Okay, I’ve got a few of the basic plugins up and working. Will have to see if Twitter Tools remains operating stably this time. Currently automatically cross-posting to LJ and Facebook as well as Twitter.
Next I will have to make a decision on what to do about other blogs. My Dreamwidth blog (presuming I can X-post to it using a 2nd instance of the LJ plugin, without conflicts) is my dedicated “creative” blog. It already receives cross-posts from my business site, because that is related to my creativity. It does seem a little redundant though.
What I should probably do is move ALL my work to this main blog and cross-post out. After all, if someone wants only to watch one part of it they can use a category-filtered RSS feed. There’s also only been so many posts in that particular blog, so migrating it over wouldn’t be much of a problem.
This will mean the days of assumed anonymity are well and truely over.
Part of the reason for my doing this was an increasing lack of faith in the data security of Livejournal due to several of their recent underhanded actions. I have nearly a decade of personal and private information on that blog which I’m currently making an offline archive of, which will be followed by the deletion of all records there.
Ultimately the idea of the “friends only” post is insecure. If I want something to remain private, it shouldn’t be going on a website with large assumptions of who’s actually sitting on the other computer. A truly private network for authenticated trusted offline messaging would be nice, but to the best of my knowledge doesn’t currently exist.
Quite simply, my days of anonymity on the net have been long gone. So I’ll have to suffice with talking to friends one by one if there’s something I need a delicate ear about, and just go back to keeping an offline diary for those thoughts I need to get down out of my head. The rest of my actions are assumed to be in public view. No room for shame or fear.
Which other sites will I attempt to get automatic cross-posting set up with? As many as possible. It will be interesting to see how many WordPress can handle, as well as spreading my social network as wide as possible.
Admittedly, I’m surprised that there isn’t a singular cross-post management plugin already available. And as an act of devotion to the internet, I intend to pursue making one.
I’d say the same about the idea of a “friends page” plugin that could aggregate all your watch lists into one via OpenID, giving a decentralised blogging option. But beyond casual curiosity of passing viewers, there doesn’t seem to be much point in maintaining such a thing on the website itself. Aggregate watch-lists seem better suited to dedicated programs or combinational browser scripts. It would seem idealy suited to something like Greasemonkey or a set FireFox plugin.
Where now?
Well back to the premise; I have a little soul-searching to do before committing to some large and hard-to-undo changes regarding my existing online history.
I also need to create some static pages, repair the cosmetics and get a gallery script set up. I’m doing a lot more photography these days, and it seems a terrible waste to leave them all sitting on my hard-drive; but again I shouldn’t have to assume trust of an outside agency, like any of the many online photo-sharing sites.
I think perhaps I will make some personalisations, then come back to the more tender issues. Let my subconscious work on it for a while.
