Experimentation continues with IndieWeb projects — over to Webmentions. It is a really wonderful concept which enables responses to a post to be written on one’s own website. As Jeremy Keith wrote in one of his posts:
Basically, it’s an equivalent to pingback. Let’s say I write something here on adactio.com. Suppose that prompts you to write something in response on your own site. A web mention is a way for you to let me know that your response exists.
Even better, and simpler to follow explanation is put out by Drew Mclellan detailing what’s involved in implementing webmentions.
The flow goes something like this.
- Frankie posts a blog entry.
- Alex has thoughts in response, so also posts a blog entry linking to
- Alex’s publishing software finds the link and fetches Frankie’s post, finding the URL of Frankie’s Webmention endpoint in the document.
- Alex’s software sends a notification to the endpoint.
- Frankie’s software then fetches Alex’s post to verify that it really does link back, and then chooses how to display the reaction alongside Frankie’s post.
The end result is that by being notified of the external reaction, the publisher is able to aggregate those reactions and collect them together with the original content.
I have got the webmentions (and pingbacks) enabled here — over to testing now. So there you have it. This post is also an attempt at sending a webmention.