Molly White on POSSE:

Short for Post (on) Own Site Syndicate Elsewhere, it’s not a protocol or even a piece of software, but rather a philosophy. Rather than publishing a post onto someone else’s servers on Twitter or Mastodon or Bluesky or Threads or whichever microblogging service will inevitably come along next, the posts are published locally to a service you control.^d At that point, the rest is simple (if not easy): plugging in whichever social media sites you desire, and syndicating the posts through them either by copying the post there directly, or publishing a snippet with a link back to the original source.

Love the idea, but I’ve been tearing my hair out trying to make it work.

Here is what I want:

1. I post here, on my blog.
2. If the post is short and has no title, it is posted on social networks as text/images only.
3. If the post is longer, it is posted on social networks with a link back here.

Here is what I’ve tried:

• Various cross-posting plug-ins for WordPress. Failed because they don’t meet criteria #2.
• Brid.gy. Failed for inscrutable technical reasons, plus it only syndicates to Mastodon and Bluesky. (Though it seems to reflect comments/likes from those networks back here, which is nice.)
• Micro.blog. I am fine paying $5/mo for this if it works. So far it succeeds on syndicating to socials, but I have to post on micro.blog, not here. I’m not sure if I can post here, syndicate to micro.blog, and have that post syndicate to socials. I tried a WordPress plugin that syncs micro.blog’s RSS feed back here, but it creates the headline “Post Title” for title-free posts, which is not ideal.

The #IndieWeb movement is a great idea in theory but it shouldn’t be nearly this hard for someone who is not a programmer but fairly tech savvy.

If anyone has ideas on how to make this work, please share them.