Jonathan LaCour cleverdevil.io

My XTEINK X4 got me reading again. My new X4 Pro arrived last week. Great little device, and the addition of a front light and touch screen make it nearly perfect. Those pogo pins, tho…
Jonathan LaCour cleverdevil.io

Finished my re-read of Mistborn era one earlier this week. I had forgotten just how satisfying the ending is. It’s equal parts emotional, beautiful, and surprising. Everything fits together neatly and you’re left with a deep mythology of gods, forces in opposition, and harmony. 🤘🔥
Tantek Çelik tantek.com
Today’s #WASSUP tip: a search shortcut for saving pages in the Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine.

Yes this is a lot like yesterday’s tip, except for archiving a page, rather than looking it up.

For example if you try looking up a page in the Internet Archive and it’s not there.

Or if you find an “interesting” page, and want to blog it later, you may want to save a copy of it in the Internet Archive as you are seeing it today, because when you look later it may have changed (or gone away).

I used to do this by typing "https://web.archive.org/save/" into the browser address bar and then pasting the link I want to save in the archive.

Again this is not really a “search engine”, however Firefox’s search engine shortcuts simplifies this greatly (less typing).

Here’s how to create a save shortcut for the Internet Archive Wayback Machine:

1. open Firefox Preferences ("Firefox" menu, "Preferences" item)
2. select "🔍 Search" from the left column
3. click the [ + Add search engine ] button
4. enter "Internet Archive Save" into the Search engine name field (without quotes)
5. enter "https://web.archive.org/save/%s" into the URL field (without quotes)
6. enter "ias" into the Keyword field (without quotes)

When viewing a page that I want to save in the Internet Archive:

1. copy its link
2. activate the browser address bar (cmd-L does this in Firefox and Safari)
3. type "ias " (without the quotes)
4. paste the link I had copied earlier, and press return

Wait a few seconds (could take up to a few minutes) and the Internet Archive should save the page and show you the saved version.

If it fails for any reason (happens sometimes), likes takes a while and then displays something like:

"Sorry / Job failed"

You can click the "Return to Save Page Now" link on the page, and try pasting the link one more time into the text input box and pressing return.

If it says something like

"The target server blocks access to [URL]. (HTTP status=403)"

(literally happened to me today)

or some other HTTP status error code (5xx or 4xx), then you can try emailing the IT staff of the site you were trying to archive by emailing "webmaster@" the domain of that URL and perhaps CC: help@ that domain.

E.g. if the URL was https://example.com/some-path then you would email "webmaster@example.com, help@example.com".

With something like:

----

Dear [Domain Name] Webmaster,

Could you check your server configuration and explicitly allow the Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine to make historical archive copies of your pages?

This is important for the history of the open web, and greatly helps journalists, bloggers, and historians.

Please allow their User Agent: "archive.org_bot" to crawl and archive your site. More info on their "archive.org_bot" here: https://archive.org/details/archive.org_bot

Thank you for your consideration!

[sign your name]

----

Replace the two [ bracket phrases ] the domain name of the link you were trying to archive and your name respectively.

Good luck and happy internet archiving!

Previously: https://tantek.com/2026/249/t1/internet-archive-wayback-machine-search-shortcut

This is my sixth #WASSUP #WASSUP2026 post, and fourth useful web tip for September.

#InternetArchive #WaybackMachine #save #searchShortcut #Firefox #FirefoxSearch #archive #archives #tip #webTip #browserTip #webBrowserTip #archiveTip
#WASSUP #WASSUP2026 #InternetArchive #WaybackMachine #save #searchShortcut #Firefox #FirefoxSearch #archive #archives #tip #webTip #browserTip #webBrowserTip #archiveTip
gRegor Morrill gregorlove.com

Hey San Diego, come out to a Mutual Aid Comedy Show on September 19th! All proceeds benefit We All We Got SD.

Lineup: Shannon Hardy, Geoff Grooms, Max Kerwien, Pedro Martinez, Lauren Gural.

Info/tickets and original Instagram post.
#comedy #SanDiego #MutualAid
Tantek Çelik tantek.com
Today’s #WASSUP tip: a search shortcut for looking up pages in the Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine.

Ever click on a link for an article or photo and it’s not found (404), or redirects to a home page, or otherwise is not what you expect?

The Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine archives webpages (that allow it) and quite often you can lookup broken links in the archive.

I often do this by typing "https://web.archive.org/web/" into the browser address bar and then pasting the link I want to lookup, because I know some of the Internet Archive’s URL patterns.

Though it’s not really a “search engine”, I realized I could use the search engine shortcuts feature of Firefox to simplify this greatly.

Here’s how to create a search shortcut for the Internet Archive Wayback Machine:

1. open Firefox Preferences ("Firefox" menu, "Preferences" item)
2. select "🔍 Search" from the left column
3. click the [ + Add search engine ] button
4. enter "Internet Archive" into the Search engine name field (without quotes)
5. enter "https://web.archive.org/web/%s" into the URL field (without quotes)
6. enter "ia" into the Keyword field (without quotes)

Now if a link I follow fails to load (404) or is otherwise broken, I can:

1. copy that link (I may have to go back to the previous page and right-click choose "Copy Link")
2. activate the browser address bar (cmd-L does this in Firefox and Safari)
3. type "ia " (without the quotes)
4. paste the link I had copied earlier, and press return

Presto, an Internet Archive result for that link.

If you’re a frequent user of the Wayback Machine, hopefully this will save you some time.

And if not, try it anyway for the next time you click on a link and it seems broken.

This is my fifth #WASSUP #WASSUP2026 post, and third useful web tip for September.

#InternArchive #WaybackMachine #search #searchShortcut #Firefox #FirefoxSearch #searchEngine #archive #archives #PageNotFound #404 #404Error #Error404 #tip #webTip #browserTip #webBrowserTip #searchTip
#WASSUP #WASSUP2026 #InternArchive #WaybackMachine #search #searchShortcut #Firefox #FirefoxSearch #searchEngine #archive #archives #PageNotFound #404 #404Error #Error404 #tip #webTip #browserTip #webBrowserTip #searchTip
Jonathan LaCour cleverdevil.io

Kimi Antonelli is absolutely incredible. One of the best drives I’ve ever seen. #F1
Aaron Parecki aaronparecki.com
O'Reilly Auto Parts
Battery drop off
Aaron Parecki aaronparecki.com
Community Warehouse

at Community Warehouse

Read More
Aaron Parecki aaronparecki.com
Community Warehouse

at Community Warehouse

Read More
Jonathan LaCour cleverdevil.io

So I think Miami is going to be good at football this year.
Jonathan LaCour cleverdevil.io

Miami better beat Stanford by six scores to redeem week one…
Jonathan LaCour cleverdevil.io

Bring back Paul Johnson, you cowards.
Tantek Çelik tantek.com
The #Blaugust 2026 blogging challenge had a nice set of awards this year based on reaching a certain number of posts published:
* 1* — Newbie Blogger. *if it was your first time doing Blaugust
* 5+ — Bronze
* 15+ — Silver
* 25+ — Gold
* 31+ — Rainbow Diamond
From https://nerdgirlthoughts.game.blog/2026/07/15/blaugust-2026-is-coming/.

These levels, and the total for the duration (rather than one per day) made the challenge more inviting, accessible, and fun, removing (most of) the stress of a typical daily challenge for a month.

When I started the Web And Standards September Useful Posts (#WASSUP) blogging challenge, I said it was similar to Blaugust and noted “30 posts during the month of September”. While I adopted Blaugust’s total posts for the duration (rather than daily) aspect, I meant to include such levels too.

James (@jamesg.blog) reminded me of this in his first WASSUP post yesterday:
* https://jamesg.blog/2026/09/02/hide-on-desktop-mobile-css
and noted explicitly:

“I am not planning to write every day about web development per the challenge, but I will try my best to share a few HTML and CSS tips throughout the month!”

After a bit of brainstorming in the #indieweb cafe channel and some further thoughts, again, inspired by the Blaugust levels, here are the #WASSUP2026 levels to start with:

* 1 ⭐️ Starter. Congrats on starting the challenge!
* 5 ✨ Weekly Tipster. Post once per week, or at least 5 times for the duration.
* 8 🕸 Weekends Weaver. Post every weekend day, or at least that same number, 8 times.
  (Thanks to James for this suggestion!)
* 22 ❇️ Weekdays Wizard. Post every weekday, or at least that same number, 22 times.
* 30 💠 Superbly Useful. Post at least 30 times during the month.

I’ve updated the original post to include these awards, and they’re all self-assessed.

https://tantek.com/2026/244/t1/september-blogging-challenge-wassup

Let’s see your useful posts about the web or open web standards!
#Blaugust #indieweb #WASSUP2026
Tantek Çelik tantek.com
How to add MapQuest with a search shortcut to your Firefox:

1. open Firefox Preferences ("Firefox" menu, "Preferences" item)
2. select "🔍 Search" from the left column
3. click the [ + Add search engine ] button
4. enter "MapQuest" into the Search engine name field (without quotes)
5. enter "https://www.mapquest.com/search/%s" into the URL field (without quotes)
6. enter "m" into the Keyword field (without quotes)

If you already had an "m" search shortcut for another search engine, you may need to first edit that search engine (click the pencil ✏️ icon next to it) in the list of "Additional search engines", and remove/replace the existing "m" with something else.

This is my third #WASSUP #WASSUP2026 post, and second useful web tip for September.

#MapQuest #search #searchShortcut #Firefox #FirefoxSearch #searchEngine #map #maps #GoogleMaps #AppleMaps #LakeOntario #tip #webTip #browserTip #webBrowserTip #searchTip
#WASSUP #WASSUP2026 #MapQuest #search #searchShortcut #Firefox #FirefoxSearch #searchEngine #map #maps #GoogleMaps #AppleMaps #LakeOntario #tip #webTip #browserTip #webBrowserTip #searchTip
Tantek Çelik tantek.com
If you find a wiki page seemingly from a MediaWiki, but without a "View History" link, here’s a tip for how to find it.

Example: the old HTML Working Group (WG) wiki at W3C
* https://www.w3.org/html/wg/wiki/Main_Page

Note the warning at the top: “This wiki has been archived and is now read-only.”

Aside: many years ago, each group at W3C had their own MediaWiki install, in a different path and disconnected from both every other group’s wiki, and the top level general W3C wiki (http://www.w3.org/wiki). I pointed out this made no sense, since groups more often than not had overlaps in documentation, technology, practices and would of course benefit from wiki-syntax interlinking. This was never really fixed at an infrastructure level, it had to be fixed at a cultural level, convincing working groups one by one to use the general W3C wiki, and ignore any WG-specific wiki. The other apparent hazard of having a WG-specific wiki is they can be (and have been) shutdown or frozen (like the example given), breaking any chance of fixing typos, other minor errors, or creating redirects to where the work has been restarted subsequently.

Note also the lack of a "View History" link as a tab top right adjacent to the content area (or anywhere else on the page).

This is likely because the page has been archived as static HTML, preserving the markup and styling, but removing any editing or history browsing or diffing or any other form submission based features that would require a dynamic backend like MediaWiki.

Here is how to find such a page’s history:
1. Find the “last modified” date in the footer and note the year, month, day.
2. Check for the page in the Internet Archive, e.g. prepend its URL with "https://web.archive.org/web/"
3. If there’s (presumably) still no "View History" link, look at the year month day numbers in the URL — the first 8 digits after "/web/" E.g. "20260512" for this page as of today.
4. Replace those 8 digits with the year, month, day noted in step 1, with 4, 2, 2 digit numbers respectively. E.g. "20150623" for this page. Press return to load that.
5. You may have to "close toolbar" the (x) in the top right of the page content.
6. Note the "View History" link, click it.

Presto, view history on a former MediaWiki page that’s been archived to static HTML.

This is my second #WASSUP #WASSUP2026 post, and first useful web tip.

#wiki #wikiPage #MediaWiki #ViewHistory #W3C #HTMLWG #wikiArchived #readOnly #staticHTML #InternetArchive #WaybackMachine #LastModified
#WASSUP #WASSUP2026 #wiki #wikiPage #MediaWiki #ViewHistory #W3C #HTMLWG #wikiArchived #readOnly #staticHTML #InternetArchive #WaybackMachine #LastModified
gRegor Morrill gregorlove.com

New mf2 to iCalendar release

Read More
#indieweb #microformats
Tantek Çelik tantek.com
Welcome to September! Time for a new blogging challenge for the month. After some ideation, here’s my proposed September blogging challenge, on topics I find myself reading and posting about, with an emphasis on pragmatism:

The Web And Standards September Useful Posts blogging challenge

Or the #WASSUP challenge for short.

I really enjoyed the #Blaugust blogging challenge last month (31 posts ✅ — summary in another post), and not feeling a resonance with the two prior September challenges noted on the IndieWeb wiki, decided to come up with my own. Iterated on some ideas yesterday until arriving at WASSUP (yes, as a backronym, inspired somewhat by WHATWG which also has WHATNOT and WHATUP meetings).

Similar to Blaugust:
* 30 posts during the month of September (1 per day if you wish, or double/triple-up to get ahead or catch-up)

Topic:
* Anything *useful* (features, tips) about open web standards, the open web as a whole, web browsers, or web services like search engines.

Hashtags:
* #WASSUP #WASSUP2026

And that’s it.

If those are topics you already blog about, great, join in using the hashtags and share what you find useful about them!

Otherwise, take a look at how you frequently use the Web, and post what you have found useful, especially the most useful for you.

Blog clever tips about how you have made better use of the Web, web browsers, search engines etc.

If you’re a web developer or designer, share what you find most useful about web standards, your choice, either in their entirety or of individual features, like HTML elements, attributes, CSS properties, Selectors, DOM features, WebAPIs, standard media formats on the web, etc.

Let’s see what positive pragmatic things we can share with each other about the web and how it works in practice.

Glossary:

Blaugust:
* https://indieweb.org/Blaugust
blogging challenge:
* https://indieweb.org/blogging_challenge
September blogging challenges:
* https://indieweb.org/September#Challenges
standards
* https://indieweb.org/standards

#blog #blogging #bloggingChallenge #September #web #openWeb #webStandards #openWebStandards #webDev #webDevs #webDeveloper #webDevelopers #webDesign #webDesigns #webDesigner #webDesigners #useful #pragmatic

This is post 20 of #100PostsOfIndieWeb. #100Posts #indieweb

← https://tantek.com/2026/243/t1/many-paths-indieweb-custom-domain
→ 🔮
#WASSUP #Blaugust #WASSUP2026 #blog #blogging #bloggingChallenge #September #web #openWeb #webStandards #openWebStandards #webDev #webDevs #webDeveloper #webDevelopers #webDesign #webDesigns #webDesigner #webDesigners #useful #pragmatic #100PostsOfIndieWeb #100Posts #indieweb
Tantek Çelik tantek.com
There are many paths onto the #indieweb. Two of the most common:
1. an idea for a name and a website
2. a desire to create and express yourself, independently of social media

If you start with (1), have an idea for a domain name, find one, and buy it, then you need a place to direct it to.

The simplest next step is setting up a content hosting service, and configuring it with your new domain name.

If you start with (2), a desire to create and publish, then similarly, the simplest first step is to set up a content hosting service.

Either way, you should choose a service that supports custom domain names.

Had a great chat with Joe Crawford (@artlung.com) this morning about the many ways people find their way to the indieweb, and set up their own indieweb site.

We talked about the challenges of attaching a domain name to a service, and how that could be better documented and explained.

Subsequently Joe took the initiative to create a new "custom domain name" page on the IndieWeb wiki to help consider and choose a content hosting service that supports custom domains:

* https://indieweb.org/custom_domain_name

There are both free options and paid options depending on what kind of features, user experience, and support you want.

Most paid options cost less than a latte a month, certainly less than monthly mobile phone or video streaming fees.

Know other content hosting services that support custom domain names?

Add them to the wiki page!

And if you prefer to install and run your own content management software or create your one yourself, you can do that too:

* https://indieweb.org/CMS

If you do create one, watch out for spending more time coding than writing.

Or code away! It’s your site, code, write, mix it up as you wish.

Previously: https://tantek.com/2026/242/t1/indieweb-own-domain-content-personal-website
 
This is post 19 of #100PostsOfIndieWeb. #100Posts

#independent #socialMedia #domain #domainName #contentHosting #customDomain #customDomains #customDomainName #customDomainNames #CMS
#Blaugust #Blaugust2026

← https://tantek.com/2026/242/t1/indieweb-own-domain-content-personal-website
→ 🔮
#indieweb #100PostsOfIndieWeb #100Posts #independent #socialMedia #domain #domainName #contentHosting #customDomain #customDomains #customDomainName #customDomainNames #CMS #Blaugust #Blaugust2026
Jonathan LaCour cleverdevil.io

Aaron Donald and Myles Garrett on the same DL is going to be wild. This has to be the best shot at a Super Bowl for the Rams since 2021.
Tantek Çelik tantek.com
What does it take to be on or be part of the #indieweb?

As several have shared before me:
* own your domain and publish some content on it

That’s the foundation. If you have a personal website on a domain you own and control, you’re on the indieweb or part of the indieweb or however you would like to express a sense of belonging.

Of course there are lots of things you can do to be more indieweb, and that’s very much a choose your own adventure journey.

Maybe you’ll decide to post your content first on your personal site rather than on silos, and only post copies (syndicate) to social media walled gardens.
* https://indieweb.org/POSSE

Maybe you like taking an explicitly principled approach, step-by-step.
* https://indieweb.org/principles

Maybe you’ll decide to entirely quit using specific silos, for any reason, whether you created a replacement with your own site, or switched to a community owned and run solution.
* https://indieweb.org/silo-quits

Maybe you’re a developer and decide to implement various open web standards (formats and protocols) so your indieweb site can interact more with other indieweb sites.
* https://indieweb.org/building-blocks

Maybe you want to join a community of like-minded folks creatively expressing themselves on their personal sites, treating each other respectfully, encouraging each other, and collaborating on building better solutions than sites that require agreeing to long and heavily imbalanced terms of service.
* https://indieweb.org/join

All of these are optional.

Make a personal website on a domain you own, put some content there.

Welcome.

This is post 18 of #100PostsOfIndieWeb. #100Posts
#domain #domainName #ownYourDomain #ownYourIdentity #identity #personalWeb #personalWebsite #smallWeb #ownYourData #ownYourContent #POSSE #indiewebPrinciples #principles #siloQuit #siloQuits #openWeb #openWebStandards #webStandards #community #IndieWebCommunity
#Blaugust #Blaugust2026

← https://tantek.com/2026/240/t1/indieweb-your-own-words-actions
→ 🔮
#indieweb #100PostsOfIndieWeb #100Posts #domain #domainName #ownYourDomain #ownYourIdentity #identity #personalWeb #personalWebsite #smallWeb #ownYourData #ownYourContent #POSSE #indiewebPrinciples #principles #siloQuit #siloQuits #openWeb #openWebStandards #webStandards #community #IndieWebCommunity #Blaugust #Blaugust2026