[wp-hackers] Syndication Input Sought

[Jeff Lambert]

Thanks everyone for your input. I¹ll be researching options soon. If
anyone has any other recommendations just let me know. Pros-and-Cons to
the various options but the REST APIs are, to me, the more strategic
approach but when I looked at them previously they weren¹t quite there,
which is why I was jazzed when I found the push syndication plugin until I
continually realized it was similar to a lot of projects that start out
hot-n-heavy and then fall a bit to the wayside.  Good comments on security
and other such things.

Cheers,

Jeff

On 9/8/14, 11:13 AM, "Bart Schouten" <list at xenhideout.nl> wrote:

>On Mon, 8 Sep 2014, Xen wrote:
>
>> That seems pretty good, like, exactly the same thing as the Facebook
>> "Graph" API.
>
>
>My apologies about this 'top-post', it was a bit unclear, but I was
>responding to James...
>
>> It may be worth looking into the WP-API, which is the JSON api slated
>>to 
>> go into core in 4.1 (I think). I haven't used it, but I think it will
>> provide JSON endpoints withou [sic] requiring the Jetpack plugin, if
>> you're looking to avoid that.
>
>By James DiGioia, Mon, 8 Sept 2014.
>
>
>In any case, it has me thinking.. There is one bot in the crawlers to my
>site I've been observing that gives me a really bad feeling. It is the
>"meanpathbot". What the "meanpathbot" does is basically just steal all
>your content, all your css, all your javascript, and then sell it to
>researchers and journalists and the like who like to analyse that data to
>their benefit.
>
>Which could, for example, be sensitive content you removed at the perfect
>time from your site so as to gain enough exposure for it, but not too
>much.
>
>It could be anything. And they try to archive it and then provide access
>to all of it, to anyone who is willing to fork out the cash. Which starts
>at $500 USD per month.
>
>I am definitely going to block that one. But on the topic of public
>"REST" 
>APIs, if you allow your content (that is basically something you protect
>and control its access paths to) to be retrieved by THIRD parties (like
>Facebook does) but WITHOUT the representation you have so carefully
>chosen 
>(by designing your web interface) or that (in the case of Facebook) your
>users may have carefully chosen so as to provide a certain feeling and a
>certain integrity of what others see of you, within a certain access
>domain ---
>
>And now suddenly everyone and his green seamonkey can just press a button
>and download it all, irrespective of who they are or where they are at...
>
>I just say that that is something you need to carefully watch against.
>
>Something becomes more valuable if a user/visitor/person has to put in a
>bit of effort, such as taking the time to actually visit your site. Or to
>get to know you. Or to first hear about you. Or to know where to look for
>information. Or to be intrigued by what you offer and to seek more.
>
>If you were to write a book, get it printed, and then give it away for
>free, you will find 95% of it in the dustbins of the area where you have
>been handing it out. People will take it off your hands, look at it for 2
>seconds, get bored, and throw it away. That's just the way it goes..
>
>So make sure you maintain the proper balance between what people are
>getting from you, and what they are putting in themselves. That's just
>what I'm trying to say.
>
>Don't be a whore who trades something worthless for something equally
>worthless. Your content is valuable. It has a price, a worth, a value. It
>has seen effort. It has seen sweat. It has perhaps even seen a lot of
>blood. Or even some tears as well.
>
>So don't start giving it all away just because it could mean more
>exposure 
>of it. Don't be the one who gets rejected. Be the one who rejects.
>
>Even if directly monetizing access is not your business model. Even if
>you 
>are not a business for money at all. There is still something you want,
>be 
>it a form of popularity, of being a popular place where people like to
>hang out, a type of community centre, you are trying to be something
>valuable as a result of the value you put onto your site so as you give
>value to others, they give value to you because you become a source to
>them of value. And the more people recognize you as a source of value to
>them, the better it becomes for you, in all respects.
>
>But that depends increasingly in this world on your ability to maintain
>control over who sees what and how. And syndication to a controlled
>netwerk of sites that agree with your vision is not a problem at all. But
>take care to recognise what is "inner circle" and what belongs to the
>"outer circle". The outer circle of you, the main public.
>
>Personally I intend to put into my (very personal) site a form of
>intrigue. Everything is in fact publically accessible (or most of it) but
>I can give off the illusion that it is sacred or hidden material by
>providing a sense of exclusivity to those who opt to become members. That
>requires nothing more than that certain material will take more effort to
>reach for those who are not members. For example, non-members will only
>see the 5 most recent posts and will have to traverse categories to get
>to 
>the rest.
>
>That's intriguing. It will give people the impression that I consider my
>content valuable enough to restrict access to it, while not turning
>anyone 
>away if they want to put the value into it to get my value out.
>
>So it is really an illusion of exclusivity when the site is
>all-inclusive. 
>But many commercial entities do the reverse: they provide an illusion of
>inclusivity when in fact they are very exclusive, in the sense that you
>can never become part of their inner circle. (Try to send an email to
>Google technical support, if you could, if you dared, if you envisioned
>the possibility of dreaming about that being within the realm of the
>achievable.)
>
>So don't be Google and don't be Facebook. Facebook at least has to
>restrict access to almost everything since it is a persons site.
>WordPress 
>falls along the same lines as Facebook mostly... but since most content
>is 
>public to begin with, people running those public JSON webservices may
>end 
>up being among the likes of Google if they think people offloading their
>data is a plus....
>
>Regards,
>
>Bart.
>
>
>> But the only downside that you're making it extremely easy for anyone
>>to 
>> gain this type of access, if you're not careful. Which is why I would
>>be 
>> hesitant...
>>
>> It's funny. The Facebook Graph API provides for less information than
>>the 
>> regular web interface. And all those developers that want to use it,
>>are 
>> complaining about that. For instance, you cannot even retrieve your own
>> friendslist unless every one of your friends give you (or your app)
>> permission to do so. Meanwhile, if you're willing to put in the effort,
>> all of that information is easily 'grabbable'.
>>
>> In any case, I understand your feeling, Jeff. You can get exhausted
>>from 
>> trying things that don't ever seem to work. Jetpack is also not the
>>most 
>> ...elegant or useful addition to the fleet. Suddenly you are mandated
>>to 
>> install a 21 meg plugin that comes with a million features and requires
>>a 
>> WP.com account to basically do anything, and that is actually not a
>>plugin 
>> itself but a plugin framework within the plugin framework of WP.org.
>> Personally, I intend to use it at some point, but I'm going to strip
>>away 
>> the all-too-obvious "container" aspect to it at least in terms of the
>>user 
>> interface (the word "Jetpack" is meaningless to me because it doesn't
>>do 
>> anything useful; "stats" and "akismet" are not). And get rid of all the
>> modules I don't use anyway, and will never use. After that it will just
>>be 
>> a common library to the few 'modules' I do use :) :p.
>>
>> Just giving it its proper position ;-).
>>
>> When I read the page at http://wordpress.org/plugins/push-syndication/,
>>I 
>> feel a lot of sadness. As if those developers that had once written
>>those 
>> words with inspiration, are now feeling drained, as you do. The plugin
>>was 
>> probably conceived as something relatively standalone. But today
>> everything has come under a heavier wind and this wind is pushing
>>forward 
>> in some sort of frenzy of WordPress.com integration of everything.
>>
>> For example, one of the Jetpack advantages is listed as "if you let us
>>do 
>> your statistics, it will not burden your own servers, but rather ours,
>> that are extremely speedy." How one cloud-hosted server park can ever
>>be 
>> faster than a local server is beyond me, unless you'd be talking about
>>the 
>> caching advantages of webclients retrieving things like jQuery from
>> centrally hosted locations (such as some Google server) instead of your
>> site. But it is nonsensical to think that the computing power of
>>millions 
>> of decentralized hosts would be dwarfed by a few centrally hosted
>>server 
>> parks. And these guys think they are some kind of awesome. When you
>>check 
>> the stats page of a newly configured stats counter or API key or
>>whatever, 
>> you are greeted with the message "Whoa! Not so fast! We just started
>> counting, there's nothing here yet, DUDE." Liberally cited, but still,
>> that was the gist of the message. Completely inappropriate for
>>something 
>> that is meant to be a serious, boring (but still exciting) "accounting"
>> system. Suddenly we're all being turned into surfer dudes when really,
>>we 
>> just wanted to check out how that page looked.
>>
>> Jetpack is really not that cool. Not nearly as cool as they try to make
>>it 
>> out to be..
>>
>> So perhaps you're also feeling drained because that plugin you got
>>excited 
>> about, it is really at a true 'dead end' or at least a 'not feeling it
>> anymore' end.
>>
>> So there's probably something that they're doing (or that someone is
>> doing) that is more in line with 'the times' and it is just a matter of
>> getting through the grief of having lost this old thing, so you can
>>make 
>> room for the new thing and I'm sure it will soon fall into your hands,
>>or 
>> cross paths with you...
>>
>> It is just a bit of a feeling of depression I guess.. that I'm feeling
>> right now..
>>
>> Kudos,
>>
>> Bart.
>>
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