Tinkering a tiny bit with hacking some extra style into this blog, thanks to more JavaScript and CSS. It's a bit dirty and might fail miserably, but it seemed like a good idea at the time.

Free hosting, community bootstrap, and changing diapers

• I just read Amy and Donovan musing a bit about OPML Community Server hosting and who might step up to help make sure opml.org isn't the only place doing it. Frankly, I'm surprised Dave's providing free community hosting of any sort again - it's a thankless task. But, having taken advantage of its availability again with the OPML Editor, I can see how necessary it is to get a community bootstrapped.

• If anyone steps up to provide free community spaces as alternatives to opml.org, they will need to be somewhat heroic and expect to be peed upon, perhaps not unlike what happens occasionally when one changes a baby's diaper. That said, I have two thoughts / questions, since I'm in catch-up mode a bit here:

  • First, just how does one get an OPML Community Server hosted? Most hosting with which I've got experience is Linux - I've never personally rented a Windows server. Since there's no Linux version of Frontier or the OPML Editor, I assume that's what you'd need. Seems like a Mac OS X server could do well, also. I wouldn't mind one of those if I didn't already have a nice hosting situation going. Along those lines, I think some sort of laundry list of requirements for community server hosting would be a good thing to collect so that potential heroes know what to expect. It's probably simpler than I think.

  • Second, I'm under the impression that much of what forms the connection between an OPML Editor and a Community Server instance is built from XML-RPC. Oh yeah, there's already been some effort toward enabling WordPress to serve this purpose. And, here's some more effort in progress. It seems like it wouldn't take too much work to fully support the entire interface exposed by a Community Server to the OPML Editor, and WordPress in PHP seems like a great place to do it. Maybe go from there and build a PHP-based solution independent from WordPress entirely. This solution would work great on my Linux server and would be a great "feed a man to fish" option for people who want to self-wean from free hosting.

• I think it would be great if opml.org can continue as the "lobby" for new users of OPML Editor tech, with low-resistance paths for users to wander off into their own respective homesteads once they start getting comfortable. It would also be nice to have options to keep homesteads federated together - maybe not via webrings, but maybe via baby change servers spawned from changes.opml.org.

• Yeah, there are already things like blog ping services, Technorati, Feedster, and the like. But for tribes closer-knit than the blogosphere at large, smaller circumference circles may be desirable.

I just finally watched Shaun of the Dead. Man, that was brilliant. Now I have to try to chase down some episodes of Spaced.

In some brief tinkerings tonight, I haven't gotten any joy on the Jabber side of tcp.im. Started digging into the AIM side of things, and have rediscovered that it's a port of an older version of Py-TOC by Eric Sooros from 2002 or so. Seems like that was during the peak magic time for Radio UserLand, and attention dropped off from there. I wonder if the code in-place can be brought up to date, or if a complete re-transliteration of a modern version of Py-TOC would be the least painful? Boy, reviving AIM and Jabber services in the OPML Editor would sure be swell.