Today we updated the web version of Micro.blog (and the Mac app) to provide better control over how new posts are routed to external services like Twitter, Mastodon, LinkedIn, etc. Just like showing blog categories, you can show checkboxes and uncheck which services you don’t want Micro.blog to cross-post to. This setting is remembered only for the current post and by default posts go out everywhere.
This is a fairly big change. I expect we’ll learn more as people actually use it. I wanted to get it out for the web and Mac first because we can ship those without waiting for approval from Apple and Google. Mobile versions will follow.
Some of the gotchas you might run across:
- This is designed for setting on new posts. There’s no interface for changing it when editing a draft post yet.
- Micro.blog will only show the cross-post services you have enabled in Account → Edit Feeds. If you have multiple feeds, things might be a little weird if there’s no obvious mapping between feeds and your blog.
- This is for blogs hosted on Micro.blog. If you are posting to an external blog like WordPress, there’s no mechanism to customize cross-posting other than the existing global options.
We’ve also expanded our support for the Micropub API to include syndicate-to fields. This is well-covered in the spec. The Mac app is open source and uses the same public API.
Aywren Sojourner - Micro.blog Thank you so much for this nice feature!!
Len Damico I have been looking forward to this from the moment I figured out how cross-posting worked. Thank you!
AJ Giron Oh, this is sounds cool. I’m going to need to give it a try.
Juha Liikala This is soooo cool! Thank you for making this possible Manton! 😊🙏
Odd-Egil “Oddzthrash” Auran That is probably going to make a lot of people happy. I welcome it with open arms myself. 😃👍🪄✨
Manton Reece @pratik Correct. It’s on by default, so basically you uncheck whatever you don’t want.
Mike Roest Am I just stupid but I can’t see how to turn that on. Is it not available for self hosted?
Terence @msroest I guess not, unless I’ve misunderstood what has written here : www.manton.org/2023/02/2…
“This is for blogs hosted on Micro.blog. If you are posting to an external blog like WordPress, there’s no mechanism to customize cross-posting other than the existing global options.”
As for me, being hosted on micro.blog, I applaud the arrival of such a function that, like many, I was looking forward to. Thank you very much, , your platform is getting better every day!
Manton Reece @msroest @terence Right, not for self-hosted because there’s no place to store the list of services to use for a given post. We’d need to either send all posts through Micro.blog instead of directly to your server, or add a cross-posting setting to your feed. Something we can look into later.
Paul Robert Lloyd @terence Thinking of Micro.blog apps purely as Micropub clients, why not query the config of a Micropub server and show checkboxes for any targets provided under the syndicate-to property. When creating a post, send the checked values in the mp-syndicate-to property. No?
Paul Robert Lloyd @terence Oh but I guess things get complicated if you are self hosting posts, but using Micro.blog’s cross posting features, right?
Manton Reece @paulrobertlloyd Right. The Mac app does use syndicate-to, though! Haven’t tested with external blogs yet… I think it needs improving in a bug fix update because the posting code is a little different.
Manton Reece @pratik Yes. Posting from an app that doesn’t have a setting for this yet will assume the post should go to all services enabled for your feeds.
Isaac T. 👏🏽👏🏽👏🏽 that makes my, “What can go to LinkedIn?” decisions a lot easier!
Avanceé.Agency oh, now this could be interesting… neat add. When the mobile app gets updated, should be in a decent space w/content to play with this
Mike Roest @terence doh sorry somehow missed that in the blog post, Thanks!
Michael Grant Excellent, I will definitely be using this.
Michael Grant Manton Reece @pratik I think keeping them checked is still the best default for most people, and consistent with the old behavior. Will reevaluate after more people use it, though,