72 lines
6.2 KiB
Markdown
72 lines
6.2 KiB
Markdown
---
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title: Cool Things People Do With Their Blogs
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date: 2022-04-27T17:25:00+02:00
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categories:
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- webdesign
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tags:
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- blogging
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---
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Small and independent blogs are always full of surprises. The more blogs I stumble upon, the more genuinely surprised I am by the things people do with their blogs. It seemed like a good idea to summarize highlights here. I hope it might inspire non-bloggers to blog and bloggers to tinker more with their site---because obviously the tinkering never ends!
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I randomly selected blogs for each _thing_. There are ample other sites that use that particular feature, but I had to start somewhere. Some blogs appear multiple times, probably making them even funkier! This list is incomplete, I'll try to periodically update it as I encounter more cool stuff. Enjoy!
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### Content related
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- Publish reviews of books/music/... in a cool sortable grid: [Chris Burnell's Music](https://chrisburnell.com/music/)
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- Hack together your own `last.fm` to scrobble music to your own site: [Jan Boddez' Owning My Scrobbles](https://jan.boddez.net/articles/owning-my-scrobbles)
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- Sync your laptop battery, local weather, and current location with your site: [Aaron Parecki's homepage](https://aaronparecki.com/)
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- Publicly display global website statistics: [Luke Harris' stats page](https://www.lkhrs.com/stats/)
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- More stats: game playtime, AWStats server data: [Roy Tang's stats](https://roytang.net/page/stats/awstats/)
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- Create and regularly update a "uses" page: [Ru Singh' uses page](https://rusingh.com/uses/)
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- Create and regularly update a "now" page: [Derek Sivers' the /now page movement](https://sive.rs/nowff)
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- Auto-import game metadata from How Long To Beat and others: [Jefklak's Codex games page](https://jefklakscodex.com/games/)
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- Use your own site to publish checkins instead of Foursquare: [Henrique Dias' checkins](https://hacdias.com/checkins)
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- Regularly publish week reviews or link bundles: [Stefan Imhoff's Link Bundle #15](https://www.stefanimhoff.de/links/bundle-15/)
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- Have an "on this day" page that displays posts from previous years: [Frank Meeuwsen's on this day archive](https://diggingthedigital.com/onthisday/)
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- Group multiple posts into series: [Amos' long-form series](https://fasterthanli.me/series)
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- Group multiple posts into research questions: [Emmanuel Quartey's questions section](https://www.quartey.com/questions)
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- Syndicate the HTTP blog to a Gemini capsule: [Brain Baking Gemini](/post/2021/04/using-hugo-to-launch-a-gemini-capsule/) (defunct)
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### Design related
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- Create an official coat of arms as the logo of your site: [Marijn Florence's heraldry adventure](https://satyrs.eu/heraldry/)
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- Design your site around ever-evolving note-taking systems: [Andy Matuschak's Evergreen Notes](https://notes.andymatuschak.org/Evergreen_notes)
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- An audible frequency graph that determines posting activity: [Chris Burnells' All posts archive](https://chrisburnell.com/archive/)
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- Write a custom dynamic blog engine from scratch, because we can: [Jan-Lukas Else's blog](https://jlelse.blog/)
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- Implement a simple client-site search using lunr.js: [Brain Baking archives]( /archives/)
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- Show articles from others blogs you read below your own articles: [an article from Drew DeVault](https://drewdevault.com/2022/04/15/Status-update-April-2022.html)
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- Use a public inbox as a commenting system: [an article from Drew DeVault](https://drewdevault.com/2022/04/15/Status-update-April-2022.html)
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- Implement reaction buttons for each post: [Jan-Lukas Else's thoughts on reactions](https://jlelse.blog/posts/goblog-reactions)
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- Emulate the multi-pane layout of an e-mail client: [Brian Lovin's writings](https://brianlovin.com/writing)
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- Each post has a unique HTML design/layout: [Aegir's Words](https://aegir.org/words/smoothbooze)
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### IndieWeb related
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- Have a guestbook page where people can send Webmentions to to sign it: [Ana Rodrigues' guestbook](https://ohhelloana.blog/guestbook/)
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- Collaborative pixel-art that gets saved every five minutes: [Aaron Parecki's IndieWebCamp Pixel Art](https://aaronparecki.com/2018/01/21/11/pixel-art)
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- Publish replies to others' sites using Webmentions: [James' Coffee Blog, Replies](https://jamesg.blog/replies/)
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- Post Tweets on your own site first, then syndicate to Twitter: [Sebastiaan Andeweg's tweets](https://seblog.nl/)
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- Summarize all IndieWeb-based RSVP events in a calendar: [Jamie Tanna's RSVPs](https://www.jvt.me/rsvps/)
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- Work together on MicroPub/Sub as a new social reading protocol: [Neal Mather's blog](https://doubleloop.net/)
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- Join the IndieWeb ring to promote own and others' sites: [Horst Gutmann's blog](https://zerokspot.com/)
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- Build a custom Webmention receiver/sender: [IndieWeb examples](https://indieweb.org/Webmention#IndieWeb_Examples)
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### RSS related
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- Provide multiple RSS feeds for notes, articles, etc: [Ton Zijlstra's feeds](https://www.zylstra.org/blog/feeds/)
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- Add query capabilities to RSS feeds: [Eli's RSS navigational tips](https://eli.li/2022/01/11/site-updates-and-some-tips-for-navigating-this-website)
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- Automatic publishing of favorites from an RSS reader: [Peter Rukavina's favorites](https://ruk.ca/favourites)
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- Styled OPML Blogrolls that can be imported into your reader: [Ruben Schade's Omake OPML](https://rubenerd.com/omake.opml)
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- Styled RSS feeds to better explain what a web feed is: [Matt Webb's RSS feed](http://interconnected.org/home/feed)
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- A "Reply via email" link in each RSS post to encourage interaction: [Mike Harley's RSS feed](view-source:https://obsolete29.com/feed/feed.xml)
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- Secret RSS-only posts that do not appear on the website: [Ton Zijlstra's RSS feed](https://www.zylstra.org/blog/feed/)
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- Send out newsletters based on your RSS feed: [Kev Quirk is newslettering again](https://kevq.uk/im-newslettering-again/) (defunct)
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- Add the location from where you write to your RSS feed: [Ruben Schade's RSS feed](https://rubenerd.com/feed)
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---
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**Addendum** 29th April: I never thought to receive that many positive feedback! This article is suddenly one of the most popular I recently wrote, made it to [Lobste.rs](https://lobste.rs/domain/brainbaking.com) and [Hacker News](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31199973), and was boosted over eight times on Mastodon. Funny, the more _meta_ a blog article is, the more popular it is.
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