CrowderSoup

I build my own tools. Sometimes robots help. Sometimes they break.

Aaron Crowder avatar

Aaron Crowder

Hi, I'm Aaron Crowder. Or—if you know me online—CrowderSoup.

Father of two, Software developer, and lover of the open web. I like to take things apart (and sometimes even put them back together). I can frequently be found tinkering with some bit of code in my spare time.

My CMS Was Publishing My Posts Early
Aaron Crowder

My CMS was publishing my scheduled posts early. On two sites. And nobody noticed, including me. Schedule a post for next Tuesday and it showed up the second you hit save: at its URL, in the post list, in the RSS feed, in the sitemap. It even tooted to Mastodon. Then next Tuesday rolled around and... nothing happened, because nothing was ever watching the clock. Drafts were worse. Saving one sent webmentions for a post nobody could even see yet. The CMS is Webstead, which runs this blog. I wro...

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New theme, who dis?
Aaron Crowder

If you're reading this on my site instead of in a feed reader: hi, yes, it looks different. 👋 Honestly, the old look had gotten stale. It was the stock Webstead default theme with every setting left at its default. Cream background, orange accent, fancy serif headings. Nice! But it looked like every Webstead site, and I wanted mine to feel like mine. So now it's a terminal. What changed A prompt for a header. aaron@crowdersoup:~$, with a blinking cursor (it stops blinking if your system asks...

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My Blog Has an API for AI Now. No Keys, Just OAuth.
Aaron Crowder

Webstead, the CMS that runs this blog, now has an MCP server built in. As of this morning it also does OAuth, so I connected it to Claude like any other connector. No API keys pasted anywhere, just a normal "log in and approve" flow. The MCP server landed in #147 and the OAuth bits in #148. What it can do Claude can now: Search and read my posts Write drafts and hand me a preview link that works logged out Upload media Edit, publish, revert, and delete, with a confirm step for the destructiv...

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  1. screenshot of a web-game I'm making
    Pardon the roughness, but I'm more focused on making the game basically work first lol
  2. screenshot of gardn.website
    The current state of Gardn
  3. screenshot of note publishing
    The Gardn's note publishing UI

I think it was James of https://jamesg.blog/ who I first mentioned to a while back that I wanted to make a game focused on helping non-technical people build a website. Well James: here it is!

The Gardn is something I've been working on at https://gardn.website. Right now it's kind of like a bookmarking website that helps you save links and post them to your website (or Mastodon, if your website doesn't support Micropub).

Eventually The Gardn game will be the main entrypoint. If you don't have a website you'll be coached through creating one. The game will give you interfaces to enter URLs (your website, posts, etc.) to scan and save which will help you get seeds to plant in your garden.

Your garden is your space to cultivate. I'm not quite ready to show that yet! My vision is that you will be able to share a link to your in-game garden on your website. Visitors to your website can come to your virtual garden as a player to explore. My hope is that it's a creative space for webmasters as much as it is a way to help grow the #IndieWeb.

Aaron Crowder

A Comprehensive Guide to PADD: Your Personal Aggregation Display Dashboard
Aaron Crowder

If you spend any time in the IndieWeb community, you've probably heard of feed readers; tools that let you follow blogs and websites without being beholden to any single platform. PADD (Personal Aggregation Display Dashboard) is one such reader, built by me with the IndieWeb philosophy at its core. I've been using it daily and wanted to walk through everything it offers. What Is PADD? PADD is a Microsub-compatible feed reader and social reader. The name says it all: it's a personal aggregati...

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So... #PADD is getting "Notifications". If your microsub server has a notifications channel then PADD will automatically treat them as such!

I realized that part of the #Microsub spec calls for a notifications channel when I was adding a microsub server to my blog software. So naturally if my blog was going to publish it, I figured my reader should consume it naturally.

Seriously, I am having so much fun building this stuff.

Aaron Crowder

Never thought I'd be thinking about building a shader in WebGL so that I can post fancily edited photos to my blog from my phone using a Star Trek themed web app I made.

Just #IndieWeb things I guess, lol

ps, how good does PADD look??

Aaron Crowder