Timeline

The latest release of Indigenous for Android brings a handy new feature: push notifications! You can fully control what you receive, since you are able to send them yourself on any given moment. Push notifications are send via Pushy.me which relies on MQTT.

Setup is easy: login with the same account as you do in Indigenous at https://indigenous.realize.be, which is now the new home of Indigenous for Android. You'll receive an API token which you can use to send push notifications. If you are on Drupal and enabled the IndieWeb module, you can also enter the API token on the microsub settings screen to automatically get notified when a new webmention comes in. I would be awesome to see other frameworks or services to offer this functionality as well!

The service is completely free. It's also optional, so no resources are wasted of your phone if you decide not to enable it. Future releases of Indigenous will also allow to configure your own MQTT backend. Sadly enough, the F-Droid version doesn't contain this feature yet. I expect it to arrive, along with location, in a couple of weeks!

About a year ago, I only just learned about the principles of IndieWeb, which in a way is a bit of a shame. Fast forward to now, and I'm proud to announce the first stable release for Drupal 8. Together with this milestone, I also pushed a new version of Indigenous so that both are aligned feature wise.

It's been a great journey so far, and while there's still a lot to do for both projects, the stability and feature set warrants a stable tag. It has changed the way I interact with (social) media day to day now since the last half year, both in reading and posting, being in full control of every aspect. It's great, everyone should try it!

What's next?

I've been thinking the last few weeks to raise funding, but after much consideration, I'm not going forward on that path. Even though my public GitHub profile lists over 1300 contributions the last year (about 3.5 per day), which somehow is simply crazy, I still have more than enough spirit and motivation to keep on going. Just a little slower from now on, since many features for both projects are not mission critical - even though they are awesome. Of course, I won't mind if someone would suddenly feel the urge to sponsor me.

Slowing down now you think, that can't be true ? Right. As already announced a few weeks ago, the next focus will be writing an Activitypub module for Drupal so you can communicate with your site on the Fediverse. I'm currently using Bridgy Fed for this, but, in the IndieWeb spirit, it's time to bring this home!

But first, time to make sure I don't mess up my tryouts of the Moonlight sonata. No commits until after March 31st - I promise :)

Starting this year, I have the opportunity to contribute to Drupal and get paid for it. While I've had sponsored time in the past, this time it's recurring: Dropsolid is paying me a day a month to work on Drupal core or contrib. 1 day is limited, however, make no mistake, even one day is useful to get into the queue and review issues or commit patches on contrib modules I maintain. And of course, I credit them in the issue queue.

The main areas where I will focus on for now are:

• Issue queue gardening for Drupal Core (RTBC, NR, Critical)
• Display Suite maintenance for D8
• Configuration management issues

Note that I'm looking for areas where I feel comfortable and make sense for the company. For instance, I'm not going to work on IndieWeb during these paid hours - but feel free to contact me if you'd like to have me work on that :)

I'd love to have more these days like these, so if other companies are interested in sponsoring me to work on Drupal, get in touch and let's talk!

For now a big thanks already to Dropsolid and see you in the queue!