Indie checkin flow

Update: I’ve automated this.

Here’s my 2015 IndieWeb launch commitment: I’d like to be able to post indie checkins easily, both here and on Facebook. I’d like to use Facebook’s venue database, and I’d like a flow that’s optimized for my phone, like my current reply/like/repost flow.

The answer I ended up with is manual PESOS. I do it with Facebook and my WordPress bookmarklets, but it should work just as well with other silos and web servers. Here are the steps:

  1. Check into the venue in your silo app. Five taps for Facebook.
  2. Open the silo’s venue page, then open the venue’s web page. Two taps for Facebook.
  3. Open a new checkin post for that venue web page in your site’s editing interface. Two taps with the Press This bookmarklet.
  4. Publish the post. Usually one tap.

The total cost for me is five taps for the FB checkin (without message, tags, etc.) plus five additional taps for the manual PESOS. Attaching a syndication URL costs four more taps, two to copy the FB checkin’s URL and two to paste it into the indie checkin HTML.

Here’s an example of a resulting indie checkin of mine and its corresponding Facebook checkin.

The next step is to automate this. For me personally, the path of least resistance is to automate the PESOS, ie build a minimal OwnYourCheckin similar to Aaron‘s great OwnYourGram. And…done!

Also on IndieNews.

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