I LOVE finding sites that support webmentions. For me, it’s an instant subscribe. These are people who are looking to build community on the web in a new way.
The process of “replying” and sending a webmention to a post is still a bit cumbersome. Here are the current steps:
- Read an article that I want to respond to
- Determine if the article supports webmentions (either they offer a URL box OR you have to view the source to see if they have a webmention endpoint).
- Copy the URL
- Paste the URL into the “reply box” in something like Quill
- Write your reply
It works, but it’s not ideal. Also, the average user is not going to go through the trouble of doing all of this.
“There must be a better way…”
Solution
I am proposing a brower extension that you would authenticate with your micropub endpoint using IndieAuth. Once authenticated, the steps to reply to a post become as followed:
- If the site supports webmentions, the plugin will have an active icon
- Click the icon to reveal a text box
- Type your response and click send
(behind the scenes, the extension posts the reply to your blog and then sends a webmention to the URL you are replying to)
This would greatly reduce the friction of using webmentions for responses to posts and I believe would further the adoption of this technology.
Maybe I will get around to building this someday…
Let me know what you think by sending me a webmention ;)
