webmention.io VS Jekyll

Webmentions (webmention.io) are a way to bring social activity and interactivity to your site without having it on your platform itself or needing to have complex systems in place. Harness the activity, audience, and functionality from existing platforms.

async function getMentions(url) { let mentions = []; let page = 0; let perPage = 100; while (true) { const results = await fetch( `https://webmention.io/api/mentions.jf2?target=${url}&per-page=${perPage}&page=${page}` ).then((r) => r.json()); mentions = mentions.concat(results.children); if (results.children.length < perPage) { break; } page++; } return mentions.sort((a, b) => ((a.published || a['wm-received']) < (b.published || b['wm-received']) ? -1 : 1)); }

Webmentions: https://webmention.io/

In the interim, I found myself pondering why every webmentions-on-Hugo solution I’d ever found up to now used JavaScript, rather than trying to do it purely in Hugo. After all, Hugo sports plenty of data-grabbing horsepower. For example: in my own experience to date, I’ve found Hugo's getJSON feature just as useful as the node-fetch on which the aforementioned JS relied to grab data from webmention.io.

One of the building blocks for such a system might be something like:

https://webmention.io/

{ "type": "feed", "name": "Webmentions", "children": [ { "type": "entry", "author": { "type": "card", "name": "Jon Kuperman", "photo": "https://webmention.io/avatar/pbs.twimg.com/a52326c0080bba610767505756be327891f63722c0ceb6515de5840097c65cb9.jpg", "url": "https://twitter.com/jkup" }, "url": "https://twitter.com/jkup/status/1365400108016291841", "published": "2021-02-26T20:35:28+00:00", "wm-received": "2021-02-26T21:23:21Z", "wm-id": 1048723, "wm-source": "https://brid.gy/comment/twitter/raymondcamden/1365399913987792900/1365400108016291841", "wm-target": "https://webmentions.vercel.app/posts/alpha/", "content": { "html": "hello!\n\"u-mention\" href=\"https://twitter.com/raymondcamden\">\n\"u-mention\" href=\"https://webmentions.vercel.app/\">\n\"u-mention\" href=\"https://www.raymondcamden.com/\">", "text": "hello!" }, "in-reply-to": "https://webmentions.vercel.app/posts/alpha/", "wm-property": "in-reply-to", "wm-private": false }, { "type": "entry", "author": { "type": "card", "name": "Jonathan Bossenger", "photo": "https://webmention.io/avatar/pbs.twimg.com/211d2d7837e89b60b4399dfc76f5aa3aad8b2d792335f08ecd65ce6c73da48cb.jpg", "url": "https://twitter.com/jon_bossenger" }, "url": "https://twitter.com/jon_bossenger/status/1365402390212587527", "published": "2021-02-26T20:44:32+00:00", "wm-received": "2021-02-26T21:23:17Z", "wm-id": 1048721, "wm-source": "https://brid.gy/post/twitter/raymondcamden/1365402390212587527", "wm-target": "https://webmentions.vercel.app/posts/alpha/", "content": { "html": "I assume the copy of Edge runs on Ubuntu? \"https://webmentions.vercel.app/posts/alpha/\">webmentions.vercel.app/posts/alpha/\n\"u-mention\" href=\"https://webmentions.vercel.app/\">", "text": "I assume the copy of Edge runs on Ubuntu? webmentions.vercel.app/posts/alpha/" }, "mention-of": "https://webmentions.vercel.app/posts/alpha/", "wm-property": "mention-of", "wm-private": false }, { "type": "entry", "author": { "type": "card", "name": "? cannot even", "photo": "https://webmention.io/avatar/pbs.twimg.com/1f2ab7fe8fb6c20b4a2be803b95f6559677d0b88577a091c2b1755f70dff4247.jpg", "url": "https://twitter.com/diffalot" }, "url": "https://twitter.com/diffalot/status/1365406879459860480", "published": "2021-02-26T21:02:22+00:00", "wm-received": "2021-02-26T21:23:06Z", "wm-id": 1048716, "wm-source": "https://brid.gy/post/twitter/raymondcamden/1365406879459860480", "wm-target": "https://webmentions.vercel.app/posts/alpha/", "content": { "html": "Testing webmentions Alpha Post \"https://webmentions.vercel.app/posts/alpha/\">webmentions.vercel.app/posts/alpha/", "text": "Testing webmentions Alpha Post webmentions.vercel.app/posts/alpha/" }, "mention-of": "https://webmentions.vercel.app/posts/alpha/", "wm-property": "mention-of", "wm-private": false } ] }

This blog is running on Hugo. It had previously been running on Jekyll. Both these SSGs ship with the ability to create excerpts from your markdown content in 1 line or thereabouts.

Jekyll

In future, if you want to move from Jekyll to something else, you just have to worry about that `_posts` and `_assets` folder. They may have different naming convention but you can just config-managed it or change it to your choice. This is why I suggested owning that two yourself.

You also may not worry about FrontMatter[3] (meta in the header) and its accompanying jazz by asking Jekyll to use the plugins `jekyll-optional-front-matter` and `jekyll-titles-from-headings`. These comes as part of the officially supported Jekyll plugins[4] by Github. That way, you are just writing a human-readable plain-text spiced up with Markdown and readable by almost every other Static Site Generator.

Now, play with the `_config.yml` that Jekyll generates for you from the theme above to define your post dates, navigation, and others. Jekyll is one of the OGs — the Gandalf of Static Site Generators. If you have a problem, someone somewhere has solved that.

Did I missed something? I was supposed to write a blog article for my website on this one and this comment will serve as my starting bullet points.

1. https://docs.github.com/en/pages/setting-up-a-github-pages-s...

2. https://jekyllrb.com

3. https://frontmatter.codes/docs/markdown

4. https://docs.github.com/en/pages/setting-up-a-github-pages-s...

"Using the Chirpy theme for Jekyll."

I would suggest looking into static site generators. Some popular examples, which are used myself are: - Hugo: https://gohugo.io/ - Jekyll: https://jekyllrb.com

In terms of GitHub stars, SSGs like Next.js, Hugo, Gatsby, Docusaurus, Nuxt.js, and Jekyll top the list. Some popular SSGs even host conferences and workshops, providing resources and networking opportunities for those looking to explore more advanced topics in depth.

I created my blog using Jekyll, a great open-source tool that can transform your markdown content into a simple, old-fashioned-but-trendy, static site. What are the advantages of this approach? The site is super-light, super-fast, super-secure and SEO-friendly. Of course, it’s not always the best solution, but for some use cases, like a simple personal blog, it’s really a good option.

Yes, it's Markdown and I use https://jekyllrb.com with the theme "jekyll-theme-hacker" to generate the site. I quite like how simple it is.