I’ve added “Reply via Email” and “Reply on the Fediverse” buttons to articles on Musings, including to Atom Feed items so you can reply directly from your feed reader.
background
I used to have comments on my blog. (At the time, that blog was See With Eyes Closed.) It worked well, but I didn’t have a good way to check back for new comments, and I was having to implement measures to fight spam.
When I transitioned to a static site, though, one of the things I had to drop was the comments section.
When I launched tty1 last year, I decided to implement something I’d been seeing: comments via the Fediverse. I’d hand my site the link to the thread where I’d posted about the new article, then it would fetch any replies as the comments section. (It still does that!)
Moving to my own self-hosted instance broke this, though: GoToSocial, the platform I’m using, requires authentication to fetch statuses the way I was doing, so I had to keep posting on my Mastodon account instead of my GoToSocial one to get the comments working.
I’ve been thinking, though, do I really need to do it this way? One of the benefits of GoToSocial is that it provides its own static, JS-free version of public posts. Simply linking to it should be enough for people to read comments and post their own.
So, that’s why this blog only has a link to the relevant thread. It works out easier and better that way.
Now, to Reply by Email: I’ve seen a number of other blogs with Reply by Email links, and I’ve enjoyed the idea. When I launched tty1, I also had it list my email address and PGP public key, so people can email me if they want to.
To my surprise, some people have emailed me. My conversations over email about my articles (and about other people’s when I reply via email) have been some of the most valuable and interesting discussions I’ve had related to my blog.
So, finally, I decided to add a simple “Reply via Email” link to the bottom of posts, both on the site and in the Atom Feed.
my thoughts
I love how it turned out. It’s nice and simple, and should hopefully result in my having a number of thoughtful conversations with y’all.
I highly recommend setting up something like this on your site—I want to see more “Reply via Email” links when browsing in my feed reader!
And once you’ve set it up (or if you haven’t), why not take this opportunity to try it out? Go ahead, send me an email. The link is below. If you wanna try out PGP encryption or signature verification (I sign all my emails), my public key is there too.
