@prologic@twtxt.net Hello, dear developer, I would like to ask a question: if I have an twtxt.txt document on a website that others can access via internet but cannot modify, is this twtxt.txt document really just acting as a RSS, not even a social network?
@nwu1dm@twtxt.net That would basically just be a read-only feed. And in that case, yeah it would act a bit like RSS feeds. In fact this is how we do RSS -> Twtxt via https://feeds.twtxt.net/
@nwu1dm@twtxt.net What’s your use-case? 🤔
@prologic@twtxt.net @nwu1dm@twtxt.net well, a twtxt file only you can modify and nobody else is what twtxt is all about.
@marado@twtxt.net Yeah to be honest I’m a bit confused by the OP’s question here really (sorry @nwu1dm@twtxt.net) – hence why I’m asking what the “use-case” is… – In case it’s not clear, @marado@twtxt.net is 100% correct, Twtxt and also Yarn.social (which uses Twtxt and some Extensions) are arguably (IMO) the only truly decentralised social ecosystem that I know of in existence today (bay maybe a few other obscure ones, do we count finger?! 😅)
Even as a user on my multi-user pod (twtxt.net) you are free to do what you want, and even host your feed in multiple places just as @marado@twtxt.net does, and I believe takes advantage of the yarnc sync tool and api 👌
I think OP is trying to understand how twtxt works. There is a language barrier, but I think that’s what he is asking.
@bender@twtxt.net You’re probably right. We’ll do our best to explain how things work 🤞
@nwu1dm@twtxt.net How will it be a disaster? 🤔
@nwu1dm@twtxt.net I think we’re talking about different things. If by “disaster” you mean reading your twtxt.txt (feed) file, then yes, you need to have a “decent” client. There are a few around, not just yarnd.
That being said, you can and are free to create your own client however you wish. jenny for example (which you can find on the landing page at https://yarn.social) treats every Twt as an Email. And then you can use something like mutt to navigate your feeds you follow, replies and your “timeline”.
Does this make sense? – I actually thought you were referring to some scalability problem, but I don’t think you were, you were talking about the UX? Today the best clients that exist are the ones that are listed on Yarn.social. If someone comes up with another client that’s just as compelling (good), we’ll be sure to list it there ! 👌
@nwu1dm@twtxt.net In order for you to find others to follow and they to follow you, I’d recommend using the search.twtxt.net search engine. As you’ve already found your way to my pod (a multi-user client with a Web App, API and Mobile App) you’re already being followed by a few in the small but growing community 😅 – Find folks is well hard in a true “decentralised” ecosystem. But we’re here 😅 The best way to build your “network” is by interesting with others, you will find over time your network of followers will grow and change over time and what you follow will also 👌
feeds.twtxt.net is also a good course of “external feeds” (many of which are 1-way mirrors of Mastodon users or RSS feeds of websites, news, etc).
@nwu1dm@twtxt.net Also if you chose to host your own feed (you’re welcome to keep using my pod, it’s there for use by all!), one thing to keep in mind as you either pick a client, figure out how to host your feed, etc is the HTTP User-Agent header that many clients will use to tell you they have fetched your feed. This is an important discovery aspect of Twtxt and we extended this as well to support multi-user pods like yarnd.
See: https://dev.twtxt.net/doc/useragentextension.html
At a bare minimum, you basically need to parse your web server access logs. There is a tool that @lyse@lyse.isobeef.org wrote called useragent that helps with this.