Thinking about how 90% of what I post to social media is links back to my blog and how that’s probably not great for attracting followers but also it’s exactly what I want.

Because I only use Mastodon as an extension of a POSSE setup, I missed the rollout of quote posts, but I’m thrilled that (as I expected) they’re a simple syntax translated by the Masto software into a specific presentation. Means that I can probably build it into a POSSE workflow somehow.

Je suis content de découvrir combien il est facile de changer mon site Hugo en version multilangue, mais il y aura des conséquences pour le POSSE si je ne suis pas attentif…

Since early 2019(!), I’ve been slowly but surely orienting my online presence around my Hugo blog. This doesn’t mean that I’ve given up on social media platforms, but that those are merely appendages to a website that I have more control over. In fact, I’m really pleased with the POSSE—Post to Own Site, Syndicate Elsewhere—setup that I’ve developed over the past couple of years. It currently works like this: All of my posts start on this website, and then I use the EchoFeed service to send posts to my Mastodon accounts and a Bluesky account (Micro.blog also imports my posts via RSS).

Testing a new post-forwarding service for my POSSE setup. Wish me luck!

I… didn’t mean to wait until the day before the Inauguration to post the text of my sermon on hope in the face of despair. The weekend I gave the sermon was also the weekend of a funeral and near a very busy end of semester, so blogging was on the backburner. Even if I had had more time, my website-to-social media setup was a bit borked and I’m just vain enough to not post things if I think my audience is going to be diminished. I finally had some time yesterday to figure out what was going on and fix it, so now I’m trying to get back into regular posting.

I keep saying that I blog for myself before any other audience, but there’s a lot I haven’t been posting because I knew my POSSE setup was borked these past couple of weeks. I think it’s fixed now, so time to get those posts finished and published.

I started using the static site-friendly, largely non-creepy Tinylytics service in 2023, and a few weeks ago, I finally forked over the money for the paid version of the service. [EDIT: I’ve since cancelled my subscription to the service because I’m no longer sure it aligns with my values.] This year, I’ve become skeptical enough of quantification as a concept that I feel vaguely guilty about tracking which of my posts get how many views, but I’m also a researcher who understands the value of quantification, and it’s also, well, validating to see which of my posts get traction. That said, I still know not to put too much faith in these numbers—for example, I got a very abnormal 537 hits to my website from Finland on October 24th that I just can’t figure out.

Next self-imposed challenge for improving my website-first approach to social media: How can I “repost” content from either Mastodon, Bluesky, or Micro.blog in a way that embeds it in the post on my site but then links to (or otherwise shares) it when that post goes out to those platforms?

Some of my recent posts that I like the best have naturally been to the one part of my site for which my Micro.blog POSSE relay isn’t working. Guess it’s time to teach myself some JSON in hopes of building a more reliable set of feeds.

It’s been messy, but pretty sure I’ve finally figured out how to post images to my website (and from there to social media) from my phone.

One of the biggest gaps in my current website-first approach to social media is an inability to snap a picture and quickly post it. I’ve wanted to tackle this for a while, but an upcoming cool vacation has me thinking I should really go for it.

It’s now been over two years since I ditched Twitter, and I recently made the decision to go ahead and outright delete the account rather than leave it there to ward off imposters. It’s been really interesting to explore the new landscape of social media during this time, and I wanted to put together a post with some of my current thoughts.

I’m on Bluesky now, I guess?

First, I set up a Bluesky account a number of weeks ago, and I’ve been following other Bluesky accounts for a while (first via RSS, now via the Reeder app alongside RSS), but I’ve finally started actually using it since the election, which seems to be sparking some new interest in ditching Twitter. I’m especially happy that Mormon Twitter seems to be re-emerging on Bluesky, since that’s one of the things that I’ve missed the most. I also think a lot of Bluesky features (domain name-based handles, starter packs, better trust and safety features) are neat!

I am 100% on team POSSE, but it can approach Rube Goldberg levels of complexity, and I don’t always know right away how to fix things that break.

introduction and history

I’ve experimented for a while with consuming a range of media through an RSS reader. I don’t remember how long I subscribed to Feedbin, but being able to follow both Twitter accounts and email newsletters in the same app as my RSS subscriptions was a real game-changer. Eventually, I jumped ship for NetNewsWire—I don’t remember all the reasons behind the switch, but knowing that I could keep subscribing to Twitter and start following some subreddits was definitely a major factor.

I was recently talking to some friends about how I’ve been working to make my Hugo blog the center of my online presence. In particular, even though I didn’t know the term at first, I’ve been trying since 2019 to follow the POSSE strategy of “Publish (to) Own Site, Send Elsewhere” (note that, in the grand tradition of many tech acronyms, everyone agrees what the acronym means, but there are multiple ways of understanding what it stands for exactly).