Microblogging for dynamic content

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I've chosen to use MediaWiki as my content management system (CMS) for a variety of reasons, which mainly come down to user experience. Publishing news and updates is as easy as editing a WikiPedia page, and yet I wanted a way to include dynamic, up-to-the-moment information, from my mobile device if possible, to keep things fresh and interesting or draw attention to updates I've made on subpages.

It is certainly possible to include dynamic content from public sources, such as Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, or the like--but I wanted as much control as possible over the content and I didn't want site-specific updates on those platforms. Enter the private microblog--like a regular blog, only with small updates, and hosted on my own web server.

If you look to the right, you will see a box headed "Notices tagged with testing123". This box is generated by a MediaWiki extension called FeedImport, although non-MediaWiki sites can surely use any RSS-capable plugin or script to gather the same information. The content of the box comes from a program called StatusNet, which you can safely think of as a personal Twitter installation. (For details on setting these things up, see this article.)

With StatusNet installed and my site pulling in updates, I am now able to quickly add information to my site from any computer and from my mobile device, as easily as if I were posting a tweet to Twitter. To really get the most out of the setup, though, requires the use of hashtags.

Note that each update in the box on this page includes "#testing123," which on Twitter is called a hashtag (the pound sign preceding the word is the "hash" part). I have set this box up so that any post I make to StatusNet with that tag in it will show up on this particular page. On the front page, all the posts with "#doingnow" appear in that box, and on my page about beards, it's "#beard". This way, I can direct my updates exactly to the place they ought to go, from a single interface on my mobile device, just by including the correct hashtag in my post.

In my case, StatusNet is installed on my own web server, and I am the only one with an account on it. If I were managing a company site I could easily create profiles for each person so that they could contribute similarly. The box on a given page can consist of only updates by one person with a given hashtag, or multiple people with that hashtag, or all by one person regardless of hashtags, etc. It is a very simple and intuitive way to get dynamic content onto a website, all while having the control and security of a private system.

If you couldn't tell, I love this setup. If you need any help putting something like this together, feel free to ask questions here, or using any of the other resources under "Contact" in the upper left of this page.