Driving Traffic to TiddlyWIki.com | aka new guy has grandious plans for tiddlywiki, formats obnoxiously

[Alec Perkey]

// Intro

 

Hey TW community!
I'm new here, a javascript developer from Ann Arbor, Michigan with a special interest in user psychology.

I've noticed TW has the potential to help me accelerate my life's purpose/passions--namely facilitating those in my social sphere to realize their capacity to participate and empathize in the emerging global culture via social networking.

// Intended plugin developments

- user management
- pulling data into user profiles from existing popular social networks
- user reward system, such as badges/points-- user feature permissions modules to progressively enable more complex features for users so as not to overwhelm them, and also encourage -participation via scarcity

My dev intentions are purposefully grand (at least for me) -- which leads me to my next point, I want to encourage more developers to spend time on the TW github.  

// Driving more traffic to TiddlyWiki, facilitating a larger &  stronger community

The way I found TiddlyWiki took almost 3 full days of research, reading through wikipedia articles and whatnot. At first I dismissed it, because I didn't realize how much more than 'A personal non-linear web notebook' TW is. Its beautiful, modular JavaScript!

 

TW has the potential to make us all RICH! ;p

 

But seriously, I come from a internet marketing background as well, so I figured I could do the TW community a small favor and spent an hour compiling the most useful info in a report:
Compiled SEM/backlink report for TiddlyWiki.com
http://bit.ly/twseoreport 
or directly https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1OkY1Gxq23MFlx63d1EHcBRJpGhVzQRP38w6QdmIXnKM/edit?usp=sharing  

http://i.imgur.com/KmtsvrN.png 

 

One easy thing we should all do (unless you don't care about TiddlyWiki), is link to TiddlyWiki.com with our own sites using the keywords which will drive more traffic and build a bigger community, see below:

personal wiki
wikitext
node js wiki
local wiki
notebook wiki
personal wiki software
web notebook

[Felix Küppers]

Hi Alec,

great to hear that you plan to further enhance TW (by developing plugins)!
Also very interesting search engine data you assembled there, I am sure TW will achieve better position-scores in the near future as it increasingly keeps attracting more people.

-Felix

[Mat]

Alec, great you're introducing yourself and even greater you're contributing already at kick off! I think you'll find this is a wonderful and friendly little community :-)

So; javascript developer AND background in internet marketing PLUS wanting to contribute - WOW what a combo! Extremely valuable for TW! As you discovered, spreading the word is definitely a weakness for us. I figure: "More people = more dev and contributions = better TW" so I find your research very interesting.

I actually did a related thing to your analysis not long ago. Far from as ambitious as your research tho (...and that IS ambitious! Wonderful!)

And your intended dev areas sound super! Do you aim for these because you've identified them as bottlenecks for the development of TW? I don't know how much you've heard on the talk about making TW federated, but based on what you write it seems like you share common interests with this still vague project. I'm referring to your mention of social networks and also user reward systems. Currently a TW is pretty much isolated but it's obvious (at least to me) that a more collaborative and social configuration will change things dramatcially. (For instance when TiddlySpace came, it stirred up things quite a bit, in a positive way).

Regarding the keywords; How is a regular user to put in those keywords? As metatags in html-head? But do search engines still use these? I was told they don't. Maybe there ought to be some kind of keyword field in Controlpanel where peopel could kind of add their own thnigs that their TW is about - and by default those words that you suggest appear there. Similar appearing to the DefaultTiddlers list, i.e a direct editor. Thoughts on this?


<:-)

[David Gifford]

Yay, a fellow Michigander! (I am a long time TW user from the Grand Rapids area, but living in Mexico City).

Blessings to you as you use TW and contribute to the community!

Dave

[Alec Perkey]

Thanks all for the warm welcome.

 

Regarding the keywords; How is a regular user to put in those keywords? As metatags in html-head? ...

No meta tags necessary, just something like writing a short blog post about TW (or whatever) with links containing the keyword wanting to rank for, pointing at tiddlywiki.com. You could even just paste the links I provided into the content wherever seems appropriate. These are called backlinks and are the bread and butter of ranking. As an example, TW is ranking #5 on google usa for 'personal wiki', despite only having 3 indexed backlinks (noted in row 197 or the anchor tag tab in the spreadsheet i shared). Of course, this is to rank the main site, not your own tiddlywiki--in order to grow the community.

And your intended dev areas sound super! Do you aim for these because you've identified them as bottlenecks for the development of TW? I don't know how much you've heard[...] 

I haven't immersed myself yet in the specifics of what plugins have been developed, planned, or discussed. If there is a centralized place for this, I haven't found it. Today I plan to dig more into the github and explore more  tiddlyspaces. I haven't heard anything about this federation, but it sounds cool to hear there is discussion about this somewhere!.

[Mat]

No meta tags necessary, just something like writing a short blog post about TW (or whatever) with links containing the keyword

I assume you mean a blog post using some TW, right? - but I recall hearing something about google having a hard time indexing or was it even reading TW's due to their fragmented nature... or maybe that was only concerning tiddlyspace, which has a radically different architecture.

I haven't immersed myself yet in the specifics of what plugins have been developed, planned, or discussed. If there is a centralized place for this, I haven't found it. Today I plan to dig more into the github

Other than github there's the tiddlywikidev google group.
 

and explore more  tiddlyspaces. I haven't heard anything about this federation, but it sounds cool to hear there is discussion about this somewhere!.

Just so there's no misunderstanding; "explore tiddlyspaces" would mean to go to "tiddlyspace.com" specifially, whereas e.g "explore tiddlywikis" is the general term (...even if most of them happen to be hosted on tiddlyspot.com, also a server but that hosts ordinary tiddlywikis).

<:-)

[Alec Perkey]

 

I assume you mean a blog post using some TW, right? - but I recall hearing something about google having a hard time indexing or was it even reading TW's due to their fragmented nature... or maybe that was only concerning tiddlyspace, which has a radically different architecture.

To be clear, I just meant anyone who thinks TW should be more popular, and who administers any site at all (could be TiddlyWiki or wordpress or Joomla or anything.. even a tumblr or other web 2.0), can say something about TiddlyWiki.com with one of those links to better rank TiddlyWiki.com.

But since you brought it up, I would agree TWs in general (since they are single web applications) would have a hard time competing for seo since the TW html isn't traditional semantic html broken into multiple pages. It seems Jeremy has found a way to represent static tiddlers and get them indexed by google. Would be interesting to get lists of tiddlers by tag or other complex filters in a static view too. Future searches for 'seo for single page applications' will likely provide some insights as web crawlers continue to evolve.

 

Just so there's no misunderstanding; "explore tiddlyspaces" would mean to go to "tiddlyspace.com" specifially, whereas e.g "explore tiddlywikis" is the general term (...even if most of them happen to be hosted on tiddlyspot.com, also a server but that hosts ordinary tiddlywikis).

I see- I didn't realize tiddlyspot.com existed in addition to tiddlyspace.com. I had been exploring some the tiddlyspace.com subdomains. It seems the tiddlyspace.com TWs are more modern than the ones hosted at tiddlyspot.com from what I've seen (of course many are private within these, and maybe most TWs are decentralized and stored as simple html files off the web).

Are there other tiddlywiki farms/hosters? 

[Mat]

I see- I didn't realize tiddlyspot.com existed in addition to tiddlyspace.com. I had been exploring some the tiddlyspace.com subdomains. It seems the tiddlyspace.com TWs are more modern than the ones hosted at tiddlyspot.com from what I've seen (of course many are private within these, and maybe most TWs are decentralized and stored as simple html files off the web).

Are there other tiddlywiki farms/hosters?

I think my comment in this very recent thread, answers these questions (se the summary-link).

You can upload a TW5 to TiddlySpot, in fact it is setup to do in core (Controlpanel > tab Saving). So what you do is you go to Tiddlyspot, and create a TW (say a classic one - you won't use it). The you go to tiddlywiki.com and straight into controlpanel, tab saving. There you simply fill in the tiddlyspot-name you just registered and the password - and then click the regular sidebar save. It will upload a TW5 to tiddlyspot, and overwrite the TWc. Unfortunately you cannot use FF for this one-time-uploading-procedure. I think it works with any other browser, but know Chrome works for sure. I use FF but have set my Chrome to have the tw controlpanel as startpage so it's very quick when I set up a new tiddlyspot.


<:-)

[Alex Hough]

I wonder if there is a case for the "about Tiddly wiki" website not being a Tiddlywiki....

There is -- and a mathematics specialist might want to jump in here -- some kind of impossibility of defining something in its own terms..... something to do with Godel incompleteness theory. 

So how about this; the about TiddlyWiki webpage is not a Tiddlywiki, but one generated from TW into the most basic type of HTML -- echoing the style of early W3 pages. 

Something like this: http://www.w3.org/WhatIs.html

A timeless style like this would IMHO add a sense of authority and authenticity to the project. It frames TW as development of hypertext... from pure html of the early days, though to Wards Wiki (the first wiki) and now a personal wiki.  HTML has -- though developments like TW -- become an everyday non-taking tool. TW is right up there in the cutting edge of Wikis and web standards - this is the reason it has such integrity. 

@Jerm mentioned in a recent hangout that he may be entering the world of teaching, and in an early YouTube I recall him talking about hypertext as the biggest innovation in text since the comma (I may be mistaken of course) . A concise framing of TW in the history of hypertext tools would be the kind of thing which could be useful to students of hypertext.

Of course, there would be a page with links to TiddlyWikis, but a "vanilla" starting point would highlight the features of TiddlyWiki to a useful base point. Evoking the design trends of the day in the explanations of TW while looking impressive, ultimatedly undermines the timeless qualities of TW  and the evocation of Chir

Alex

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[Jeremy Ruston]

Hi Alec (and Alex)

> I'm new here, a javascript developer from Ann Arbor, Michigan with a special interest in user psychology.

A belated welcome to the group (Alec already introduced himself over Twitter).

> I've noticed TW has the potential to help me accelerate my life's purpose/passions--namely facilitating those in my social sphere

> to realize their capacity to participate and empathize in the emerging global culture via social networking.

That's very nicely put. Parenthetically, we've often discussed featuring user testimonials on tiddlywiki.com; this would be a great one to start with :)

> // Intended plugin developments

> - user management

> - pulling data into user profiles from existing popular social networks

> - user reward system, such as badges/points-- user feature permissions modules to progressively enable more complex features for users

> so as not to overwhelm them, and also encourage -participation via scarcity

> My dev intentions are purposefully grand (at least for me) -- which leads me to my next point, I want to encourage more developers to

> spend time on the TW github.  

All great stuff, and there's some prior work/thought in some of those areas that may be useful to share. Those topics would make a good hangout discussion, too, if you get the chance to join.

> // Driving more traffic to TiddlyWiki, facilitating a larger &  stronger community

> The way I found TiddlyWiki took almost 3 full days of research, reading through wikipedia articles and whatnot. At first I dismissed it,

because I didn't realize how much more than 'A personal non-linear web notebook' TW is. Its beautiful, modular JavaScript!

I also think that TiddlyWiki has a certain inner beauty when viewed from the right perspective (the stuff about it being a quine, for instance, with a single

operation that is repeatedly repurposed: that of parsing and rendering wikitext to a render tree, with optional selective updating of an attached DOM tree).

We have been working on the front page recently; you may be interested to see the work in progress at http://tiddlywiki.com/prerelease

> TW has the potential to make us all RICH! ;p

There is that hope! I'd like to see the community working together in a framework that includes both for-profit and non-profit activities. I don't intend to try to make

my living *from* the TiddlyWiki community, but I do hope to be able to make a good living *with* the TiddlyWiki community.

 

> But seriously, I come from a internet marketing background as well, so I figured I could do the TW community a small favor and spent an hour compiling the most useful info in a report:

Very interesting, I'm not familiar with that kind of material. Would access to the Google Analytics dashboard help your research?

 

> One easy thing we should all do (unless you don't care about TiddlyWiki), is link to TiddlyWiki.com with our own sites using the keywords which will drive more traffic

> and build a bigger community, see below:

Yes, that echoes my exhortation to spread the word as the best way for people to help TiddlyWiki; open source projects need the oxygen of publicity in order to grow, and one of the best ways for us to

generate that publicity is through grass roots web and social media postings.

> I wonder if there is a case for the "about Tiddly wiki" website not being a Tiddlywiki....

I'm not against that at all. As I've said on Hangouts in the past, I'd like to see tiddlywiki.com become a news feed with signposts to the main TiddlyWiki sites (/dev, /gettingstarted, /plugins etc).

It doesn't need to look like TiddlyWiki anymore. Using TiddlyWiki to generate a static site is a good way to go.

Best wishes

Jeremy.

--

Jeremy Ruston
mailto:jeremy...@gmail.com