What's New in v0.5

Last month on HTML Day, we launched the first stable version of Octothorpes, v0.5. Our development process until now has been somewhat anarchic, so we figured it might be a good idea to explain what's in this release, what we consider a release, and what the future of the project looks like.

What makes this a release

We had been cowboy coding this to move it forward in the time we could make for it (and tbh we still are sometimes 🤠), so one big change with this release is that we're going to try not to do that anymore. 0.5 closes the circle on a significant part of the original vision for Octothorpe Protocol. It is a certain kind of Thing now, and going forward we will improve that Thing until it becomes a New Kind of Thing, which will be 1.0.

Prior to this release, the Octothorpes project was more of a prototype than a protocol. Hashtags worked in-situ, using a single standard for writing them, and we had some pages on the server where you could see lists of hashtags and their sites. We have a lot more than that now.

Our original vision was as much about browsing as it was about building independent websites. We want OP to be a whole network that you can own and operate as you wish. That means giving you control over how you use OP on your site, and how you get data out of the network. Version 0.5 makes that possible with the addition of the API and Harmonizers.

The API lets you build your own algorithm

With this release, it's easy to create unified feeds from complex sources based on criteria you pick yourself. Want an RSS feed of posts hashtagged #sandwiches from your three favorite blogs? If they're on OP, you got it. If I started listing all the things you can do with it, I'd end up duplicating the docs, so if you're curious, go check them out. Just know that if your site is on OP, now every page has its own API endpoint which can be used as a data source or RSS feed and combined with every other page and octothorpe in the system.

Harmonizers let you use octothorpes without changing your site's code

Basically, a harmonizer is a definition of what counts as an octothorpe on your page. OP uses an open standards that lets you write your own harmonizer, so you don't have to use the "official" code to put octothorpes on your page. Our "official" code is really just a suggestion now. There is no longer one way to do it. If you can identify the part of your webpage with standard CSS-selectors, you can use it as an octothorpe. For example, if you use webmentions already, you can just write a harmonizer to point at those and, bam, they're octothorpes. Now you have an API and RSS feeds for all your mentions.

Besides convenience, this was an important feature for us to add because it opens the door to using OP with services that don't let you edit the HTML.

Together, these power Octothorpe Protocol

With this release, we're moving away from talking about octothorpes to talking about Octothorpe Protocol, or OP. We still love octothorpes, but hopefully now it's clear how much more this system can do than just hashtags, and that it's an actual system. You don't have to use any hashtags at all to get something useful out of OP.

New ways to use OP

v0.5 introduces some new core vocabulary and features.

No tags necessary

OP will now index any page you ask it to, whether or not it has octothorpes on it, making them available as /posted on the API. This lets you do cool things, like make composite feeds from your favorite blogs.

All kinds of links

Previously, we had hashtags, backlinks, and bookmarks. Now, every non-hashtag octothorpe is simply a link, with an extensible vocabulary of subtypes.

Backlinks are the only subtype that can't be assigned. A link is marked as a backlink when the target site either links back to the referrer or specifically endorses the referrer's domain. This way, you can distinguish between incoming links, like mentions, and mutual links.

Otherwise you are free to label links as you wish. The default harmonizer includes ids for bookmarks and citations.

Webrings 💍 ‼️

The most notable addition to the OP vocabulary is webrings. Just as links can now have a subtype, webrings introduce the idea of types for URLs. Right now, webring is the only type that has any meaning in the system. It means "this page defines a webring, and the backlinks here are members," and we think that's pretty cool.

With OP now you can make and manage webrings with just a couple lines of HTML. And, anyone on your OP webring can now share hashtags, backlink or mention each other, and scope any of their feeds to just members of that ring. All with plain HTML that runs on static sites.

We have real docs now

I'm skimming over a lot here, because if you want to learn more you can just check out the up-to-date, accurate, legible documentation that fills the rest of this site. We will keep it up to date as we add features on the way to v1.0.

We have a new section with fun ways you can use OP to enhance some of our favorite parts of the old internet called The Old Ways. First up -- how to make a blogroll that other people can subscribe to.

Project status

This remains a volunteer project run by two people, in public use for a little over a year. As things stand, we don't have the resources to spend the next year developing OP as intensely as we spent this last year. This version achieves a lot of what we set out to do, and if it never goes further than this we are still proud of what we built. Of course, we are still going to try to keep things growing. So we'll both be focused on outreach and adoption in the coming year and take a slower, more planned approach to feature additions.

We see a few potential paths for turning this into a sustainable project that's bigger than just the two of us, which we'll go into more detail about in a later blog post. For now, know that we're looking for ways to support this project that align with the values that it's founded on, and none of them involve slowly degrading those values for profit.

OP in the wild

No site? No problem. Right now you can use OP natively on Bear Blog and Peep.zone.

Bear Blog has its own server that doesn't require registration, but you will need a paid account to edit your blog's template to make it work. Follow these instructions to get set up on Bear. Peep is free, and thorpes on the main server.

What's Next

On the community end, we're reaching out to more services and platforms in the small and independent web world to make using and integrating with OP as easy and accessible as possible. If you have a community or project that you'd like to integrate with OP, do get in touch!

We'll also be publishing more docs, videos, and blog posts about all the things you can do with OP. And check back soon for some fun built-with-OP projects we have planned.

On the code side, we're close to finishing a roadmap to v1.0. The biggest part of that will be building tools to host your own OP server, and tools for navigating a federated network. We hope OP 1.0 will be something that lets you run and customize your own community network of independent sites all on your own. We're also working on UIs and tools for reading the OP network to bring in more people who love the open web but don't build it themselves.

Meanwhile, Nik is making some really interesting stuff as Stucco Software that will make using OP even cooler and more useful.

Stay in the loop

All official OP updates will be posted to this blog, but, thanks to OP, we can also post pertinent things from our own sites. So here's the feed everything posted from all the sites in the Dev Webring about #octothorpe-news

We do technically have a mailing list, but haven't used it yet. If you'd like to be on it when we do, sign up here.

Otherwise, we will cross-post updates on the official OP Mastodon and Bluesky.

Show us what's possible with OP

I had a note to write "something vision-y" to end this post, but I forgot I already did, and it has nice pictures of space. I've gone on long enough. I can't wait to see what people post with OP next.