some IndieWeb actions easier, one can try out any of the following Bookmarklets or bookmarklet-type schemes:

•  Matthias Pfefferle & Ryan Barrett: IndieWeb Press This plugin based on this post
• Peter Molnar: Extending Press This in WordPress to support indieweb reply, like and repost
• David Shanske: indicates that those who use Post Kinds can create a pseudo bookmarklet with the URL scheme http://www.YOURSITE.com/wp-admin/post-new.php?kind=like&kindurl=@url or http://www.YOURSITE.com/wp-admin/post-new.php?kind=repost&kindurl=@url where the variable "@url" is the permalink of the tweet. The post kind is then set appropriately as well as the referenced URL which then does the embed
• Scott Kingery: Bookmarklets for #Indieweb Favorites and Retweets

Mobile

For ideas on using WordPress for the IndieWeb on mobile see also Posting from mobile devices

Development

Several projects are actively under development for use in WordPress. Plugins/themes considered complete enough for widespread use will appear on this page or on WordPress/Plugins.

For common conventions of data storage in WordPress to ensure interoperability, see WordPress Data.

For Core Development, brainstorming on development of Indieweb themes/plugins for WordPress and discussion of common conventions to ensure interoperability, see WordPress Development.

Most plugins are actively developed on github and welcome issues, comments, suggestions, and pull requests, so feel free to visit and participate there as well.

People using WordPress

People using WordPress on their primary or other sites as well as people who formerly used WordPress.

POSSE to WordPress

With WordPress's API it's possible to automatically POSSE posts to it, and there's at least one example of an Indieweb community member doing so to the hosted service: POSSE to hosted

POSSE reply to WordPress

It's possible to post a reply to a WordPress blog post on your own site, and then POSSE your reply to the WordPress blog post's comments section, as well as POSSE your reply with threading to anywhere that WordPress blog post itself was POSSEd to, e.g. Twitter. Be aware that POSSEing comments to another WordPress blog will often also trigger a pingback/trackback if the site supports it.

Indie Web Examples:

Tantek reply POSSE

Tantek Çelik has started experimenting with manually POSSEing reply posts to WordPress blogs to their comment sections. E.g.:

• original reply: http://tantek.com/2014/255/t2/well-deserved-talented-known-minor-correction
• manual POSSE comment: https://gigaom.com/2014/09/11/indieweb-advocates-launch-known-so-bloggers-can-be-social-and-still-control-their-content/#comment-1483187
  • related: Bridgy Publish feature request to Publish to WordPress comments which could help automate this!
• semi-automatic POSSE tweet @-reply: https://twitter.com/t/status/510633038062309376
  • only *semi* automatic because I had to dig up the in-reply-to tweet permalink manually, but then the POSSE copy of my reply and tweet threading was handled automatically by Falcon.

aaronpk

Aaron Parecki occasionally manually POSSEs reply posts to the comments section of WordPress blogs. E.g.:

• original reply: http://aaronparecki.com/replies/2015/01/13/2/indie
• semi-automatic tweet reply: https://twitter.com/aaronpk/status/555106750433869824 (not fully automatic because required finding the @gigaom tweet permalink manually)
• manual POSSE comment: https://gigaom.com/2015/01/13/ind-ie-scales-back-focuses-on-heartbeat-social-networking-client/#comment-1513998

Security and Spam Protection

WordPress is often targeted for attacks and spam due to its popularity. It is important to keep your installation updated and take some basic steps to protect yourself.

Criticism

Problems with and criticism of using WordPress software from an IndieWeb perspective.

Complexity

The apparent complexity of using and maintaining WordPress has gotten bad enough (or people have gotten tired of it enough) to make people write plain HTML instead[1]

@kevinmarks @t ive resorted to writing blog posts by hand (html and all!) because i hate wordpress. been looking into hakyll tho

Jetpack Requires Login

Jetpack is a popular plugin that incorporates a large number of features and services from WordPress.com into a self-hosted WordPress site.

The plugin requires a WordPress.com login. While the service provided, such as their stats service, would require a login, many of the plugin features, such as infinite scroll, contact form, etc do not. But to use any of the features, you must log in.

Security and Maintenance Vulnerability

Like any system with widespread adoption, WordPress is a target. It is important to keep your site updated with the latest version of the software and any plugins. WordPress has a limited automatic update system.

Fatal Error memory exhausted

WordPress fails to catch and handle fatal errors like running out of memory, and this results in a poor UX on real world sites, that leak otherwise private server configuration information like WordPress install path, potentially account username etc. e.g.:

• http://yottabytes.info/?p=10497 (on 2014-06-08 15:28 EDT):

  Fatal error: Allowed memory size of 41943040 bytes exhausted (tried to allocate 32 bytes) in /home/johnkrol/public_html/wp-includes/post.php on line 1961

Criticism:

• Christian Weiske: PHP: Allowed memory size exhausted ”… nonsense to list a server configuration … ”
  • Tantek Çelik: This is not just a "server configuration" issue. This is a failure by WordPress to catch / handle the exception, although it is not unique to WordPress (see the below linked PHP issue), and a vulnerability that anyone considering WordPress should be aware of.

See: PHP: Fatal Error memory exhausted for more details.

Pages can not have numeric slugs

WordPress does not allow numeric page slugs, making it difficult to set up pages representing a year, such as /event/2014/. This is frustrating if you need to set up a series of annually recurring pages (not blog posts) without using a plugin. [2]

WordPress.com hosting service

WordPress.com is a blog hosting service that runs the WordPress open source software.

See Also

• projects
• silos
• blogs
• web hosting