Return to Buy Me a Coffee, starting with omg.lol, and site updates
This is the last minor update to TIL before major changes are made, and soon the return of regular publishing. I’ll cover the changes for now and a little about the future.
Let’s start with the changes…
Buy Me a Coffee
The donations page is back. Having previously switched to Memberful, I have since realised that creating a membership program doesn’t make any sense whilst BMC was in fact a good fit. It can be as simple as needed and has capacity to offer more options for supporting TIL should that ever be needed.
The bio is now clearer; much more relevant with cleaner language and relevant links. I’ll likely update this again in the future but I think it does a good job of introducing TIL.
I’ve also published an announcement for the return of the page, “Open again”, which goes into greater detail. Other posts have been made available only to supporters, since they are no longer relevant to the current progress of the project.
Lastly, I have added a goal to the page which can be seen underneath the “Buy” widget; the cost of an annual hosted Micro.blog subscription. This is the top-most priority of costs and is similarly first to be listed on the Funding page.
omg.lol
TIL is now on omg.lol! I’ve had a lot of fun setting up the profile page, which is in an early preview mode, and getting to grips with the platform and how it can work with and alongside Micro.blog. A number of folks on Micro.blog already know well the excellent work that has been done by Adam Newbold and the staff over there.
The other public use I have made of omg.lol is the “Statuslog” feature, with which I am now posting the TIL Status Updates. It is here that I provide the small, continuous updates to TIL, many of which were previously included in the Release Notes category on the site. The feed of Status Updates is included in the TIL Micro.blog timeline as some of you might have already noticed, and is available for anybody to use via RSS.
As a result of the new Status Updates feed the news posts on this site will instead be more like this very post; longer posts for announcements and related ideas, with reduced focus on every little change. Since the focus of posts here are as resources for using Micro.blog, it feels good to minimise the amount of meta subject-centred writing whilst also keeping it public in a separate space for those who are interested. Finally, my personal blog will no longer be used as a source of news at all; although I may still link to the most significant updates.
I look forward to trying out more of the ways in which Micro.blog and omg.lol can either interoperate or at least work in a complimentary fashion.
1.9.10
I have made several updates to the site itself; this includes and relates to external platforms.
The header and footer have both finally been improved with regard to the layout of the “Following” icons, the addition of a new separator for the end of posts and pages, and overall design when using smaller screens. The central “Join” column of the footer has also been replaced with a “Support” column, in the process of swapping the membership offering for the donations page.
Given the aforementioned change to how updates are published, the post category for announcements regarding changes has been changed from “Release Notes” to “News”. The ICYMI and About pages have been edited to reflect this switch, whilst the latter also now has an Elsewhere section that includes the newly launched omg.lol and Mastodon extensions of TIL. The support section of the About page has also been updated to switch the previous membership program for Buy Me a Coffee.
The final changes to pages have been for the Funding page, which now includes a much improved list of goals; there is greater detail and the information is up-to-date. I have also expanded the last section of the page, “Making a donation”.
I’ve added a new page: Tweets. This archive is the remaining copy of these posts, since I have deleted this account.
Elsewhere, I have enabled ActivityPub integration so that it is now possible to get a feed of posts from the site via Mastodon; this link has taken the place of the Twitter profile, where relevant, on the site.
It has been both a lot of fun and a relief to work on TIL again. The feeling I get from connecting to more of the open web, at the cost of the closed web, is… comfort, I think?
My previous plans for 2.0 have not worked as I originally had intended, and so my approach has now changed. I have already started writing the next update, covering this exact topic, and so I imagine that will be along much sooner than this post was from the last update. Certainly my path forward is much clearer and it is safe to say that I have found the renewed energy to finally get TIL back on track.
Until the next announcement, I’ll see you all on the timeline.
Thanks for reading.
— Simon
