Scott's WordLand

Sorry, I blurted

Thu, 30 Apr 2026 13:47:22 GMT

I took a quick look at blurt, the new WordPress short-form blogging theme available on WordPress.com.

It's a theme, just like Baseline is a theme. Themes can alter the behavior of WordPress in almost any way imaginable. It's still just a theme, so if Blurt is not using too much WordPress.com magic, it should be able to used on a self-hosted site.

The artificial 500-character limit is clunky. The compose box simply is disabled if there are too many characters. If you edit the post in the WordPress dashboard, when saved extra characters are silently dropped.

With WordLand I can post 600 characters, and they don't get cut off. If I try to edit that, the save fails. It's an early version, Blurt doesn't know how to handle posts coming from outside its UI.

I'm not sure why everyone thinks a character limit is a defining feature of social media. That should be up to the writer, not the platform. It should be a threshold, not a wall. micro.blog seems to handle this well (at 300 characters the UI show a title field you may choose to use or not).

All in all, it's a cute idea, and I look forward to see how it develops. (Sorry for the fart joke title.) (Actually I'm not sorry. 😃)

FeedLand Docker Compose for Localhost

Mon, 23 Feb 2026 08:24:41 GMT

When I was creating the FeedLand Docker Compose file, I was thinking of it running on a VPS with a public hostname. There was another use case I was not thinking about: running on a local machine in a private network, without any hostname in DNS. This would be pretty common for someone just wanting to run FeedLand for themselves on their own laptop, without wanting to set up any SSL or proxy.

For this case I've added an option to run FeedLand as localhost. When the initial script is called as `./scripts/generate-env.sh --http-localhost`, the URL of FeedLand is set to http://localhost:1452, and the Caddy web proxy is not started.

I've also added a script to easily determine the confirmation URL for a new user when email has not been configured.

Thanks to John Johnston and Frank McPherson for suggesting and testing the localhost installation. This should make it even easier to explore FeedLand.

Next I intend to explore other possibilities for using the FeedLand Docker image, for example with the Synology Container Manager or with Coolify.

FeedLand Docker Compose

Wed, 11 Feb 2026 16:06:53 GMT

I have just released a Docker compose file for FeedLand for public testing. It contains a compose file some supporting scripts to quickly install an instance FeedLand together with MySQL as Docker containers. It will optionally start a Caddy proxy to enable HTTPS.

I've been testing this out on the command line of a Linux VPS. You need to have Docker installed, of course. It makes things easier if you can run Docker as a normal user instead of root.

Once you've downloaded the repo from GitHub, there are basically two steps.

Create or generate a .env file with you FeedLand hostname and the passwords for MySQL
Run `docker compose up -d` to create and run the containers

That's it. A config.json file is created that can be edited to add features and change settings.

Running notes will be posted to https://scott.this.how/feedlandDockerCompose.opml

This is completely inspired by Chuck Shotten's Dockerfile for FeedLand from his feedlandInstall repo. I've published a FeedLand Docker image at Docker Hub (generated by a GitHub action whenever FeedLand itself is updated).

Please feel free to try this out and let me know in the issues if the instructions are unclear or if it doesn't work as expected. 😃

Baseline theme updates – Fall 2025

Sat, 22 Nov 2025 11:42:42 GMT

It's been a while since we checked in here, so here's what's going on with the Baseline theme.

v0.2.3 adds support for WordLand linkblogs. For posts in the 'linkblog' category, the link URL will be rendered as a link at the end of the post. A date headline appears above the posts for that day. The customizer includes an option to use the linkblog layout for the home page, for sites that consist entirely of linkblog posts. See https://links.daveverse.org for an example.
v0.2.4 adds support for the feedland-blogroll plugin. If the plugin is installed, the home page will be rendered in two columns with the blogroll in the right column. See https://daveverse.org for an example.
The RSS Cloud plugin for Wordpress hasn't been updated in a while and wasn't working as expected. I wrote a simple RSSCloud External Ping plugin to add the cloud element to the RSS feed and ping rpc.rsscloud.io on new and updated posts. If it keeps working well I'll submit it to the wordpress.org plugin directory.

Upcoming changes will include:

Now we create an artificial title for titleless posts. That is suboptimal when there are a lot of titleless posts. We need to offer an option to suppress the artificial titles, and perhaps show date headlines (like for linkblogs) instead.
The now theme has so many options it is becoming unwieldy to develop. We need to break it down so the options (linkblogs, blogrolls, etc.) are plugins or separate themes in order to streamline the basic Baseline theme.

Linkblog homepage layout

Wed, 30 Jul 2025 11:13:29 GMT

We have a proposed layout for a linkblog homepage at links.daveverse.org. It's a work in progress, and it's not yet available at the GitHub repo. The layout is very inspired by the links tab at Scripting News.

Right now the linkblog homepage is an option in the Baseline theme. When turned on, it activates a linkblog template for the homepage. Is this the right way to do it? Should a linkblog layout be a separate theme or a child theme of Baseline? I don't know yet. 😃

For the layout I* am making a lot of assumptions about linkblogs.

The site is only a linkblog. We don't show any other kinds of posts.
All posts are in the 'linkblog' category. Posts not in the 'linkblog' category are ignored.
Posts will usually (or almost always) have a 'link' attribute, which WordLand puts in a custom field in the post. This will be put as a link at the end of the post.
Posts do not have titles. If a title is included, it is ignored.
Posts are usually (or almost always) a single paragraph. If there is more than one paragraph, they will all be printed, but the layout is optimized for one-paragraph posts.
There are no links to individual posts.
Archive pages of posts older than a few weeks or months is a problem to be solved later.

*I say "I" here as these assumptions are completely arbitrary and were not made in consultation with anyone else. They can certainly be discussed in the GitHub repo.

Minor Theme Update

Mon, 07 Jul 2025 15:43:29 GMT

I've published a minor update v0.1.5 to the Baseline theme. It now shows a minimum number of posts on the home page, even if you haven't written any posts in the past two months.

Now that linkblogs have been added as a feature to WordLand, we're thinking about how best to display them with the Baseline theme. I've put up a prototype of a linkblog in WordPress to experiment with the layout. (The prototype gets it's data by polling the RSS feed once an hour rather than from WordLand, but the basic idea is the same.)

How to install Baseline

Tue, 13 May 2025 10:08:00 GMT

For WordPress.com sites

You must have a business plan at WordPress.com in order to install Baseline.

Download this file.
In the dashboard of your site go to Appearance > Themes.
If there is a button that says "Install new theme" click it. (The button is only there for business users.)
Choose the zip file you just downloaded, and Install Now.
The page "Installing theme from uploaded file" should appear. Clicking "Activate" will activate the theme.

For self-hosted sites

Download this file.
In the dashboard of your site go to Appearance > Themes.
Click the "Add Theme" button, then the "Upload Theme" button.
Choose the zip file you just downloaded, and Install Now.
The page "Installing theme from uploaded file" should appear. Clicking "Activate" will activate the theme.

The source code for the theme is available at GitHub.

Testing New Home Page

Thu, 05 Jun 2025 16:55:24 GMT

I'm trying out a new logic for the home page. Instead of using infinite scroll to eventually show all posts, we're showing only the posts for the current and previous month, just like Scripting News. We don't link to anything older, since old news is no longer news, and good older posts will have links from elsewhere.

There will be an option to show the traditional WordPress pagination links to older posts for those who prefer that behavior.

WordPress.com AI website builder

Fri, 30 May 2025 15:31:55 GMT

I got a mail from WordPress today announcing their AI website building. Having just built a (very basic) theme for WordPress, I decided to take it for a spin.

The first blurb on the entry page is "This is way better than Wix." So we see who their target audience is.

I told the prompt that I wanted a blog to feature my own writing, ranging from tweet-like short posts to a few paragraphs, on daily life and current events from an American living in Europe. It crashed once, but it sent me a mail with a link to resume working on the site.

After it was done with my prompts, it put me in the WordPress Site Editor and asked me to choose fonts, colors, and a basic layout. It won't let me out of the Site Editor until I upgrade to a paid site.

The text is soulless AI, really hung up on Europe. But it looks like a working theme that I could start out with if I were looking to make a site like this. I would give it the Midwestern compliment "it's not too bad".

Baseline v0.1.2

Tue, 20 May 2025 09:20:05 GMT

We've just packaged v0.1.2 of the Baseline theme, which adds support for featured images (here's an example). The installation instructions are here.

Our next goal is to get the theme accepted into the WordPress.org theme directory. That will make it a lot easier to install on self-hosted sites, and and is a prerequisite to getting the theme approved for WordPress.com.

While not strictly necessary for acceptance, in that process we'll be converting Baseline to a block theme. We want to be certain Baseline is compatible with future versions of WordPress, and a block theme will help ensure that.

Featured Image

Tue, 20 May 2025 05:09:46 GMT

This is a post with a featured image. We've just added support for featured images, and we're putting it at the top of the post constrained to the width of the post body.

A test post

Thu, 15 May 2025 16:04:06 GMT

A test post never comes alone. They generally come in twos or threes or even as a crowd!

Smaller post titles on the home page

Tue, 06 May 2025 11:26:42 GMT

We're trying out smaller post titles on the home page. These are now 25px, as opposed to 32px on the single post page.

Block quotes are supported by WordLand, but didn't yet have a style.

This is now a block quote with a style.

And here is some text after the block quote.

Mon, 05 May 2025 06:13:52 GMT

My answers to the questions from May 4, 2025:

As I understand it, with a Business plan on wordpress.com you can install any third-party theme.
Looking at the WordLand timeline, every post has a headline of author name and date, whether there is a title or not. That looks more balanced that simply having no headline for titleless posts.
I think that whether WordLand can add CSS to a site or a post depends on the WordPress.com REST API. At first glance I don't see anything about styles. On a self-hosted site it would be possible to extend the API to accept CSS (ChatGPT), but would WordLand to access that over wordpress.com?
OK
OK, we can try that
OK

A test list for viewing margins

Tue, 22 Apr 2025 14:23:55 GMT

This is a paragraph of text that comes above the list. These five random items were generated by AI.

Mango
Telescope
Jazz music
Notebook
Bicycle pump

And this is a paragraph to finish this list.

It looks like WordPress is putting 22 px top and bottom margin on the paragraphs and the ordered list, and 18 px top and bottom between the list items (actually the margin is on the p element within the li).

Here are the same items as an unordered list.

Mango
Telescope
Jazz music
Notebook
Bicycle pump

And finally some text as a paragraph that appears below the list.

Applying the single column layout

Sat, 26 Apr 2025 06:12:52 GMT

I've applied the single column layout proposed by Christy Nyiri. I personally think it looks fantastic.

Here are some WordLand styles.

Heading 1

Heading 2

Heading 3

This is a block quote. (This doesn't seem to be styled yet.)

Bold, italics, underlined (hmm, it's not underlined).

An ordered shopping list:

Bread
Milk
Eggs

Notes as an unordered list:

The next/previous links have returned to the WordPress default instead of large arrows only. Update: That was my bug, now fixed.
As Christy noted, the child elements of the Post Template block are a little weird at inheriting global padding, as evidenced on mobile.
Are H1 and H2 way too big? Update I've bumped down the font-sizes of H1 to H3 to large, medium, and normal. H1 now matches the size of the post title, and H3 matches the size of normal paragraph text.

Here's a paragraph that appears under the unordered list.

Test with large image

Wed, 30 Apr 2025 06:14:27 GMT

Here is a test post with an image 1600 pixels wide.

Change #5, next/prev links

Tue, 22 Apr 2025 09:22:16 GMT

For Change #5, I once again used an add_filter function to replace the HTML generated by WordPress, this time for the next/prev links. The links show only an arrow at 1.5em (24 px), no underline, with the post title in the title attribute of the anchor tag so it shows up as a tool tip.

Change #10, category list for single post

Tue, 22 Apr 2025 03:08:23 GMT

For Change #10, since we can include PHP code in the theme, we don't need to use JavaScript to filter out the Uncategorized category. We can use an add_filter function on the get_the_terms hook in functions.php to remove Uncategorized before the wp:post-terms block displays the categories.

The block also has a parameter for the prefix to the displayed list, so we changed it from "Posted in " to "Categories: ".

Change #11, icon for RSS feed

Mon, 21 Apr 2025 08:48:30 GMT

I thought Change #11 would be simple. The icons are in a social-links block, and an RSS feed is among the supported services.

However, adding

to the sidebar failed. I had to dig into the WordPress code itself to find the service is named "feed", not "rss". The correct syntax for the RSS feed icon is

.

🙄

Hooking up the correct link to the icon is a task for later.

Update: We put an add_filter function in functions.php to put the actual feed link on the icon (Commit 38b1a45).

Change #4, font for post body

Sun, 20 Apr 2025 11:52:52 GMT

For Change #4 some adjustments to the post body text were requested.

Font size should be 18px
Font weight should be 400
Font color black on white background
Values should be able to be changed in browser dev tools

In block style WordPress themes most of the CSS is in the theme.json file.

The font size in a post is set in core WordPress to the CSS variable --wp--preset--font-size--normal. "normal" is set in WordPress itself to 16px, so I set "normal" in theme.json to 18px.
I also increased the "small" font size from 16px to 18px.
Under "typography" I changed the font weight from 300 to 400.
Also under "typography" the background was already set to white, so I left it.
Yesterday I posted on how to view and change CSS variables in dev tools.
On my own, I also increased the size of "x-small" text from 14px to 16px, since the text in the sidebar and the footer seemed too small compared to the 18px post body text.

Once these changes are tested, they will become version 0.0.2 of the theme.

Change #2, footer

Fri, 18 Apr 2025 15:36:18 GMT

I implemented Dave's Change #2 first, as it was the easiest to do.

I first set up a child theme to Retrospect, as described in the WordPress support docs. Files and settings in the child theme override those in the parent theme, and all of my changes will be in one place. The child theme is on GitHub at https://github.com/scotthansonde/wordlandBaseline
I copied over the parts/footer.html file from the parent theme folder to the child theme folder.
I edited the text as requested. The footer now reads "Written in WordLand, running on the WordPress platform."

Update

Corrected the text and changed the text to black (using theme-5 instead of theme-3 in footer.html)

New URL

Wed, 26 Mar 2025 15:21:21 GMT

If I intend to use WordLand permanently, it would be silly to have a site named wordland-test.shanson.de. So I'm changing the name to wordland.shanson.de. Let's see if that breaks anything. 😃

Changed the settings for the docker container running WordPress to accept connections from a second domain
In the WordPress General settings, change the WordPress URL and Site URL
At wordpress.com, the new URL already shows up under Sites
In WordLand, log out of wordpress.com and log back it. The new URL shows up from my site.
Try a new post to the new URL. That's what this is.
Check the WordPress RSS feed. Only the new domain is contained in the feed. The feed is visible at both the old and the new feed URLs.
The WordLand RSS feed uses the new URL for the new post and keeps the old URL for older posts. That's OK, since the old URLs still work, and will eventually be redirected to the new URL

So I didn't really break much of anything.

An uploaded photo of a beach in Lanzarote

Thu, 20 Mar 2025 14:38:02 GMT

Source

Beautiful Things

Mon, 10 Mar 2025 10:45:23 GMT

This time last year, my wife was preparing for emergency heart surgery and we had no idea why. Her pulse was racing, she was short of breath, and the cardiologist said she had the heart of an unhealthy 80-year-old (she was 60 and healthy). The song "Beautiful Things", released 6 weeks before, was a reminder of how fleeting the good things in life, and even life itself, can be.

Please stay
I want you, I need you, oh God
Don't take
These beautiful things that I've got

A few days later we had the answer, and the solution. She had been born with a bicuspid aortic valve, with two flaps instead of three. Her aorta had expanded over the years to compensate, but was starting to become clogged. The valve was replaced, and today she is as good as new.

That was a year ago Friday, and this week we will be travelling to Lanzarote (Canary Islands, Spain) to celebrate her new first birthday.