@ovidem@mastodon.social avatar

ovidem

@ovidem@mastodon.social

I blog about web design + code at distinctivequality.com. Founded indieaisle.com for indie creators. And blocksedit.com, a visual editor for branded emails.

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matthiasott, to random
@matthiasott@mastodon.social avatar

By the way, do you have a personal website and does it have a home page? (I’m pretty sure it does… 😁)

I would love to know: what’s on your “home” and why?

Feel free to share a link, of course. 🤗 As always, I’m also asking on behalf of my newsletter subscribers.

ovidem,
@ovidem@mastodon.social avatar

@matthiasott I have an intro that explains the name of the site, a brief description about me and what the site is about, and then an overview of related links, including my latest blog posts. https://distinctivequality.com

ovidem, to SmallWeb
@ovidem@mastodon.social avatar

This post by @Daojoan is spot on, and the reason I decide to (re)launch @indieaisle. I would add that you should use tools, resources, and other people to help develop your site. Work with a designer, a developer, a template, a system. BUT understand how it all works together and how you can make changes if you need to.

https://joanwestenberg.com/blog/the-creator-economy-trap-why-building-on-someone-elses-platform-is-a-dead-end

ovidem, to random
@ovidem@mastodon.social avatar

Making incremental website improvements give me warm fuzzies. It’s like each update fills in a piece of my being.

https://jamesg.blog/2024/03/04/incremental-website-improvements-joy/

alabut, to random
@alabut@techhub.social avatar

Let’s see if I can turn the into the lazyweb. Does anyone have any examples of blog posts that handle vertical video well?

Just embedded without the usual platform cruft would be great, but I’m also curious about reach goals for Instagram levels of polish, ideally with just plain HTML. Can you do things like auto-playing silently until you click on it to unmute, playing only the video that’s in the viewport, etc, without a bunch of javascript wizardry?

ovidem,
@ovidem@mastodon.social avatar

@alabut On our homepage, we have a silent video as an MP4 using the standard <video> tag. It autoplays and loops and is compatible across browsers. The file size is also relatively small so it loads pretty instantly too without needing to set it up to stream or anything. https://blocksedit.com

ovidem,
@ovidem@mastodon.social avatar

@alabut Yep! I set that up about a year ago when I decided to look into using the video tag by itself instead of embed code and was surprised how simple it had gotten. Doing it before that involved multiple video files for browser compatibility and various code adjustments for different browsers. Now it’s basically just four HTML parameters!

cory, to tech
@cory@social.lol avatar

🔗: The IndieWeb is for Developers https://darthmall.net/weblog/2024/indieweb-is-for-devs/

ovidem,
@ovidem@mastodon.social avatar

@cory I like to think of it as indie web (lowercase) is for all, while Indie Web is to inspire developers to build tools to improve the indie web experience. I’m trying to do this with my @indieaisle side project: include Indie Web tech as optional services alongside other standard web features. https://indieaisle.com

jake4480, to random
@jake4480@c.im avatar
ovidem,
@ovidem@mastodon.social avatar

@sarajw @jake4480 The creators of Back to the Future talked about how the reason they chose 30 years into the past (and future in the second one where they had a cafe 80’s in the year 2015) is because they observed that that’s about the time period people seem to be fascinated with in looking into the past. This looks pretty accurate to that theory!

sarajw, to random
@sarajw@front-end.social avatar

What options are there to properly fight spam in a static website? Are there any?

Or if I get access to a database endpoint, maybe via an ORM rather than PHP - I can put my entries in there, but how can I run spam checks?

I currently use Netlify Forms, they run Akismet and it's awesome. But I'd like to make my email contact form and guestbook form independent from Netlify if I can.

Every site I'm finding in my search for spam filters and contact forms seems to be all about wordpress plugins 🫠

ovidem,
@ovidem@mastodon.social avatar

@sarajw I’m actually working on something exactly for this! It’s a service that automatically processes your form in the backend while checking for spam and redirects back to your site. I’m hoping to have it up and running within the next week.

ovidem,
@ovidem@mastodon.social avatar

@sarajw Update! I ended up getting sick last week so we’ve had to delay the launch, but we’re so close! We’re currently doing some final beta testing. In the meantime, I thought I’d share some info on how the setup is going to work. Let me know what you think: https://indieaisle.com/form-spam/

ovidem,
@ovidem@mastodon.social avatar

@flamed @sarajw And our form spam blocking service is now live! Here’s the announcement for it: https://indieaisle.com/indieaisle/form-spam-blocking/

ovidem,
@ovidem@mastodon.social avatar

@flamed @sarajw Wanted to let you know that the form spam blocking service now has an individual subscription option (at $3/month) instead of requiring getting the bundled Pages plan!

https://indieaisle.com/form-spam/

matthiasott, to CSS
@matthiasott@mastodon.social avatar

🤔 I’m preparing my talk at the moment and I’d be glad to hear your thoughts:

In which areas do you see the most potential for innovative web design when it comes to the latest and greatest features?

Like, which CSS features would you recommend a designer (or developer) to learn who wants to create outstanding work for the Web in 2024? ✨

ovidem,
@ovidem@mastodon.social avatar

@matthiasott Grid for structure, nesting and variables for organization, and :has()!

indieaisle, to random
@indieaisle@mastodon.social avatar

A powerful, flexible, format, with an interface that's easy to use.
https://indieaisle.com/indieaisle/template/

ovidem,
@ovidem@mastodon.social avatar

@alabut @indieaisle @ovidem Hey, thanks. Yep, that is kinda the idea, but even the hosting can be any static host. Indie Aisle would act as dynamic services on top of a self-hosted static site. It’s currently just me but I’ll eventually need help from a backend developer.

matthiasott, to random
@matthiasott@mastodon.social avatar

You might have noticed that the next issue of the newsletter is a little delayed this time. I’ll finish and send it out tonight. 🤗

But while you’re waiting:

Do you have a links or bookmarks section on your website? Or do you know a site that does this really well?

Feel free to share the link with me and my newsletter subscribers below! (RT == 💚)
👇

ovidem,
@ovidem@mastodon.social avatar

@matthiasott Yep! Here’s my links page: https://distinctivequality.com/links/

matthiasott, to RSS
@matthiasott@mastodon.social avatar

Citizens of the open web! 💚

Does your website or blog have an feed? Let me – and my newsletter subscribers – know the URL(s) below.
👇

ovidem,
@ovidem@mastodon.social avatar

@matthiasott I recently updated mine with some styling! https://distinctivequality.com/blog/feed.php

matthiasott, to random
@matthiasott@mastodon.social avatar

Inhabitants of the open web!

Do you have a on your site? Or did you come across a fantastic example on someone else’s website?

Let me know the URL below! 🙌

(Once more, I’m also asking for my newsletter subscribers 😉)

ovidem,
@ovidem@mastodon.social avatar

@matthiasott Yep! I call it my Following page. It includes Blogs, newsletters, podcasts, and even YouTube channels: https://distinctivequality.com/following/

matthiasott, to random
@matthiasott@mastodon.social avatar

“Because copyright today covers virtually every sort of human expression – including blogposts, photographs, forum posts, scraps of software code, and government documents – it would be impossible to train today’s leading AI models without using copyrighted materials.”
—OpenAI

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2024/jan/08/ai-tools-chatgpt-copyrighted-material-openai

ovidem,
@ovidem@mastodon.social avatar

@matthiasott I don’t think their excuse holds up. There’s some kind of licensing/royalty method that they could offer. Something along the lines of how Apple Music or Spotify works for musicians.

I wrote up a blog post on how OpenAI sees themselves as the savior of humanity’s AI future and because of that has essentially decided to make bad AI: https://distinctivequality.com/blog/chatgpt/

matthiasott, to random
@matthiasott@mastodon.social avatar

✍️ New post: The Best Comment Section on the Internet

https://matthiasott.com/notes/best-comment-section-on-the-internet

ovidem,
@ovidem@mastodon.social avatar

@jon @matthiasott I like @kottke’s approach of requiring a paid membership to comment. It seems like a good way to filter out the negative aspects while allowing for discussion among like-minded people that have a vested interested in keeping posts relevant.

matthiasott, to Blog
@matthiasott@mastodon.social avatar

What were your favorite posts of the year? 🤔

And, in case you have a personal site, which of your own posts was your fave or the most “successful” of 2023?

(Asking for my subscribers, of course. 😊)

ovidem,
@ovidem@mastodon.social avatar

@matthiasott One of my favorite posts of the year was your The New CSS post! And my own best post is this one on share links: https://distinctivequality.com/blog/share-links/

matthiasott, to random
@matthiasott@mastodon.social avatar

If you have a personal website: what platform, CMS, SSG, tech stack, or service are you using for it? Would you pick it again? How much technical expertise did it require to set up and make it your own? And do you have to do a lot of maintenance?

Once more – you guessed it – I’m asking for my subscribers. 😉
RT = 🎉

ovidem,
@ovidem@mastodon.social avatar

@matthiasott For years now I have been using my own PHP code plus JSON for my blog. One PHP page for listings, and another for posts, with HTML for post content. I’m working on writing up an article about it and releasing the code on GitHub soon!

matthiasott, to webdev
@matthiasott@mastodon.social avatar

How do you feel about all the shiny new features coming to these days? Are you exited? And if so, what are you most exited about? Are you already using some of them? Or are you still waiting?

ovidem,
@ovidem@mastodon.social avatar

@matthiasott I tend to go with the approach of reading about new CSS stuff and thinking about how to apply to something I’m working on or did recently. Using :has() popped up for me last week for the first time and it came in very handy!

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