{"version":"https:\/\/jsonfeed.org\/version\/1","title":"JungleFeed","home_page_url":"https:\/\/www.georgestevenson.co.za\/en\/blog","feed_url":"https:\/\/www.georgestevenson.co.za\/en\/blog\/.json","description":"RSS Feed for Jungle George","author":{"name":"JunglGeorg"},"items":[{"title":"Rediscovering the Peer-to-Peer Web with Webmentions","date_published":"2026-09-22T13:53:00+00:00","id":"https:\/\/www.georgestevenson.co.za\/en\/blog\/hey-webmentions","url":"https:\/\/www.georgestevenson.co.za\/en\/blog\/hey-webmentions","content_html":"

I was scrolling through Mastodon the earlier today and came across a post from Konstantin pointing to his article, Webmentions: The nice things we have<\/a>. It served as a great reminder of what makes (or used to make) the open web fun and why relying entirely on closed social platforms misses the point.<\/p>\n\n

What actually is a Webmention?<\/h3>\n

At its core, a Webmention<\/a> is a W3C standard that brings cross-site conversations back to personal domains. <\/p>\n

In the modern corporate (and enshittified) web, leaving feedback on someone's thoughts usually means logging into a centralised silo or embedding a privacy invasive third party comment widget like Disqus. Webmentions flip that back to a decentralised model:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. You write on your own domain:<\/strong> You publish an article or a note on your site and link to a post on mine.<\/li>\n
  2. Your site sends a ping:<\/strong> Your server sends an automated, lightweight HTTP POST request to my endpoint saying, \"Hey, this URL linked to that URL.\"<\/em><\/li>\n
  3. My site verifies the backlink:<\/strong> My server inspects your page, confirms the link exists, and extracts your author details.<\/li>\n
  4. The conversation federates:<\/strong> Your comment, reply, or link appears directly below my original article.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    You own your content, I own mine, and neither of us has to hand our interactions over to an algorithmic platform just to have a conversation.<\/p>\n

    Taking Back the IndieWeb<\/h3>\n

    Setting this up requires a bit of wiring under the hood, getting discovery tags in place, validating endpoints, and parsing payloads but the result feels distinctly like the web we were promised. <\/p>\n

    If you run an IndieWeb enabled site, link back to this dispatch from your own domain and let's see the handshake in action.<\/p>","date_modified":"2026-09-22T12:10:27+00:00"},{"title":"Second first post","date_published":"2026-09-22T11:53:00+00:00","id":"https:\/\/www.georgestevenson.co.za\/en\/blog\/second-first-post","url":"https:\/\/www.georgestevenson.co.za\/en\/blog\/second-first-post","content_html":"

    A second first post, the first, much like a pancake, was a mess. This is a new post in an item template. Adding more fluff to test the line wrap and alignment.<\/p>\n

    Check out my previous thoughts on Rediscovering Webmentions<\/a>.<\/p>","date_modified":"2026-09-22T12:56:35+00:00"}]}