about.html

{% extends "base.html" %}

{% block title %}About - Bridgy{% endblock %}

{% block body_class %} about {% endblock %}

{% block content %}

<li id="what" class="question">What is this?</li>
<li class="answer">
<p>Bridgy pulls comments, likes, and reshares on social networks back to your
web site. You can also use it to post to social networks - or comment, like,
reshare, or even RSVP - from your own web site.
</p>

<p>A picture is worth a thousand words, so here's a screenshot of comments,
likes, etc. that Bridgy sent to a
<a href="https://snarfed.org/2014-01-15_a-new-kingdom#comments"
   target="_blank">post on my own site</a>:
</p>

<br />
<p>
<a href="https://snarfed.org/2014-01-15_a-new-kingdom#comments" target="_blank">
 <img id="screenshot" src="/static/example_post_screenshot.png"
      style="border: 1px solid lightgray; max-width: 100%" />
</a></p>
<br />

<p>Here's a screencast of Bridgy sending an Instagram comment and like to my web
site:</p>

<p style="text-align: center">
<iframe src="//www.youtube.com/embed/eGMNItivBdY"
  width="420" height="315" class="shadow" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen>
</iframe>
</p>

<p>Bridgy is part of the
<a href="http://indiewebcamp.com/">IndieWeb</a> ecosystem. In IndieWeb lingo,
Bridgy offers
<a href="http://indiewebcamp.com/backfeed">backfeed</a>,
<a href="http://indiewebcamp.com/POSSE">POSSE</a>, and
<a href="http://indiewebify.me/#send-webmentions">webmention</a> support as a
service.</a>
</p>

<p>Read on for more details, or
<a href="/">head to the front page</a> to sign up and get started!</p>
</li>


<br />
<ul class="about">
<p><em>General</em></p>
<li><a href="#how">How does it work?</a></li>
<li><a href="#cost">How much does it cost?</a></li>
<li><a href="#privacy">What do you do with my data?</a></li>
<li><a href="#who">Who are you? Why did you make this?</a></li>
<li><a href="#history">How long has this been around?</a></li>
<li><a href="#stats">How big is this?</a></li>
<li><a href="#profile-link">Why does my web site URL need to be in my social
  network profile?</a></li>
<li><a href="#disconnected">Bridgy stopped working for me!</a></li>
<li><a href="#facebook-expired">Bridgy used to work with my Facebook account,
  but now it doesn't!</a></li>
<li><a href="#facebook-pages">Does it support Facebook pages?</a></li>
<li><a href="#security">It looks like anyone can poll or disable my
  account or publish as me. Isn't that a security hole?</a></li>
<li><a href="#registration-api">Can users sign up for Bridgy
  without leaving my site or application?</a></li>
<li><a href="#bug">I found a bug! I have a feature request!</a></li>
<li><a href="#cute">Brid.gy? Really?</a></li>

<br />
<p><em>Pulling back responses</em></p>
<li><a href="#which">Which things does it send, specifically?</a></li>
<li><a href="#accept">How can I get my web site to accept
  webmentions?</a></li>
<li><a href="#realtime">Bridgy isn't seeing one of my comments or
  likes or reshares!</a></li>
<li><a href="#missing">...but it's been a while, and Bridgy
  still hasn't seen it!</a></li>
<li><a href="#domain">Bridgy can't find my original posts! It just
  says <em>No webmention targets found</em>.</a></li>
<li><a href="#link">Do my posts really need to link my web site?</a></li>
<li><a href="#appspot">What are all these brid-gy.appspot.com links
  in the comments that Bridgy sends to my site?</a></li>
<li><a href="#ssl">OK, fine. But why brid-gy.appspot.com instead of
  brid.gy?</a></li>
<li><a href="#source-urls">What's the format for Bridgy's webmention
  source URLs?</a></li>

<br />
<p><em>Publishing</em></p>
<li><a href="#publishing">What do you mean, <em>publishing</em>?</a></li>
<li><a href="#microformats">How does it decide which parts of my web
  page to include?</a></li>
<li><a href="#publish-types">What can I publish, exactly?</a></li>
<li><a href="#webmentions">Can I do this automatically, whenever
  I post something new on my web site?</a></li>
<li><a href="#reply">How do I reply to a tweet from my web site?</a></li>
<li><a href="#like">How do I like, retweet, or RSVP from my web site?</a></li>
<li><a href="#picture">How do I post a picture?</a></li>
<li><a href="#facebook-publish">What happened to publishing Facebook
  comments and likes?</li>
<li><a href="#omit-link">Can I disable the link back to my post?</a></li>
<li><a href="#ignore-formatting">Can I disable the plain text whitespace and
  formatting?</a></li>
<li><a href="#silo-content">I want more control over the text that gets posted.</li>
<li><a href="#short-link">Can I include a short link instead of the full link?</a></li>
<li><a href="#response">How does Bridgy respond to webmentions?</a></li>
<li><a href="#error-response">How about error responses?</a></li>
<li><a href="#silos">Why only Facebook and Twitter? Why not Google+ or
   Instagram?</a></li>
<li><a href="#401">I'm getting a <em>401: Unauthorized</em> error when I try
   to publish to Twitter.</a></li>

<br />
<p><em>Webmentions for blogs</em></p>
<li><a href="#blogs">What is this?</a></li>
<li><a href="#outgoing">What outgoing webmentions does it send from my
  blog?</a></li>
<li><a href="#incoming">What does it do with incoming webmentions send to my
  blog?</a></li>
<li><a href="#endpoint">Why do I have to add that line of HTML to
  my blog?</a></li>
<li><a href="#disqus">I'm on Tumblr. Why do I have to install Disqus?</a></li>
<li><a href="#moderation">I received a webmention, but it's not
  showing up on my blog.</a></li>
<li><a href="#user">All the comments for incoming webmentions come from me.
That's ugly.</a></li>

</ul>
<br />
<div>

<ul class="about">


<!-- General -->
<li id="how" class="question">How does it work?</li>
<li class="answer">
<p>
Bridgy periodically checks social networks for responses to your posts and
<a href="http://indiewebcamp.com/original-post-discovery">links to your web
site</a> and sends them back to your site
as <a href="http://indiewebify.me/#send-webmentions">webmentions</a>. Bridgy
also translates the responses
to <a href="http://microformats.org/">microformats</a> so that your web site can
fetch and parse them.
</p>
<p>
Bridgy can also publish posts, comments, likes, and RSVPs from your web
site <em>to</em> social networks. When you ask Bridgy to publish a post, it
analyzes its microformats data and publishes it using the social network APIs.
</p>
<p>Bridgy is <a href="https://github.com/snarfed/bridgy">open source</a>. It's
written in Python and runs on
<a href="http://appengine.google.com/">Google App Engine</a>. It uses
<a href="https://github.com/snarfed/oauth-dropins">oauth-dropins</a> to let
users connect to the silos,
<a href="https://github.com/snarfed/granary">granary</a>
to fetch data from the silos and convert it to a standard format, and
<a href="https://github.com/vrypan/webmention-tools">webmention-tools</a> to
send webmentions.
</p>
</li>

<li id="cost" class="question">How much does it cost?</li>
<li class="answer">
<p>Nothing! We have <a href="https://getcolor.com/">great day jobs</a>, and
Bridgy is small, so thanks to <a href="http://appengine.google.com/">App
Engine</a>, it doesn't cost much to run. We don't need donations, promise.
</p>
<p>If you <em>really</em> want to
contribute, <a href="https://github.com/snarfed/bridgy/issues">file an issue</a>
or <a href="https://github.com/snarfed/bridgy">send a pull request</a>, or
feel free to donate to the
<a href="http://www.aspca.org/">ASPCA</a> or the
<a href="https://www.eff.org/">EFF</a> in our name.
</p></li>

<li id="privacy" class="question">What do you do with my data?</li>
<li class="answer">
<p>Nothing! Bridgy isn't a business, and never will be, so we don't have the same
motivations to abuse your data that other services might. More concretely, we
won't ever send you email, we store as little of your
<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personally_identifiable_information">PII</a>
(personally identifiable information) as possible, and we <em>never</em> have
access to any of your passwords.
</p>
</li>

<li id="who" class="question">Who are you? Why did you make this?</li>
<li class="answer">
<p>
We're <a class="h-card" href="https://snarfed.org/">Ryan Barrett</a>,
<a class="h-card" href="https://kylewm.com/">Kyle Mahan</a>, and
<a href="https://github.com/snarfed/bridgy/graphs/contributors">many other
contributors</a>. We're just normal people who
<a href="https://snarfed.org/2012-07-25_why_i_have_my_own_web_site">like the
web</a> and like <a href="http://indiewebcamp.com/why">owning our data</a>.
</p>
</li>

<li id="history" class="question">How long has this been around?</li>
<li class="answer">
<p>Ryan started working on Bridgy in the summer of 2011
and <a href="https://snarfed.org/2012-01-08_bridgy_launched">launched the first
version</a> on Jan. 8 2012. It only
supported <a href="http://wordpress.org/">WordPress</a>, and wasn't very
polished, so it never got much adoption.
</p>
<p>He launched the current version on Dec. 9, 2013. It's been more successful,
thanks in large part to
<a href="http://indiewebify.me/#send-webmentions">webmentions</a> and the
inspiration of the
<a href="http://indiewebcamp.com/why">IndieWeb community</a>.
</p>
</li>

<li id="stats" class="question">How big is this?</li>
<li class="answer">
<p>Check out the <a href="/#stats">stats on the front page</a>!</p>
</li>

<li id="profile-link" class="question">Why does my web site URL need to be in my
  social network profile?</li>
<li class="answer">
<p>First, if you want to <a href="#publish">publish</a>, Bridgy uses this link
to connect your web site to your social network account. Second, if you want to
get responses without linking your posts to your web site, Bridgy uses this link
to <a href="#link">fetch syndication URLs</a> from your site so it can map back
from your posts.</p>
</li>

<li id="disconnected" class="question">Bridgy stopped working for me!</li>
<li class="answer">
<p>Does your Bridgy user page have a
<span class="glyphicon glyphicon-pause"></span> icon on it? If so, Bridgy has
lost access to your account. This can happen when you change your password, when
Bridgy's access expires or is revoked, or for other reasons.</p>
<p>To fix this, just click on the
<span class="glyphicon glyphicon-pause"></span> icon on your user page.
</p></li>

<li id="facebook-expired" class="question">Bridgy used to work with my Facebook
  account, but now it doesn't!</li>
<li class="answer">
<p>Facebook <a href="https://developers.facebook.com/docs/roadmap/completed-changes/offline-access-removal/">only
lets apps access your account for two months at a time</a>. That time period
automatically extends when you interact with an app yourself, but Bridgy works
in the background, without user interaction. So, you'll need to come back every
two months and log into Facebook again to renew its access to your account.</p>

<p>Don't worry! You don't need to remember to do this yourself. Bridgy will send
you a notification on Facebook when you need to renew. Just click on the
notification, and you'll be set for another two months.
</p></li>

<li id="facebook-pages" class="question">Does it support Facebook pages?</li>
<li class="answer">
<p>Yes! If you log in as a Facebook user who's an admin of a page, you can
choose that page during signup.</p>
</li>

<li id="security" class="question">It looks like anyone can poll or disable my
account or publish as me. Isn't that a security hole?</li>
<li class="answer">
<p>Looks can be deceiving. Polling is harmless - Bridgy does it automatically
anyway - and when you publish a post or try to disable an account, we check that
you own it first. If you <a href="#webmentions">publish via webmention</a>, we
<a href="https://brid.gy/about#webmentions">require a Bridgy Publish backlink</a>
in your post.
</p>
</li>

<li id="registration-api" class="question">Can users sign up for Bridgy
without leaving my site or application?</li>
<p>Not exactly, but you can get close. Direct your users to
<code>POST</code> to a Bridgy registration URL of the
form <code>https://brid.gy/SITE/start</code> (where SITE is
<code>facebook</code>, <code>twitter</code>, <code>googleplus</code>,
<code>instagram</code>, or <code>flickr</code>)with the parameters:</p>
<ul>
<li><code>feature</code>, a comma-separated list of features,
usually <code>listen</code>, <code>publish</code>,
or <code>listen,publish</code></li>
<li><code>callback</code> a URL pointing back to your site</li>
<li> <code>user_url</code> (optional), the user's URL. Allows callers to set
this value without requiring it to be present in the user's silo profile</li>
</ul>
<p>They will be ushered through the registration process and sent back to
your site when it finishes.</p>
<p>For example:</p>
<pre>
POST <a href="https://brid.gy/facebook/start">https://brid.gy/facebook/start</a>
<span class="keyword">feature=</span><span class="value">listen</span>&amp;<span class="keyword">callback=</span><span class="value">http%3A%2F%2Fexample.com%2Fbridgy-callback</span>

POST <a href="https://brid.gy/twitter/start">https://brid.gy/twitter/start</a>
<span class="keyword">feature=</span><span class="value">listen,publish</span>&amp;<span class="keyword">callback=</span><span class="value">http%3A%2F%2Fexample.com%2Fbridgy-callback</span>
</pre>
<p>The callback will be passed back query parameters:</p>
<ul>
  <li><code>result</code> equal to <code>success</code>, <code>failure</code>, or <code>declined</code></li>
  <li><code>user</code> (if successful) equal to their Bridgy user page URL</li>
</ul>


<li id="bug" class="question">I found a bug! I have a feature request!</li>
<li class="answer">
<p>Great! Please <a href="https://github.com/snarfed/bridgy/issues">file it in
GitHub</a>. Thank you!
</p>
</li>

<li id="cute" class="question">Brid.gy? Really?</li>
<li class="answer">
<p>Yeah, we know. We're not proud of the cutesy domain name either. Just go with it.
</p>
</li>


<!-- Listen -->
<br />
<h3 id="listen">Pulling back responses</h3>

<li id="which" class="question">Which things does it send, specifically?</li>
<li class="answer">
<p>Bridgy detects and sends webmentions for:</p>
<ul>
<li>Twitter
  <a href="https://support.twitter.com/articles/14023-what-are-replies-and-mentions">@-replies</a>,
  retweets, quote tweets, and favorites of your tweets.</li>
<li>Tweets from other people that
  <a href="https://support.twitter.com/articles/14023-what-are-replies-and-mentions">@-mention</a>
  you or contain links to your site.</li>
<li>Facebook comments on and likes of your posts.</li>
<li>Facebook shares of your posts
  <a href="https://github.com/snarfed/bridgy/issues/510">from other Bridgy
    users</a>.</li>
<li>Facebook event RSVPs. <a href="http://indiewebcamp.com/rsvp">Details.</a></li>
<li>Google+ comments, +1s, and reshares of your posts.</li>
<li>Google+ posts from other people that contain links to your site.</li>
<li>Instagram comments and likes on your pictures.</li>
<li>Flickr comments and favorites on your photos.</li>
</ul>
</li>
</p></li>

<li id="accept" class="question">How can I get my web site to accept
  webmentions?</li>
<li class="answer">
<p>Webmentions are pretty new, but many web servers already support them. If
you're on Blogger, Tumblr, or WordPress.com, <a href="/">you can sign your blog
up with Bridgy</a> to accept webmentions. If you're on self-hosted WordPress,
<a href="http://wordpress.org/plugins/indieweb/">install the Indieweb
plugin</a>. Otherwise,
<a href="http://indiewebcamp.com/webmention#Publishing_Software">check out the
Indiewebcamp wiki</a> for a list of options.
</p></li>

<li id="realtime" class="question">Bridgy isn't seeing one of my comments or
  likes or reshares!</li>
<li class="answer">
<p>Bridgy doesn't work immediately. It checks your accounts for new activity
periodically, every 5 to 30 minutes or so depending on the site. This drops down
to once a day if you've been signed up for over a week and we haven't
successfully sent you a webmention yet, or the last one we sent was over a month
ago.
</p>
<p>(Twitter favorites and retweets used to be an
exception, since Bridgy used
<a href="https://dev.twitter.com/docs/streaming-apis">Twitter's Streaming
API</a> for a while, but
<a href="https://github.com/snarfed/bridgy/issues/57">not any more</a>.)
</p></li>

<li id="missing" class="question">...but it's been a while, and Bridgy
  still hasn't seen it!</li>
<li class="answer">
<p>This can happen for a number of different reasons.</p>
<ul>
<li>Does the social network post have a link to your web site's post? If not,
does your web site's post have a
<a href="#link">rel-syndication link</a> to the social network post?
Bridgy needs at least one or the other so it can connect the two posts.
</li>
<li>Did you write the original post yourself? Bridgy doesn't crawl other people's
posts, even if they have links to your web site. It only sends back responses
to <em>your</em> posts.
</li>
<li>Is the post fully public? And the response too? Bridgy only shows and sends
webmentions for fully public posts and responses. If your default Facebook
audience is "friends" or "friends of friends," or your Twitter account
is <a href="https://dev.twitter.com/docs/platform-objects/users#protected">protected</a>,
or your Google+ post wasn't sent to "public," Bridgy won't see it.
<p>Instagram is the one exception. The Instagram API
<a href="https://groups.google.com/forum/m/#!topic/instagram-api-developers/DAO7OriVFsw">doesn't
expose</a> whether an account
is <a href="http://help.instagram.com/448523408565555">private</a>, so Bridgy
handles all Instagram photos and comments. If your Instagram account is private,
don't sign it up for Bridgy!
</li>
<li>Facebook's API isn't great about this either.
<a href="https://github.com/snarfed/bridgy/issues/611">Sometimes it doesn't give
us enough information to tell whether a post is public or private.</a> When that
happens, we have to default to assuming it's not public, which means we
occasionally miss posts (usually photos) that look public inside Facebook.
</li>
<li>Is it on an older post? Bridgy only looks at your 50 most recent posts. It
doesn't go back arbitrarily far because that doesn't scale. You can get around
this for an individual response by
<a href="http://indiewebcamp.com/webmention#How_to_Test_Webmentions">sending a
webmention manually</a>. <a href="#source-urls">Here's how to
construct the source URL.</a>
</li>
<li>Is it a Twitter @-reply? Does it
<a href="https://support.twitter.com/articles/14023-what-are-replies-and-mentions">@-mention</a>
you? Twitter's API
<a href="https://dev.twitter.com/discussions/10056">doesn't have a way to get a
tweet's replies</a>, so Bridgy searches for @-mentions of the tweet's author to
find its replies. That means it can't always find replies that omit the
@-mention.
<p>Also, Twitter's search API is sadly
<a href="https://dev.twitter.com/docs/faq#8650">best effort only</a>, ie it
doesn't guarantee that it returns all matching tweets for a search. Every now
and then it may not be able to find one of your replies, which means Bridgy will
miss it. Sadface.
</li>
<li>Are you using a <a href="#link">syndication link</a>? If so, Bridgy may have
fetched your post before you added the link. When that happens, Bridgy waits up
to two hours before it refetches your post and reloads syndication links. Try
clicking the <em>Crawl now</em> button on your user page.
</li>
</ul>
</li>

<li id="link" class="question">Do my posts really need to link my web site?</li>
<li class="answer">
<p>Nope! You can
use <a href="http://indiewebcamp.com/rel-syndication">rel-syndication</a> lookup
instead. It fetches the web site field in your social network profile and
follows each
<a href="http://microformats.org/wiki/h-entry">h-entry</a> to its post permalink
page and look there for rel-syndication or u-syndication links. If you publish
an unfiltered <a href="http://microformats.org/wiki/h-feed">h-feed</a> somewhere
other than your homepage, you can point Bridgy to it by including <code>&lt;link
rel="feed"&gt;</code> on the homepage. See the
<a href="http://indiewebcamp.com/original-post-discovery">original post
discovery</a> and <a href="http://indiewebcamp.com/posse-post-discovery">posse
post discovery</a> algorithms for all the gory details.
</p></li>

<li id="domain" class="question">Bridgy can't find my original posts! It just
  says <em>No webmention targets found</em>.</li>
<li class="answer">
<p>Does your Bridgy user page have a link to your web site? Specifically, the
exact domain where your original posts are? If not, add that URL to your social
network profile, then log into Bridgy with that social network again. Bridgy
needs this to find your original posts <a href="#link">if you don't link to
them</a>, and it also uses it to
<a href="https://github.com/snarfed/bridgy/issues/51">distinguish between you
officially syndicating your posts and other people just mentioning them</a>.
</p>

<p>
Google+ and Facebook let you add multiple web site links to your profile. (You
can do it on Facebook by separating links with spaces or newlines.) Twitter,
Instagram, and Flickr only allow one, so Bridgy
<a href="https://github.com/snarfed/bridgy/issues/483">also looks for links
in your profile's description field</a>.
</p></li>

<li id="appspot" class="question">What are all these brid-gy.appspot.com links
in the responses that Bridgy sends to my site?</li>
<li class="answer">
<p>Short answer: your
server's <a href="http://www.webmention.org/">webmention</a> code is probably
rendering the webmention source URL. It should instead use the source
page's <a href="http://microformats.org/wiki/h-entry#Properties">microformats2
u-url property</a>. This is a common oversight, since they're usually the same,
but Bridgy is a special snowflake. :P You might want to file a bug against your
server, or even fix it
yourself. <a href="https://github.com/idno/idno/issues/160">Here's an example
discussion.</a>
</p>
Longer answer: Webmentions</a> don't include the actual content of the response,
just a link to it. The recipient fetches that link and extracts the content and
other data using
<a href="http://microformats.org/wiki/microformats2">microformats2</a>. The
social networks don't (yet) support microformats2, so Bridgy translates their
data to microformats2 HTML and serves those translations as webmention targets
so that recipients can fetch and parse them.
<p>
</p></li>

<li id="ssl" class="question">OK, fine. But why brid-gy.appspot.com instead of
brid.gy?</li>
<li class="answer">
<p>It's an SSL thing. The <a href="https://brid.gy">brid.gy</a> domain fully
supports and uses SSL, but it uses
<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Server_Name_Indication">SNI</a>, a newer
SSL feature that some older clients and libraries have trouble with. Modern
browsers are generally fine, but when Bridgy sends a webmention, the
server that receives it also needs to understand SNI,
<a href="https://github.com/snarfed/bridgy/issues/20">and some</a>
<a href="https://github.com/aaronpk/webmention.io/issues/14">still don't</a>.
<a href="https://appspot.com/">appspot.com</a>'s SSL doesn't use SNI, so we use
it for webmention sources in order to be as compatible as possible.
</p></li>

<li id="source-urls" class="question">What's the format for Bridgy's webmention
  source URLs?</li>
<li class="answer">
<p>If you're missing a response (<a href="#missing">it can happen</a>), you can
fill it in by
<a href="http://indiewebcamp.com/webmention#How_to_Test_Webmentions">sending a
webmention manually</a>. Here's how to construct Bridgy's source URLs:
</p>

<pre>/post/<span class='keyword'>SITE</span>/<span class='keyword'>USER_ID</span>/<span class='value'>POST_ID</span>
/comment/<span class='keyword'>SITE</span>/<span class='keyword'>USER_ID</span>/<span class='value'>POST_ID</span>/<span class='value'>COMMENT_ID</span>
/like/<span class='keyword'>SITE</span>/<span class='keyword'>USER_ID</span>/<span class='value'>POST_ID</span>/<span class='value'>LIKED_BY_USER_ID</span>
/repost/<span class='keyword'>SITE</span>/<span class='keyword'>USER_ID</span>/<span class='value'>POST_ID</span>/<span class='value'>SHARE_POST_ID</span>
/rsvp/facebook/<span class='keyword'>USER_ID</span>/<span class='value'>EVENT_ID</span>/<span class='value'>RSVP_USER_ID</span>
</pre>

<p>Examples:</p>
<ul>
<li><a href="https://brid.gy/post/twitter/schnarfed/476408043819659264">
  /post/twitter/schnarfed/476408043819659264
</a></li>
<li><a href="https://brid.gy/comment/instagram/caseorganic/745317887583248368_5792358/745746409237831003">
  /comment/instagram/caseorganic/745317887583248368_5792358/745746409237831003
</a></li>
<li><a href="https://brid.gy/like/googleplus/103651231634018158746/z12ctz3xpyjlilkc422wif14hsagevxyj04/109885715467340555570">
  /like/googleplus/103651231634018158746/z12ctz3xpyjlilkc422wif14hsagevxyj04/109885715467340555570
</a></li>
<li><a href="https://brid.gy/repost/twitter/schnarfed/478564735265157120/478788580504899584">
  /repost/twitter/schnarfed/478564735265157120/478788580504899584
</a></li>
<li><a href="https://brid.gy/rsvp/facebook/212038/675481332531191/724885424">
  /rsvp/facebook/212038/675481332531191/724885424
</a></li>
</ul>
<br />

<p>Details:</p>
<ul>
<li><code class='keyword'>SITE</code> is either <code>facebook</code>,
  <code>flickr</code>,<code>googleplus</code>, <code>instagram</code>,
  or <code>twitter</code>.
</li>
<li><code>/post/...</code> URLs aren't currently used by Bridgy itself, but
  they're fun to play with if you want to convert silo posts to
  microformats2.
</li>
<li>You can add <code>?format=json</code> to the end of any URL to get the
  JSON-formatted version.
</li>
<li>For Twitter and Instagram, <code class='keyword'>USER_ID</code> is your
  username, but for Facebook, Flickr, and Google+, it's your numeric user id.
  <code class='value'>LIKED_BY_USER_ID</code> and
  <code class='value'>RSVP_USER_ID</code> are always numeric. You
  can get numeric user ids from the API consoles
  (<a href="https://developers.facebook.com/tools/explorer">Facebook</a>,
   <a href="https://developers.google.com/+/api/latest/people/get#try-it">Google+</a>,
   <a href="https://apigee.com/embed/console/twitter">Twitter</a>) or
  from <a href="https://granary-demo.appspot.com/">granary</a>.
</li>
<li>For Instagram, <code class='value'>POST_ID</code> is a numeric id,
  <em>not</em> the alphanumeric id in the photo's web URL. You can get a numeric
  id from <a href="https://granary-demo.appspot.com/">granary</a>.
</li>
<li>If your webmention target complains about <code>brid.gy</code>'s SSL, try
<code>brid-gy.appspot.com</code> instead. <a href="#ssl">More details.</a>
</li>
</ul>
</li>


<!-- Publish -->
<br />
<h3 id="publish">Publishing</h3>

<li id="publishing" class="question">What do you mean, <em>publishing</em>?</li>
<li class="answer">
<p>People often post something on their web site, then post a link to it on
Facebook or Twitter so that other people will see it. The
<a href="http://indiewebcamp.com/">IndieWeb</a> community calls this
<a href="http://indiewebcamp.com/POSSE">POSSE</a>. There are
<a href="http://indiewebcamp.com/why">lots of different reasons</a> to do this,
but one of the biggest is <em>owning your data</em>. Bridgy lets you do this
faster, more effectively, and even automatically!</p>
<p>You can try it right now. Once you're signed up to publish, plug the URL for
one of your posts into the text box on your Bridgy user page, then hit
the <em>Preview</em> button. You'll see a preview of what your post would look
like as a Facebook post or Twitter tweet. If you like it, click <em>Send</em>
and Bridgy will post it for you.</p>
<p>It's not just for posts or tweets, either! You can use Bridgy to publish
<a href="#reply">replies</a>,
<a href="#repost">retweets</a>,
<a href="#like">likes</a>,
<a href="#like">RSVPs</a>, and even tag people in
photos! <a href="#publish-types">Here's the full list.</a>
</li>


<li id="microformats" class="question">How does it decide which parts of my web
  page to include?</li>
<li class="answer">
<p>Magic! Most major blog engines and CMSes are supported out of the box, no
setup necessary. Bridgy looks for
<a href="http://microformats.org/">microformats</a> in your HTML, first
the
<a href="http://microformats.org/wiki/microformats2">microformats2</a>
<code>e-content</code> class and then the legacy <code>entry-content</code>
class. It also understands more advanced microformats2 classes like
<a href="http://microformats.org/wiki/rel-in-reply-to"><code>in-reply-to</code></a>,
<a href="http://indiewebcamp.com/like"><code>u-like-of</code></a>,
<a href="http://indiewebcamp.com/like"><code>u-repost-of</code></a>,
<a href="http://indiewebcamp.com/rsvp"><code>p-rsvp</code></a>, and
<a href="http://indiewebcamp.com/photo"><code>u-photo</code></a>, and
<a href="http://indiewebcamp.com/tag"><code>u-category</code></a> (for
<a href="http://indiewebcamp.com/person-tag">tagging</a>). Here's an example:

<pre>&lt;div class="<span class='keyword'>h-entry</span>"&gt;&lt;p class="<span class='keyword'>e-content</span>"&gt;
  <span class='value'>Two naked tags walk into a bar. The bartender exclaims, "Hey, you can't come in here without microformats, this is a classy joint!"</span>
&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/div&gt;
</pre>
</p>

<p>In general, Bridgy prefers to use <code>p-summary</code> if available, then
the full <code>e-content</code>, and finally <code>p-name</code>, in that order.
The one exception is original tweets (not <a href="#reply">@-replies</a>) on
Twitter: for those, it prefers <code>p-name</code> before <code>e-content</code>.
<a href="https://github.com/snarfed/bridgy/issues/228">Background</a>
<a href="https://github.com/snarfed/bridgy/issues/219">discussion</a>.
</p>

<p>Bridgy also tries to preserve some formatting and whitespace, notably
newlines and lists, when converting your post's HTML to plain text. Try
previewing a post to see how it will look!
</p>
</li>

<li id="publish-types" class="question">What can I publish, exactly?</li>
<li class="answer">
<p>Bridgy can publish:</p>
<ul>
<li>Twitter tweets, @-replies, retweets, and favorites. Tweets and @-replies
  may include
  <a href="https://dev.twitter.com/rest/reference/post/statuses/update#api-param-media_ids">up to four photos</a> or one video.</li>
<li>Facebook posts and RSVPs, <a href="#facebook-publish">but not comments or
    likes</a>. Posts may include a photo, video, and/or
  <a href="http://indiewebcamp.com/person-tag">people tags</a>.</li>
<li>Instagram likes, but
  <a href="http://instagram.com/developer/endpoints/media/#get_media_popular">not
    photos or videos</a>
  <a href="http://instagram.com/developer/endpoints/comments/#post_media_comments">or
  comments</a>.</li>
<li>Flickr photos, videos, comments, and favorites. Photos may include
  <a href="https://indiewebcamp.com/tags">tags</a> and/or
  <a href="https://indiewebcamp.com/person-tag">people tags</a>.</li>
<li>Nothing on Google+, sorry.
  <a href="https://developers.google.com/+/api/latest/">Their API is
    read only.</a></li>
</ul>
</li>
</p></li>

<li id="webmentions" class="question">Can I do this automatically, whenever
  I post something new on my web site?</li>
<li class="answer">
<p>Definitely! Just send
a <a href="http://indiewebify.me/#send-webmentions">webmention</a>. Your server
may be sending them already! Webmentions are pretty new,
but <a href="http://indiewebcamp.com/webmention#Publishing_Software">more and
more web servers</a> are adding support for them. If you're not sure whether
your server can send them, feel free
to <a href="http://indiewebcamp.com/IRC">ask on #indiewebcamp</a>, or you can
even write a script to
<a href="http://indiewebcamp.com/webmention#How_to_Test_Webmentions">send them
yourself</a>. It's just a single HTTP request!
</p>
<p>Bridgy's webmention endpoint
is <code>https://brid.gy/publish/webmention</code>, and the target URL
should be <code>brid.gy/publish/facebook</code>,
<code>brid.gy/publish/instagram</code>,
<code>brid.gy/publish/twitter</code>, or
<code>brid.gy/publish/flickr</code>. Your post HTML must also include that same
target URL to verify your intent to publish. If your server sends webmentions,
just include any of these invisible links in your post to publish automatically!

<pre>&lt;a href="<a href='https://brid.gy/publish/facebook'>https://brid.gy/publish/facebook</a>"&gt;&lt;/a&gt;
&lt;a href="<a href='https://brid.gy/publish/instagram'>https://brid.gy/publish/instagram</a>"&gt;&lt;/a&gt;
&lt;a href="<a href='https://brid.gy/publish/twitter'>https://brid.gy/publish/twitter</a>"&gt;&lt;/a&gt;
&lt;a href="<a href='https://brid.gy/publish/flickr'>https://brid.gy/publish/flickr</a>"&gt;&lt;/a&gt;
</pre>
</p>
</li>

<li id="reply" class="question">How do I reply to a tweet from my web site?</li>
<li class="answer">
<p>
Easy! Put the reply in a new post on your web site, and include a link to the
tweet you're replying to with class
<code><a href="http://microformats.org/wiki/rel-in-reply-to">
u-in-reply-to</a></code>, as if you were publishing a normal
<a href="http://indiewebcamp.com/comment">IndieWeb reply</a>. For example:

<pre>&lt;div class="<span class='keyword'>h-entry</span>"&gt;
  &lt;p class="<span class='keyword'>e-content</span>"&gt;<span class='value'>@schnarfed Highly entertaining. Please subscribe me to your newsletter.</span>&lt;/p&gt;
  &lt;a class="<span class='keyword'>u-in-reply-to</span>" href="<a href='https://twitter.com/schnarfed/status/448205453911015425'>https://twitter.com/schnarfed/status/448205453911015425</a>"&gt;&lt;/a&gt;
  &lt;a href="<a href='https://brid.gy/publish/twitter'>https://brid.gy/publish/twitter</a>"&gt;&lt;/a&gt;
&lt;/div&gt;
</pre>

The <code>u-in-reply-to</code> and <code>brid.gy/publish/twitter</code> links
don't need any visible text unless you want them to. Then publish your post via
the Bridgy UI or a webmention like normal!
</p>
<p>
On the other hand, if your post is in reply to another IndieWeb post
that is <em>also</em> syndicated, Bridgy will
use <a href="http://indiewebcamp.com/rel-syndication">rel-syndication</a>
links in the other post to find the appropriate silo copy to reply to.
</p>
</li>

<li id="like" class="question">How do I like, retweet, or RSVP from my web
site?</li>
<li class="answer">
<p>
Liking, retweeting, and RSVPing are almost exactly the
<a href="#reply">same as replying</a>. The only difference is that you use
<code><a href="http://indiewebcamp.com/like">u-like-of</a></code>
for a like (or favorite),
<code><a href="http://indiewebcamp.com/repost">u-repost-of</a></code> for a
retweet,
or <code><a href="http://indiewebcamp.com/rsvp">p-rsvp</a></code> for an
RSVP.

<pre>
&lt;a class="<span class='keyword'>u-like-of</span>" href="<a href='http://instagram.com/p/yoMSzRsqDZ/'>http://instagram.com/p/yoMSzRsqDZ/</a>"&gt;&lt;/a&gt;
</pre>

<pre>
&lt;a class="<span class='keyword'>u-repost-of</span>" href="<a href='https://twitter.com/schnarfed/status/448205453911015425'>https://twitter.com/schnarfed/status/448205453911015425</a>"&gt;&lt;/a&gt;
</pre>

<pre>
&lt;data class="<span class='keyword'>p-rsvp</span>" value="<span class='keyword'>yes</span>"&gt;<span class='value'>I'm in!</span>&lt;/data&gt;
&lt;a class="<span class='keyword'>u-in-reply-to</span>" href="<a href='https://www.facebook.com/events/1409507205977978/'>https://www.facebook.com/events/1409507205977978/</a>"&gt;&lt;/a&gt;
</pre>
</p>

<p>Here's an example screencast of RSVPing to a Facebook event:</p>

<p style="text-align: center">
<iframe src="//www.youtube.com/embed/otq0rcidmyI"
  width="420" height="315" class="shadow" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen>
</iframe>
</p>

</li>

<li id="picture" class="question">How do I post a picture?</li>
<li class="answer">
<p>
Just add the picture to your post in an <code>&lt;img class="u-photo"></code>
tag. For example:

<pre>
&lt;img class="<span class='keyword'>u-photo</span>" src="<span class='value'>/full_glass.jpg</span>" /&gt;
I love scotch. Scotchy scotchy scotch.
</pre>
</p>
</li>

<li id="facebook-publish" class="question">What happened to publishing Facebook
  comments and likes?</li>
<li class="answer">
<p>
Bridgy Publish supported Facebook likes and comments for almost a
year, <a href="https://snarfed.org/2014-03-25_bridgy-publish">from its
launch</a> on March 24
2014 <a href="https://github.com/snarfed/bridgy/commit/0e44fe28c1df5026b2b237d2c094a0a0ed9c8c00">until
February 14 2015</a>.
<a href="https://developers.facebook.com/docs/apps/changelog#v2_0_graph_api">Facebook's
v2.x API</a>
<a href="https://developers.facebook.com/docs/apps/upgrading#upgrading_v2_0_graph_api">makes
it much harder</a> to map backward from a Facebook post's URL to its API object
id, and even when you can, the API usually won't let you read the post or like
or comment on it. You need
the <a href="https://developers.facebook.com/docs/facebook-login/permissions/v2.2#reference-read_stream"><code>read_stream</code>
permission</a>, which Facebook only gives out in very rare circumstances.</p>

<p><a href="https://github.com/snarfed/bridgy/issues/350">Lots more gory details
here.</a> <a href="https://snarfed.org/2015-02-14_13259">RIP Facebook liking and
commenting</a>, we'll miss you!</p>

<li id="omit-link" class="question">Can I disable the link back to my post?</li>
<li class="answer">
<p>Sure! By default, Bridgy includes a link back to your post. If you're using
the form on your user page, you can uncheck the <em>Include link</em> checkbox
to disable this. If you're sending a webmention, you can disable it by adding
the query parameter <code>bridgy_omit_link=true</code> to your webmention HTTP
request, or by adding the <code>u-bridgy-omit-link</code> class to a link in
your post.
</li>

<li id="ignore-formatting" class="question">Can I disable the plain text
whitespace and formatting?</li>
<li class="answer">
<p>Sure! By default, Bridgy tries to preserve your post's HTML formatting and
whitespace when publishing it as plain text. You can disable this by adding the
query parameter <code>bridgy_ignore_formatting=true</code> to your webmention
HTTP request, or by adding the <code>u-bridgy-ignore-formatting</code> class to
a link in your post.
</li>

<li id="silo-content" class="question">I want more control over the text
  that gets posted.</li>
<li class="answer">
<p>Sure! You can give Bridgy the exact text that you want posted with
the <code>p-bridgy-[SILO]-content</code> class in your post. This will override
your post's actual content.
</p>
<p>Here's an example of publishing custom text for both Facebook and Twitter:
</p>
<pre>&lt;div class="<span class='keyword'>h-entry</span>"&gt;
  &lt;p class="e-content"&gt;This is a going to be a very long blog post. Pull up a chair, it's going to take a while. Ready? Here we go...&lt;/p&gt;
  &lt;p class="<span class='keyword'>p-bridgy-facebook-content</span>"&gt;<span class='value'>You won't believe this one weird old blogging trick!</span>&lt;/p&gt;
  &lt;p class="<span class='keyword'>p-bridgy-twitter-content</span>"&gt;<span class='value'>Long form is the new short form.</span>&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;/div&gt;
</pre>
<p>You can hide these extra elements with <code>display: none</code>, or add the classes to existing elements like your title or summary, or anything else you like.</p>
</li>

<li id="short-link" class="question">Can I include a short link instead of the full link?</li>
<li class="answer">
<p>Sure! Just enter the short link in the URL text box. Or if you're
<a href="#webmentions">using a webmention</a> instead of the web form, pass the
short link as the webmention's <code>source</code> parameter.
</li>

<li id="response" class="question">How does Bridgy respond to webmentions?</li>
<li class="answer">
<p>Bridgy handles webmentions synchronously, so it knows the result when it
responds. A <code>POST</code> to
<code>https://brid.gy/publish/webmention</code> will return
<code>201 Created</code> on success with a JSON response containing at least
a <code>url</code> field that points to the silo object that it operated on. The
same URL is included in the <code>Location</code> HTTP header. For
Twitter favorites and Facebook event RSVPs, this is the tweet, post, or event.
If a new object was created, e.g. a Facebook post or Twitter tweet, @-reply, or
retweet, there will also be an <code>id</code> field with the silo id of that
object.
</p>
<p>For example, this request for an original post:
</p>
<pre>POST <span class="keyword">source</span>=<span class="link">https://example.com/posts/123</span>
     &<span class="keyword">target</span>=<a href="https://brid.gy/publish/facebook">https://brid.gy/publish/facebook</a></pre>
<p>will receive this response:
</p>
<pre>HTTP/1.1 201 Created
Content-Type: application/json
Location: http://facebook.com/456_789

{
  "<span class='keyword'>url</span>": "<span class='value'>http://facebook.com/456_789</span>",
  "<span class='keyword'>type</span>": "<span class='value'>post</span>",
  "<span class='keyword'>id</span>": "<span class='value'>456_789</span>"
}</pre>
<p>Pro tip: Twitter responses that create new tweets actually return the entire
newly
created <a href="https://dev.twitter.com/docs/platform-objects/tweets">tweet
object</a>. The more you know!
</p>
</li>

<li id="error-response" class="question">How about error responses?</li>
<li class="answer">
<p><code>400 Bad Request</code> is the most common error response. Other status
codes may be returned when a Facebook or Twitter API call error is propagated
back to you. For example, Facebook often <code>500</code>s API requests.
</p>
<p>
Like successful responses, error response bodies are JSON. All error responses
will contain an <code>error</code> field with a human-readable error message.
Most will also contain a <code>data</code> field with the
parsed <a href="http://microformats.org/wiki/microformats2">microformats2</a>
data from your original post, which is often helpful for debugging.
</p>
<p>For example, a webmention for this source markup:
</p>
<pre>&lt;a class="<span class='keyword'>h-card</span>" href="<a href='https://snarfed.org/'>https://snarfed.org/</a>"&gt;Ryan Barrett&lt;/a&gt;
</pre>
<p>will receive <code>400 Bad Request</code> with this response:
</p>
<pre>{
  "<span class='keyword'>error</span>": "<span class='value'>Twitter doesn't support type(s) h-card.</span>",
  "<span class='keyword'>data</span>": {"<span class='keyword'>items</span>": [{
    "<span class='keyword'>type</span>": ["<span class='keyword'>h-card</span>"],
    "<span class='keyword'>properties</span>": {
      "<span class='keyword'>url</span>": ["<a href='https://snarfed.org/'>https://snarfed.org/</a>"],
      "<span class='keyword'>content</span>": [{"<span class='keyword'>value</span>": "<span class='value'>Ryan Barrett</span>"}],
    }
  }]}
}</pre>
</li>

<li id="silos" class="question">Why only Facebook and Twitter? Why not Google+ or
   Instagram?</li>
<li class="answer">
<p>Sadly, <a href="https://developers.google.com/+/api/">Google+'s API</a>
doesn't support posting or commenting, and
<a href="http://instagram.com/developer/endpoints/comments/#post_media_comments">Instagram's API</a>
allows liking, but requires
<a href="https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/viewform?formkey=dFNydmNsUUlEUGdySWFWbGpQczdmWnc6MQ">manual approval</a>
for commenting. Shameless plug: check out
<a href="http://ownyourgram.com/">#OwnYourGram</a> for an Instagram alternative!
</p>
</li>

<li id="401" class="question">I'm getting a <em>401: Unauthorized</em> error
   when I try to publish to Twitter.</li>
<li class="answer">
<p>Sorry for the trouble! Here are steps to fix this:
</p>
<ol>
  <li>Open your
    <a target="_blank" href="https://twitter.com/settings/applications">Twitter
    apps</a> page and click on the <em>Revoke access</em> button next to
    Bridgy.</li>
  <li>On your Bridgy user page (<a target="_blank" href="/users">find it here</a>
    if you don't have it bookmarked), click on the red <em>Disable</em> button
    next to <em>Ready to publish.</em> Approve the prompt.</li>
  <li>Now, reload your Bridgy user page and click on the Twitter button next
    to <em>Click to enable publishing</em>. Approve the prompt.</li>
</ol>
<p>You should be able to publish now. Sorry for the trouble!</p>
</li>


<!-- Blog webmentions -->
<br />
<h3 id="blogs">Webmentions for blogs</h3>

<li class="question">What is this?</li>
<li class="answer">
<p><a href="http://indiewebify.me/#send-webmentions">Webmentions</a> are a core
part of both the <a href="http://indiewebcamp.com/">IndieWeb</a> and Bridgy
itself. The <a href="http://www.webmention.org/">webmention protocol</a> is
growing fast, but it's still pretty new, so many large hosted blog providers
don't yet support it. Bridgy lets you add webmention support (incoming and
outgoing) to three of the largest providers:
<a href="https://www.blogger.com/">Blogger</a>,
<a href="http://www.tumblr.com/">Tumblr</a>, and
<a href="http://wordpress.com/">WordPress.com</a>.
Read on for more details, or
<a href="/">head to the front page to sign up!</a></p>
</li>

<li id="outgoing" class="question">What outgoing webmentions does it send from
my blog?</li>
<li class="answer">
<p>When you publish a new post on your blog, Bridgy attempts to send a
webmention to each link in your post.</p>
</li>

<li id="incoming" class="question">What does it do with incoming webmentions
that my blog receives?</li>
<li class="answer">
<p>When Bridgy receives a webmention for a post on your blog, it runs some
validation on the source page, in particular checking that it links to your blog
post. Then, Bridgy reformats the source page and posts it as a comment on your
post.</p>
</li>

<li id="endpoint" class="question">Why do I have to add that line of HTML to
my blog?</li>
<li class="answer">
<p>When other web servers want to send your blog a webmention, they use that
HTML line to determine where to send it. This is the
<a href="https://github.com/converspace/webmention/blob/master/README.md#sender-discovers-receiver-endpoint">webmention
endpoint discovery</a> process.</p>
</li>

<li id="disqus" class="question">I'm on Tumblr. Why do I have to install
<a href="http://disqus.com/">Disqus</a>?</li>
<li class="answer">
<p>Bridgy posts incoming webmentions as comments on Blogger and WordPress.com,
but Tumblr doesn't have traditional comments. You can use your own Tumblr blog
to <a href="http://www.tumblr.com/docs/en/blog_management#social">reply</a> to
or <a href="http://www.tumblr.com/tips#reblog">reblog</a> someone else's post,
but neither of those is quite right for a webmention, since the original is
already posted somewhere else.</p>
<p>Disqus lets Bridgy post webmentions on Tumblr blogs in the standard comment
format. We know Disqus isn't for everyone, though, and we're open to
alternatives. Feel free
to <a href="https://github.com/snarfed/bridgy/issues">file suggestions on
GitHub</a>!</p>
</li>

<li id="moderation" class="question">I received a webmention, but it's not
  showing up on my blog.</li>
<li class="answer">
<p>Check your comment moderation queue, especially if you're on WordPress.com.
Bridgy includes a couple links in the comments it creates for webmentions, which
can trigger some comment spam filters.</p>
</li>

<li id="user" class="question">All the comments for incoming webmentions
come from me. That's ugly.</li>
<li class="answer">
<p>Yeah, that's an unfortunate side effect of the way the blog APIs handle
authentication and authorization. It's the most reliable way to get
comments past rate limits, spam filters, etc. and have the best chance of
actually showing up.</p>
<p>One workaround is to create a new user with a different name, add it to your
blog as a contributor, and sign your blog up for Bridgy again under that
user. <a href="/wordpress/likeiwassayingblog.wordpress.com">Here's an
example.</a></p>
</li>

</ul>
</div>

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