microdotblog/help.micro.blog

Documentation for Micro.blog.

help.micro.blog's Issues

“First steps” article should mention filling in “About me” info

Earlier this week, @jeanmacd posted a reminder to new folks to fill in their About info to help them be discovered.

There should be a little blurb about that in the First steps help article, too, with a bit of rationale—primarily discovery.

After some discussions within the community last fall, I wrote an article going into more depth about things we thought would be useful to (optionally) include in one’s “About me” and the reasoning behind including them; we shouldn’t replicate the article on the help page, but a quick list of possible items to include would be good.

New Help main page is missing recent articles

It looks like the rewrite of the Help home page is missing a few of the recent articles:

• Welcome to Micro.blog (Manton's video)
• Sharing photos from iOS (Ron's new page from #9 )
• ActivityPub
• Authentication
• Books on Micro.blog

Tweak to help for importing/moving to Micro.blog

It would be good to point out that when importing to Micro.blog it is best to wait until the import, including images, has finished before changing the DNS or taking the site down.

Clarify Timeline display rules for date-like titles

https://micro.blog/manton/1785712

it was designed for feeds that had simple date titles like "2018-01-09" and doesn't work for more verbose formats. I'll update the documentation.

(It’s been a couple of days, so I want to capture this here so we don’t forget.)

Need to include Sunlit as an official Micro.blog ap

On this page Sunlit is missing from the Official apps list.

Related: should you mention posting via the web interface as well (it has some unique abilities). Also, is it worth mentioning Quill in the third party list (I know it’s not an app but it could be useful for some platforms etc).

Micropub photo accessibility description parameter mp-photo-alt[]= not documented

I can’t find the mp-photo-alt[]= Micropub parameter (used for passing an image’s alt text/accessibility description) documented on the Help site (I’d have expected it on the Posting API page).

Nor, for that matter, can I find it mentioned on Manton’s blog; I don’t remember now where I read Manton introduce and provide an example of it, but I can’t believe it wasn’t on his blog somewhere.

I guess this is the only documentation for it, at least that I can find?

It really should be documented, as implemented on Micro.blog, with examples, on the Help site.

Adding example code

I'd like to add some more example code to the API docs, but I'm not sure the best approach right now, since the docs read like a single page blog post. @manton Do you have any thoughts on whether code blocks in-between paragraphs would be okay, or something else that might work better?

Profile photos needs updating

Since at least the arrival of podcasting support, Gravatars are deprecated and @manton blogged suggesting everyone upload a profile picture directly: http://www.manton.org/2018/04/15/changed-the-default.html

The Profile photos page needs to be updated to reflect this: http://help.micro.blog/2015/profile-photos/

(Are Gravatars still supported at all?)

Add a sample for lists to the Markdown help

See https://micro.blog/til/2396520

Note that blockquote (currently on the page) has a similar requires-preceding-blank-line caveat, so it would be good to have a corresponding sample/explanation for lists.

Lists are a reasonably-common appearance in the Timeline and are often malformatted because of this caveat, which seems like a good argument for adding them to Micro.blog’s own Markdown help rather than hoping people follow the link to Gruber’s documentation.

Add note on toggling cross-posting and how it works

On this help page I think it would be good to include how to selectively toggle cross-posting on and off (is it iOS only?).

Github custom themes only imported once?

I've got a custom theme that I imported from Github. I guess I was under the impression that I could continue to edit it in Github, but am I correct in assuming that once it is pulled, I have to manually edit the file in Mb?

The page isn't clear on making multiple edits:
https://help.micro.blog/2019/about-themes/

If that IS the case, then I'll make a PR to make it clear that Github clones are one way, one time only.

I guess the workaround -- maybe a new help page, designing themes with Github? -- would be to delete the custom theme and then re-import it, and select it again?

Feature request: permalinks in sidebar.js

Can we get permalinks to posts included in sidebar.js?

I've written a few notes on my own site about this: https://bmannconsulting.com/microblog/

Let me know if there is a better place to put feature requests. If Microdotblog were open source, I could help implement these things :) A non commercial license perhaps.

Custom themes can only be imported from Github once?

I've got a custom theme that I imported from Github. I guess I was under the impression that I could continue to edit it in Github, but am I correct in assuming that once it is pulled, I have to manually edit the file in Mb?

The page isn't clear on making multiple edits:
https://help.micro.blog/2019/about-themes/

If that IS the case, then I'll make a PR to make it clear that Github clones are one way, one time only.

I guess the workaround -- maybe a new help page, designing themes with Github? -- would be to delete the custom theme and then re-import it, and select it again?

Add details about video hosting to the Pricing page

The current pricing page has no reference to the video hosting feature that was recently added. It should address at least below.

• Be added to the "Hosted microblog + hosted microcasts" section
• Information on limits clearly called out
• Title would have to be appropriately reworded

Add a troubleshooting section

I think it would benefit users and save you time if there was a publicized section for troubleshooting that covered common issues and the fix/approach. In the past 24 hours I’ve seen the “time zone is wrong” and “my images are square and I don’t want them to be” come up. A knowledge based approach would be great but probably too much work at this point.

Cross-posting article needs to document how to disable cross-posting

The Cross-posting to Twitter etc help article should also have a section that documents the steps to disable (and re-enable) cross-posting using the web, the Mac app, and the iOS app.

The only blog post where I’ve seen it documented is the iOS v1.3.3 announcement, and that really just documents the existence of the post settings button on iOS, not really the steps/implications.

“First steps” article should mention checking Mentions to see replies

Ron noted that the introductory help articles (i.e., those most useful for “onboarding”) don’t seem to mention checking Mentions for replies, and he related his experience replying to some new people who showed up in Discover, never hearing back from them, perhaps because they didn’t know they had gotten a reply in the first place.

A brief mention in First steps might be helpful (“You can see when someone replies to your post or a comment you’ve made by checking the Mentions tab”).

Also, Mentions was the only tab that wasn’t mentioned in @manton’s Welcome to Micro.blog screencast into, so if he ever redoes it (perhaps after Favorites get renamed Bookmarks?), adding a couple of seconds to show Mentions would be useful.

“Muting and reporting users” page needs to explain how to report via web

The Muting and reporting users page currently only explains how to mute users on the web via the “Edit muted users” section of Account.

However, @manton told me today that, if you click a user’s name to go to their profile page, you can click the (…) button next to their name and get the same mute/report options as available in the Mac app. The help page needs to be update to reflect this ability to report users (and this other way to mute them). The existing section could perhaps be renamed “Managing muted users”? (since that is the only way to unmute)…

JSON API page should mention new listing of Discover collections/tagmoji

The JSON API help page should mention the update to /posts/discover to now include the list of tagmoji Discover collections that @manton announced today:

The /posts/discover API for Micro.blog apps has also been updated. It now returns the emoji that Micro.blog is currently tracking, and whether it’s one that is “featured” in the default popup menu in Micro.blog on the web.

Photo-posting articles need to mention adding `alt` text

Comments from Bruce and Odd in a Conversation where Josh de Lioncourt thanked me for including alt descriptions on my image prompted me to check whether the Help articles related to posting photos mention adding those attributes. They do not (they pre-date the official apps' support for adding alt at posting time), so we should update them.

• Including photos
• Sharing photos from iOS (this also needs to take into account Sunlit 2.5’s new UI—no more Stories)

Document who sees replies in conversations

I remain unclear who sees replies to conversations based on the Micro.blog settings chosen. Pratik and I at least are both unclear. I think a paragraph on this help page for replies would be helpful. Or possibly add a help page about the Timeline setting “Show mentions only to people I'm following” and exactly what that does. I did a quick search and couldn’t find one.

Add a note to the Pricing page about GitHub mirroring

Mirroring to GitHub Pages is currently listed as a feature for the Hosted subscription on the Pricing page, despite the fact that mirroring currently isn't working and hasn't been for a while (as far as I can remember).

I wonder if for this specifically, and the Pricing page in general, it would be prudent to add a note whenever certain features have been inactive for a certain amount of time.

I think this kind of transparency would be only strengthen the value of the subscriptions since it would be 100% clear nothing is being hidden or lied about, even if it is unintentional.

Mastodon related info

I'm not sure if this should be an enhancement to the ActivityPub help page or a separate help item. But for folks like me it would be nice to explicitly state that setting up the ActivityPub name means micro.blog posts will be sent to mastodon's federated timeline. Also, that to follow a mastodon user enter their name in the search field of Discover.

Add a note about microformats to the Custom themes documentation

Over in this conversation, @cleverdevil discovered that micromemories wasn’t working because Khaled’s custom theme didn’t have any microformats support.

Jonathan added a note to the micromemories readme about the requirement (which kind-of helps people who want to use micromemories, if they are technical enough), but it seems like we should also warn/guide anyone making a custom theme (from scratch or from another Hugo/Jekyll theme not among those offered by Micro.blog by default) that they need to include microformats markup to ensure compatibility with various Micro.blog- and IndieWeb-related services—particularly if the person plans to share the theme.

Probably something like this is sufficient:

If you are creating a theme, be sure to include the appropriate microformats markup to ensure compatibility with IndieWeb- and Micro.blog-related services. You can look at the existing themes to see how microformats support is implemented.

Consider adding a reminder that Micro.blog needs “Full text” feeds from WordPress

We’ve seen several instances of people using WordPress having “bizarre” issues with their posts as they appear on Micro.blog (no formatting, no images, etc.). This is usually caused by Settings, Reading, For each article in a feed, show being set to “Summary” instead of “Full text”.

In the RSS and JSON Feed section of the Setting Up WordPress article, it might be useful to add a brief note about that setting, as people may have had it set to “Summary” for other reasons and not immediately realize it’s affecting postings to Micro.blog.