That title may be a mess, I’m sorry. What I am asking is if there already is the ability to, or if it has been requested, that post files could be customized, sort of like the path being customized.
For example, I see that posts get a three-word truncation automatically, taken from either the title, if there is one, or the first three words of the post, if there isn’t a title.
Sometimes this can become generic or obscure or even confusing. Especially for some of the types of posts I like to make that are part of a set or series. If each of the titles is the same words at the beginning they will all end up with the same three-word “slug” or filename, added to the date path in the URL.
I’d like to know if this could be crafted to be customized at post time via a config field, or even edited after-the-fact if you happened to want to do this but forgot after you published the post. Either way, curious about the ramifications or considerations for how it currently works and how a change might be made or why it shouldn’t be.
These are known as “slugs” (as you noted), and it has been requested but as of yet is not offered. In general, Micro.blog has been resistant to add any option to the new post screen that might add friction to quick posting.
The good news is the underlying blogging tech micro.blog uses does support custom slugs, so it’s plausible the platform can change it’s opinion on this in the future.
Micro.blog does not let you edit front matter or respect the slug front matter to my knowledge. Hugo, which micro.blog uses, does, so it’s possible MB will include this in the future. Right now, it’s an explicit choice that the platform does not support this or expose it.
That said, you can set up redirects so if this is about specific posts you can do that. But that’s not a solution for someone who routinely wants to set the slug. Slugs won’t change the date format of your URL (also Hugo customizable but I believe ignored by MB).
I still want to do this. It’s a tiny bit tricky because there are some assumptions in other parts of Micro.blog, and as @jsonbecker said we’re not sure where to put it in the UI. Probably will end up being something you can change when editing a blog post, but not a field when first posting so it doesn’t get in the way.
If you import a .md file to Micro.blog, you can specify the permalink/slug in the front matter. But not sure if there’s a workflow in regular posting apart from bulk uploading
@manton@jsonbecker My concern with only exposing the slug/URL when editing, is it forces you to go back in after the fact to make any changes. Not only would this be extremely cumbersome, but risks breaking links without a redirect, especially if posts have already propagated out through RSS and cross posting. I for one would also want the frontmatter access via third party apps when publishing a post, as that’s one of the key features of the platform.
As for where to place it in the UI, if I can make a suggestion to have it be an option that power users can toggle on? This way those of us who want access to customize URLs/slugs/drop the .html extension can do so, while still keeping the interface clean and non-confusing for those that prefer things to be automated.
This might be the way to go for people who want it. For, e.g., @donnydavis’s action Drafts can have an option or whatever Ulysses has now.
I agree with Manton that this field shouldn’t be on the posting page, just like we don’t have cross-posting options, categories, etc. But if a user wants to retain (remember?) those on their ‘Write Post’ page and not mind the clutter, they should have that choice.
Thanks y’all, that all sounds reasonable to me. And making it available first to third-party apps would be the fastest way to get something like that out there.
I did a bit of playing around with Bear Blog, and I really like the way they expose access to front matter. Effectively, if you don’t care, you never have to know it’s there. If you do, you insert it “above the fold,” as it were, et voila.