Blog updates & the future of the blog

[Wuzzy]

No blog updates over 15 months now, what happened?

If you need inspiration:
* FLARE 1.0 is out, together with its first game, Empyrean Campaign
* Yorg 0.9
* Lix reboot: http://lixgame.com/ port to D, version 0.9
* Minetest 0.4.17.1
* Development of Linux Air Combat started http://askmisterwizard.com/FlightSimMov ... llPage.htm
* 0 A.D. Alpha 23
* Hedgewars 0.9.24.1
* OpenClonk 8.1
* RedEclipse 1.6.0
* SuperTuxKart 0.9.3
* Naev 0.7.0
* LBreakoutHD announced https://sourceforge.net/p/lgames/news/2 ... happening/
* Taisei 1.2

Did I miss something?

[Julius]

Yeah, was discussed before... the old Blog on blogspot.com is most likely dead as none of the previous contributors is motivated to update it.

Regarding the news... well old news I guess, no real point in posting blog updates about them.

However, I have been experimenting with a new setup using federated microblogging (think GNU Social or Mastodon). If I get everything to work like I want, this would make blogging much easier and fun, with a much lower entry barrier for new contributors. I looks like I can also integrate the planet feeds into this, so most of the regular news would be automated then (but with the advantage that you can comment on and reshare them). The main issue I have so far is that I want to find a setup that is as maintenance free and easy to upgrade as possible... but I think I found a good solution today. Just needs some more tinkering before I can share it here on the forums.

[Julius]

Small status update:

The idea is to move the blog to a fediverse enabled platform and feed various sources from there. That will make it really easy for people to comment and also "retweet" various contributions as well as entries directly from our planets. This will be also a much faster and more streamlined way for new contributors to get access to the blog.

Oh and did I mention mobile clients for reading and writing? With Bitlbee you can even connect to it from your favorite IRC client.

The proof of concept based on HubZilla can be found here: https://social.freegamedev.net/channel/freegamer
It already auto-posts to a new Wordpress instance https://blog.freegamedev.net/ (which could in theory easily import the content of the old Blog and also auto-post back to the old blog on blogspot and other social media sites). Feedback on the theme and so on is also appreciated as nothing is fixed yet.

[Julius]

If you want to test it now, there seems to be a nice open Mastodon instance at: https://mastodon.gamedev.place/
Lots of Godot Engine developers there to follow for example.

https://gamemaking.social/ also seems like to suitable place.

[Julius]

Bit of brainstorming about possible options for contributors to the FreeGamer Blog...

The way I have set up HubZilla right now allows cross-posting to the Wordpress Blog. Hubzilla itself also allows cross-posting directly to Twitter or GNUSocial. Indirectly through Wordpress plugins it would also be possible to cross-post to the old Blogger FreeGamerblog (but we would need to find an alternative for the comments) and various other social media sites with variing degrees of success. I am mainly thinking about posting directly to Reddit, but it seems Reddit's API for doing so isn't all that great.

On the potential contributors side we have several different options for allowing "guest-posts" or permanent contributors:

1. Manually "Retweet" from any connected fediverse account via the official blog account
- Pro: shows and links to original author
- Con: requires manual intervention by blog channel account holder
2. Cross-post per user, e.g. when user is adding a new post the private channel, it is possible via check-box to cross post to the blog account
- Pro: easy and convenient, Good for contributors that just want to cross-post from their HubZilla channel from time to time
- Con: original poster is not acknowledged(unless we can improve the Wordpress plugin) , works only from within HubZilla and not most mobile clients, we have to give out login account details to contributors
3. Add an external channel as source and auto-post similar to how the new planets work
- Pro: easy and convenient, should work with non-Hubzilla mobile clients as well;
- Con: Original poster is not acknowledged (unless we can improve the Wordpress plugin), Contributor need to set up a new channel only used for the FreeGamer blog... or we need to agree on some feed filter system
4. Use RSS/ATOM feeds from external blogs, so that contributors can use their own blogging system
- Pro: Good for contributors that just want to cross-post from their private blog from time to time
- Con: Original poster is not acknowledged (unless we can improve the Wordpress plugin), probably needs some filter system as well, might break in unexpected ways, contributor might not have a RSS feed
5. Post via Wordpress site
- Pro: many people are used to this and there are some nice integration, posts and comments are automatically cross-posted to HubZilla
- Con: basically the same as before with the Blogger account, so it's doubtful this will change much, we have to create accounts in Wordpress and ensure EU data privacy there too
6. Post via IRC or XMPP directly to Hubzilla, because why not Can be done with Bitlbee or a Movim instance, basically works similar to options 3 or 4.
- Pro: https://xkcd.com/1782/
- Con: probably not that easy to make longer articles

*no specific order of preference, numbers are just for easier reference when answering*

Please note that the main idea why I am experimenting with this new system (besides joining the Fediverse, because that's cool) is to lower the entry-barrier for new blog contributors and streamline posting new entries for existing authors. So when replying please think about which option(s) would seem the most convenient to you!

Oh and some of the above options are compatible with mobile clients (1,2,3). Right now the (old) Twitter and the GNUSocial APIs are supported by Hubzilla. I hope that Mastodon clients will also work in the future, but for now this seems to be only partially implemented and thus not working. But here are some clients that should work: https://gitlab.com/distributopia/gnusocial-clients (I tested AndStatus and Twidere successfully, but the others should work fine as well). There is also an unofficial HubZilla mobile app in the works here: https://framagit.org/disroot/AndHub (works fine already, but uses webview).

[GunChleoc]

It already auto-posts to a new Wordpress instance https://blog.freegamedev.net/ (which could in theory easily import the content of the old Blog and also auto-post back to the old blog on blogspot and other social media sites). Feedback on the theme and so on is also appreciated as nothing is fixed yet.

The yellow is a bit glaring - try lowering the lightness?

[mdtrooper]

You are rock, it is a lot of work for to make the tests. In FLOS spanish comunities are with gnusocial/mastodon...and they say only good things about their platforms.

[Julius]

After long absense qudobup actually made a blog post:
http://freegamer.blogspot.com/2018/10/s ... alpha.html
wow

Edit: Let's keep the Blogger page for now, as I don't have the time and patience to maintain a seperate wordpress blog.

[Julius]

One way forward to more interactivity for the Blogger page might be to enable Bridgy with it and ultimatly Bridgy-Fed to link to the Fediverse.
Here are some links:
https://indieweb.org/Blogger
https://indieweb.org/Bridgy
https://brid.gy/about
https://fed.brid.gy/

I need to look a bit more into the actual implementation and if it would make sense to self-host these indieweb tools, but it looks quite cool.
Edit: Seems to work, but I need more editing rights for modifying the blogger template before I can fully enable it. but I still need to experiment a bit more with it.

[Julius]

https://freegamer.blogspot.com/

Got a theme update thanks to Hythlodaeus!

Much cleaner and easier to read. We also got rid of Disqus as the commenting tool and are currently evaluating different options how to link the comments the fediverse/forum etc.

[flavio]

Got a theme update thanks to Hythlodaeus!

It looks great! Very nice, elegant and comfortable to read. Thanks!

[Julius]

Blogger's build in commenting system is really SPAM prone (already got two spam messages since re-enabling it) and in general not very nice (but still better than Disqus...).
Currently trying to get this running as a replacement: https://schnack.cool/ but I am still failing to get it to run so far

[Lyberta]

I thought about developing comment system and I think so far the best thing is to use PGP keys for authentication. I don't think spambots know PGP.

[Julius]

I thought about developing comment system and I think so far the best thing is to use PGP keys for authentication. I don't think spambots know PGP.

Lol, yeah that would be cool But also totally missing the point as the FreeGamer Blog really is more about attracting new people who are not already totally into stuff like PGP or libre game development. IMHO right now the best would be probably a Discord login for commenting.