I’m curious how others use Micro.blog overall? It seems that the Timeline is separate from the blog itself (and the actual blog could be optional).
Are you using Micro.blog blog as a central hub for all of your content? Or just for general public journaling? Do you host a blog elsewhere and add it to your timeline using a feed, then cross-post to other platforms?
It seems to me that Micro.blog could be the main hub for all my content, where I post blog posts, Twitter posts, etc, and using categories and feeds, distribute that content elsewhere. Or it could go the other direction, where I create the content elsewhere, and it pulls it into Micro.blog timeline.
Micro.blog implements many of the IndieWeb ideas and is part of that community. So, it lends itself well to being a central hub for all your content and the POSSE principle. (The concept of posting to your domain first, then cross-post to other platforms.)
Many of the people I subscribe to use Micro.blog just this way – it’s their home on the internet. Or their garden. But some use it more or less like a traditional blog. And others have multiple blogs hosted on Micro.blog for different purposes.
Some, like me, have a website hosted elsewhere and choose to publish posts to the Micro.blog timeline.
@marc0janssen I believe the only way to be selective about crossposting is to use categories.
You will need to remove the default feed from your Account page and add the feed for each category you want to post. The category feed will then be posted to the Micro.blog timeline, and you can also choose which other destination to crosspost for that category.
The downside is that you cannot have a post in multiple categories, or it won’t work.
This is how it worked months ago when I was interested in the same thing. I hope it helps.
Eric is correct. Micro.blog has a stated preference to not be fussy while you’re posting, with a belief that you are writing on Micro.blog to publish on your own site and either you want it all syndicated elsewhere or not.
This is a good discussion topic that I’m still going over in my head. I touched it a bit in my post I wrote a couple of weeks ago (it links to a post by Jack which also considers this idea).
I’m coming from having one blog that did it all. I mostly tried to do long how-to articles and opinions, which mixed with personal experiences. Microblogging as we see it here was rare, and I just “vented” as on Mastodon.
The first transition was when I started to adopt the idea of having a Wiki again. In short, the wiki does away with the idea of posting by date and instead puts the hierarchy of topics front and center. It’s more of a “library” of information.
With the wiki in place, the main blog lost some of its appeal, especially because ironing out the different issues I ran into was more complex and time-consuming than dealing with the wiki.
The second transition happened with micro.blog. Someone brought it up on Mastodon, and I immidately found it appealing. For one, it took care of publishing for me and the themes were good and responsive. For another, it worked with Mastodon, which automatically enhances it as a microblogging (“venting”) platform for me. Then, the fact that its built on Hugo meant I could play with it, and I also got the help I need when I got stuck here in this forum. I was sold on the idea pretty quickly.
For now, micro.blog is where I mostly write long-form blog posts, but I still comment on others’ posts or here and then try something out. MB has my main domain and it links both to my wiki and my old blog (which still has a lot of content). It’s easy and useful this way. The wiki also links back here, but it has its issue with discoverability (SEO wise) so I’m pretty sure MB will get picked up first.