Replying with Webmentions

This site is Webmention ready. Webmentions are an open protocol created to notify a webpage about links, likes, comments, etc. There is a W3C recommendation for this protocol. They are intended to enable richer conversations across the web.

Webmentions work by allowing a source webpage to notify a target webpage that the source has mentioned the target. This is done with a really simple web request to a url defined on the target webpage that is tagged with a rel=webmention attribute.

On this site there is a hidden link on every page that points to https://wm.connermccall.com/receive. Anyone can tell my site they have mentioned a piece of content. The software running at that url received the information, goes to the source and verifies that that page does indeed contain a link to the target. This gets stored in a database and when my site is deployed it checks that database and add any approved mentions. I currently only show mentions on my blog posts, but if you mention a page I might add them there as well.

There are various software tools to assist with sending mentions. If you want to reply to my site you will need to publish content somewhere that links to the page you want to mention, then send my server a request. You can use Telegraph to send a mention. I use webmentiond to handle receiving mentions.

Webmentions are just a part of Joining the Indie Web. It ensures that you have full control of your replies while allowing me to showcase any conversations that might be happening around my content.

If you want some additional information on how I implemented webmentions, you can read about my integration in this post.