Advent of Bloggers 2021: Day 17

I am writing a blog post every day from December 1st to December 24th, 2021, about a blogger whose writing or site I follow. My aim for this series is to help you discover new blogs and to help get the word out about content creators whose blogs I appreciate. You can read more about this series in the inaugural Day 1 post.

Aaron Parecki's Website

@aaronparecki.com's website, accessible at the domain aaronparecki.com, has been a useful reference point as I have been building out IndieWeb features on my site. Aaron is a founder of the IndieWeb community, a group of people passionate about personal websites and making a more social, personal web. Aaron has taken lead both in organising the community and assisting in building out its core principles. He has built features on his website that lets him take control of his data and he has shared how he does a lot of his work with others. I love this principle of building a feature and then documenting it so people can learn why and/or how you added something to your site. He also contributes to or authors various IndieWeb standards.

Aaron's site feels like a social media profile on the home page, but more personal. The home page feels like his own. The page starts with a bio and then lists links to his last checkin, his last sleep report from his quantified self project, a podcast in which he participated, and more. You can keep up with Aaron just by looking at the home page. Going down further, you'll see a social media-like stream of posts. This social theme extends across the whole site. But, as I explore, I never feel like I am on a social network. The site is unique to Aaron.

Because Aaron's site, like sites owned by many IndieWeb community members, uses Webmentions, I can send a response to any of his posts and it will show up on his site. That means that the social stream is not one way: responses to his content that you publish on your own site will also show up on his site, so long as you have implemented Webmentions on your website.

One of my favourite parts of Aaron's site is his blog. Aaron has extensively documented many changes he has made to his site. This means that there are plenty of opportunities to learn how to build cool features on your site by looking at Aaron's blog and reading through his work. Aaron has explained the design behind his blog post pages, signing users in with an IndieAuth-compliant registration flow, sending webmentions, and more. Aaron mainly blogs about tech and the web but also dives into topics such as live steaming.

Here are some of my favourite articles from Aaron's blog:

1. Emoji Avatars for My Website
2. Redesigning my Blog Post Pages
3. How to Sign Users In with IndieAuth
4. Digital Spring Cleaning
5. Sending your First Webmention from Scratch

I have visited Aaron's site many times throughout my IndieWeb journey. Sometimes I visit his site if I'm looking for a specific guide on how to do something. Other times I will look for interesting posts to read in Aaron's bookmarks list. Sometimes I just explore, as web surfers do, and see what I can find. My exploration is not unique to Aaron's site: when I find a site that piques my interst, I'll click and click to explore. Indeed, that is part of the fun with personal websites: you never fully know what you will find.

Wrapping Up

We're getting closer to the end of this series. It feels like the month of December has flown by in many ways. There are only eight days until Christmas, something that I am only just getting my head around. Before this series finishes, I want to challenge readers to share the names of some blogs that they like with anyone they know. You could tell a friend about a cool blog you found (maybe this one!) or even write a blog post about some blogs you like. Or you could make a blogroll, a list of blogs you like. It's up to you. If you do take me up on this challenge, let me know at readers@jamesg.blog. I shall see you tomorrow for the next addition to this series.