It’s fun to think I’m back here writing occasionally, but my personal interests to come back here are more broad. Getting back to a website where I control everything is empowering and the ultimate satisfaction. The kickstart to get this point was seeing the potential through a movement called Indieweb. Indieweb principles align with my personal interests as well as the reason I started writing online so many years ago. I’m also burnt out from the effect that social media has on privacy.

Here’s what I’ve already done to asuh.com.

  • A new look, simplified but intricate
  • New blog post formats called Kinds. They mimic what we know from other social media, such as Notes which are similar to Tweets, Articles which are standard blog posts, Reply posts which are the same as Replies anywhere, Photo posts which can be like Insta photos, Bookmarks, Quotes and more! You’ve probably seen multiple posts where I’m trying out the various kinds I’ve mentioned
  • When I make a new blog post here, I can check a box and it’ll create a new Tweet on Twitter. Not only that, but with various other methods, I can now see all the Twitter activity right here on each post. I could theoretically stop going to Twitter.com or Tweetdeck and use this website to participate in Twitter
  • What’s just as important is I have the ability to show other sites that use the same content I’ve posted here. I don’t want to write into the void of another app when I can write what I want here first and syndicate it where I want. Or I can go to Instagram, post a new photo and I can connect my site to grab everything I just posted on Instagram. In other words, I don’t need to just lose the things I’m posting into these other silos of social media
  • You know how you can check in to your location? You post on Facebook or Yelp or Foursquare and share where you are? I was never that interested in this feature but I have the same ability to inform of my location at time of post
  • For sites and apps that allow it, I can now use this site to log into those other sites or apps. The support for this feature is small at the time of writing but the potential is great
  • Performance optimization is an ongoing task, as I introduce more ways to load this site as quickly as possible. I have more work to do but my goal is for site loading to be better than the rest. In fact, I’ve got some pieces put together to make this site perform as good as apps on phones
  • If you look for a post that I’m talking about code, you’ll see that code is now highlighted with a specific color scheme so that it stands out. This will help me to write more technical posts and contribute back to the web community as I discover, learn and grow as a developer

There’s more to add above but I think that’s a good highlight. Now let’s see where I hope to be in the next year.

  • Add a little more color. This is as plain as it gets but I needed a baseline to build upon. This might be slower than I want but I hope to find ways to make the reading and interactive experience more visual
  • Turn asuh.com into what’s called a Progressive Web App. You know how you can download apps in a store? I’m positive you’ve downloaded more than one app, possibly lots of apps, that are sitting on your phone being unused since you downloaded it. Appstore apps are usually pointless now when you can get the same thing using the web, inside a browser. It’s an exciting area to go into
  • Ever since I started posting, I’ve had to come to terms with what I share online being public forever. However, I’m also not willing to share everything for everyone. I’m going to explore ways to share things here that will not be publicly accessible, meaning they’ll probably be encrypted and require some kind of key to access. I think this topic deserves its own post sometime because privacy has become as precious as fine metals like gold; it’s harder to keep things to myself if I decide to share them online
  • I might get my hands dirty enhancing other themes to help other WordPress users connect with a lot of the above features. Maybe I’ll branch out to one of the frameworks/libraries du jour like React.js/Gatsby and get something up there too
  • I’ll continue contributing back to the Indieweb community in whatever ways and time I can make. I think the community still lacks enough turnkey systems to quickly get people up and running in ways that you feel connected on social media and I can increasingly see a path for this in WordPress and other ecosystems. It’s a long journey but one that’s worthwhile
  • More writing! I’m going to find a balance between some technical writing and personal writing here. Maybe I’ll divide the site up more so that the sections are more distinguished from each other. There’s a lot going on for me, less personally but definitely professionally, and I can’t wait to share more

I hope I look back at this and see that I’ve done even more than I wrote above. However, I’ll still be content if I get to even half of this. There’s so much in store for the year and the potential is endless so I hope I can make 2019 an productive year for my personal growth and continue Indiewebifying as much as I can.