WordPress

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

Getting started

For a simple summary on getting started with Indieweb on your WordPress, see Getting Started on WordPress.

WordPress software

One of many IndieWeb Projects, WordPress is web software you can use to create a beautiful website or blog. Estimates are that WordPress powers 20% of sites for which the content management server is identifiable.

If you're interested in jumping into the IndieWeb, and you've chosen WordPress as your tool of choice, great! Here are instructions that follow the step by step, ground up approach of IndieMark.

As you complete each step, try plugging your site into indiewebify.me. It will give you instant feedback, confirming that it's working or helping you fix it if not.

Contents

If you already have a WordPress site, you can add some of the elements below.

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.

Getting Help

If you need help getting your WordPress site set up for the Indieweb, try the WordPress Outreach Club.

Adding Indieweb Support/Elements to a WordPress Site

Main article: Getting Started on WordPress

Many people already have a WordPress site and want to enhance it. Here are steps/plugins to add IndieWeb support to a WordPress site.

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.

Examples

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

Security and Spam Protection

Main article: WordPress/Security

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.

Plugins

Main article: WordPress/Plugins

There are many good WordPress plugins. Here are some recommended for Indieweb use and by Indieweb people.

Themes

The safest place to download free themes is the official Wordpress Theme Directory. A 2011 study found that almost every other source in the top 10 Google results contained malicious code (a 2014 update says the situation has improved but still recommends caution).

Once you have a theme, you'll want to add microformats 2 support if possible.

Many services will also fall back to the original microformats standard, which many WordPress themes support. Some themes support microformats or other semantics. Microformats 2 is not supported by WordPress or the majority of WordPress themes.

  • SemPress supports microformats, microformats2 and schema.org (theme). It is the only complete theme with microformats2 support.
  • Independent Publisher as of v1.7 now suports microformats2 (though could possibly be further improved?) and additionally does some custom display in comments.php to better differentiate between comments, webmentions, pingbacks, and trackbacks. (Nota bene: the WordPress.com version of this theme is a separate fork and doesn't have the mf2/webmentions support.) The theme is actively being developed on GitHub for additional detail, contributions, and support.
  • P2 is a microblog theme for WordPress that might be adaptable for indiewebsters.
  • MF2_s is a starter theme forked from Underscores a popular starter theme. It is under active development with the hopes it will form the basis of future themes.

Rather than a theme uf2 is a plugin that attempts to add microformats2 data to an existing theme though as the author admits it is very limited and recommends using a theme that supports microformats natively. Be aware that some themes unfortunately use microformat classes for CSS styling rather than just semantics and this can cause issues with using the uf2 plugin (eg: the WordPress Twenty Fourteen theme styles hentry and causes display issues.)

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:

Mobile

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

Development

Main article: WordPress/Development

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

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

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

There are several efforts to add Indieweb Elements to WordPress Core and related projects.

Also, the next WordPress theme, Twenty-Sixteen, will have proper use of hfeed and hentry and remove the theme dependence on styling these elements.

People using WordPress

Main article: WordPress/Examples

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

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

Main article: WordPress/Security

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.

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]

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.

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.:

aaronpk

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

WordPress.com hosting service

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

Main article: WordPress.com

See Also

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