This website is, in some sense, an open call for everyone out there: “this is what I think and this is what I do, let’s connect!” This requires setting up pathways for people to reach out to me, and people want interacting to be as frictionless as possible. Here’s a list of ways to interact with my blog posts, in order of preference:
Reply via email
Each of my posts has a link that opens your preferred email client to send a reply via email. This is my most preferred option, because:
- I will get notified immediately.
- I can reply to you in a more private and personal manner.
Send a Webmention
Webmentions are a great way to link posts across the web. My blog is registered on webmention.io and each webmention will be listed at the end of my posts.
The problem with webmentions is that I won’t get any notifications for your mention. I know it’s a gap on my side, but as of today I don’t know how to get these notifications other than occasionally checking the webmention.io dashboard. If you have a solution for this, please let me know!
Use the comment form
I believe the early 2000s blog boom was defined not by the abundance of bloggers but by the commenters. Blogs were a hub for a community to get together and discuss topics. I don’t think blogs act like that anymore. Anyway, posting comments directly on the site is great, because others can also reply to your comment and we can have a discussion all together.
I’m aware that it’s a bit silly to list this here since currently I don’t have a comment form on my blog. I used to have an integration with Bluesky and Mastodon and replies to my posts on those platforms were federated to my posts automatically. After the recent migration of my site generator, I dropped the integration. To be honest, I didn’t like forcing people to have an account on social media platforms to interact with my posts. But I have near-term plans to self-host a comments backend for my blog. If you have a good solution for this, please let me know.
Mention me on Mastodon
I occasionally post links to my blog posts on Mastodon. You can reply under my posts there to interact with me. This is my least preferred option because I always forget to check my notifications there.
This blog is also listed on Bubbles and it has a comments integration with Mastodon. You can reply under their toots to comment on my blog posts. If you do so, please mention me in your reply so I can be notified.
You can also post a link directly from your Mastodon account. You might prefer to do this if you want your followers to see your response directly. If you choose to do this, again, please mention me in your post.
Note that any conversation on won’t be visible on my blog (though Bubbles shows its own thread).
Am I missing something here? Do you know any other way of interacting with blog posts? If you do, let me know via your preferred option.