About

Micropublish is a Micropub client that you can use to create, update, delete and undelete content on your Micropub-enabled site. A live install of Micropublish is running at https://micropublish.net

Micropublish demo

Features

  • Create, update, delete and undelete posts on your site.
  • Templates for creating Notes, Articles, RSVPs, Bookmarks, Replies, Reposts and Likes.
  • Use x-www-form-urlencoded (form-encoded) or JSON Micropub request methods.
  • Preview the request that will be sent to your server before it's sent.
  • Supports multiple values for URL properties (e.g. in-reply-to[]).
  • Customize types, icons, defaults, ordering and required properties.
  • Mobile-first. All views have been designed and optimized for mobile.
  • JavaScript is not required and you can happily use Micropublish without it. The user interface is progressively enhanced when JavaScript is enabled.
  • Full errors and feedback displayed from your endpoints.
  • Supports the post-status property proposed as a Micropub extension.

Requirements

There are a number of requirements that your site's Micropub endpoint must meet in order to work with Micropublish.

To learn more about setting up a Micropub endpoint, read the Creating a Micropub endpoint page on the IndieWeb wiki and the latest Micropub specification.

Below is what Micropublish expects from your server.

Endpoint discovery

When you enter your site's URL and click "Sign in" Micropublish will attempt to find three endpoints in either your site's HTTP response header or in its HTML <head>:

  • Authorization endpoint
  • Token endpoint
  • Micropub endpoint

Your site should expose these endpoints similar to the following examples.

HTTP response header links:

Link: <https://indieauth.com/auth>; rel="authorization_endpoint"
Link: <https://tokens.indieauth.com/token>; rel="token_endpoint"
Link: <https://barryfrost.com/micropub>; rel="micropub"

HTML document <head> links:

<link href="https://indieauth.com/auth" rel="authorization_endpoint">
<link href="https://tokens.indieauth.com/token" rel="token_endpoint">
<link href="https://barryfrost.com/micropub" rel="micropub">

Authorization

Micropublish will attempt to authenticate you via web sign-in using your authorization endpoint. This ensures you are the owner of the site/domain that you entered. A recommended way of setting this up is by delegating to IndieAuth.com.

When you have succesfully signed in, Micropublish will attempt to authorize via OAuth 2.0 against your server's token endpoint to obtain an access token.

When signing in you must specify the scope Micropublish should request from your endpoint depending on what features you support. With the post scope only the post creation action will be available. For the editing/deleting/undeleting functionality, your site's Micropub endpoint must support create, update, delete and undelete. These scopes will be requested from your token endpoint.

Configuration

When authorized, Micropublish will attempt to fetch your Micropub configuration from your Micropub endpoint using ?q=config.

It expects to find your syndicate-to list with uid and name keys for each syndication target. Any other properties are currently ignored.

{
  "syndicate-to": [
    {
      "uid": "https://twitter.com/barryf",
      "name": "barryf on Twitter"
    }
  ]
}

Methods

Micropublish supports either x-www-form-urlencoded (form-encoded) or JSON-encoded requests when creating new posts or deleting/undeleting posts. You can specify which method your server accepts/prefers on the dashboard.

Note: as required in the Micropub specification, new articles and all updates must be sent via the JSON method.

Customize

You can customize the dashboard shortcuts, properties and defaults you prefer via the config/properties.json configuration file.

  • known is a list of the properties Micropublish currently understands. These are referenced in the application.
  • default is a list of the properties which will be included in the form for all new posts.
  • types is an ordered list of types (e.g. note, article and reply) which correspond to the icon shortcuts on the dashboard. You can specify a name, icon (from Font Awesome), appropriate properties from the known list and which properties are required to send the request.

Hosting

Feel free to use the live version at https://micropublish.net. Alternatively, you can host Micropublish yourself.

I recommend running this on Heroku using the Deploy to Heroku button.

Deploy to Heroku

If you host on your own server you will need to define the COOKIE_SECRET environment variable. You should use a long, secure, (ideally) random string to help secure data stored in the user's cookie.

Bookmarklets

Drag these links to your bookmarks bar and you can quickly perform each action on a page you are viewing, with the relevant properties already filled:

The URLs are hard-coded to the https://micropublish.net install so you will need to update if you are hosting Micropublish yourself.

Help

If you would like any help with setting up your Micropub endpoint, your best option is to join the #indieweb channel on Freenode IRC.

For Micropublish specific help, get in touch and I'll be happy to help.

To file any bugs or suggestions for Micropublish, please log an issue in the GitHub repo. If you wish to make any improvements please fork and send a pull request through GitHub.

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