Webmentions

How this site sends and receives Webmentions.

This site supports Webmentions. If your site sends Webmentions and you link to a page here, your mention should be delivered to my Webmention endpoint.

Receiving

I use webmention.io as an inbox for this space:

  • Endpoint: https://webmention.io/bongotwisty.blog/webmention
  • The endpoint is advertised via a <link rel="webmention"> tag in the HTML <head> of each page.

I’m not currently rendering Webmentions publicly on posts. I check them via the webmention.io dashboard and may follow links or respond, but they’re not shown as a visible comments thread.

Sending

This is a static site built with Hugo and deployed via GitHub Pages. Outgoing Webmentions are sent automatically as part of the publish pipeline:

  • After Hugo builds the site, a Python script runs on each deploy.
  • It looks at Markdown content files that changed in the latest commits, maps them to their generated HTML pages, and scans those pages for external links.
  • For each external link, it:
    • Checks for a Webmention endpoint on the target (HTTP Link headers or <link rel="webmention"> in the HTML).
    • Sends a Webmention (source = my post URL, target = your URL) if an endpoint is found.
    • Records source:target pairs in a local JSON cache so the same Webmention is not re-sent on future builds.

To keep the noise down:

  • Only posts whose source files have actually changed are considered on each deploy.
  • There is a cap on how many new Webmentions are sent per run.
  • Content prior to 2017 is ignored for automated catch-up.

Expectations

If you run a Webmention-aware site or use a service like Micro.blog or webmention.io for your own domain, linking here should result in a Webmention being delivered to my endpoint. Likewise, when I link to your Webmention enabled posts from newer content, my site will attempt to notify you once via Webmention as part of the build process.

Why I’m using Webmentions

I see Webmentions as a lightweight way to have cross-site conversations without depending on a single social platform. By adding them to my Hugo + GitHub Pages workflow, I can:

  • Acknowledge other people’s writing when I link to them from newer posts, without manually sending notifications.
  • Give Webmention enabled sites a quiet, one-time signal that I’ve referenced their work, which they can choose to display, archive, or ignore as they see fit.
  • Keep my own site simple and static while still participating in a small social layer on the web.

At the moment I’m using Webmentions mainly for discovery and personal awareness. That may evolve over time into a public comment system, but for now the goal is to support and take part in the broader IndieWeb ecosystem in a low-noise, respectful way.