I’ve wanted to participate in the IndieWeb community, and I just wrote my first project toward that goal.
Interpersonal is a connection between my site and the IndieWeb.
Right now, it lets me authenticate via IndieAuth. In the future, I’d like to support micropub and Webmention in both Interpersonal and this blog.
Interpersonal is deliberately kept separate from this blog. It doesn’t share styles, code, or a git repository. My goal is to eventually make it pluggable for other people to use with their sites.
I also want to make sure my main site will continue to work, even if something breaks in the server-side logic required to implement IndieAuth. One reason I host my site the way I do is that it will last without any maintenance – I’ve had bouts of repetitive-stress injury, and my site stayed up during that time because there was nothing that could break. Basically I don’t want to create chores for myself that I cannot avoid, since I work on this in free time outside of work. Keeping Interpersonal separate ensures that the site will stay up even if my logic breaks.
This is also good because it will keep Interpersonal from getting tied in to my own infrastructure. I think that anyone could use it as an IndieAuth endpoint today. (If you try that and you find something that doesn’t work, please file a bug!)
PS: I worked with Flask for the first time, and I wish I’d gotten used to it earlier. Compared to my experience with CherryPy, everything was so easy, including setting up automated tests. I couldn’t believe how quickly I got something working.
