2024–03–15

A review/check-in after 19 months of hosting on Micro.blog: It’s a mixed bag

After many years of using WordPress for my blogs I decided to transition to Micro.blog in late 2022. I’d grown frustrated with what felt like overly complex posting and feature bloat in WP. Whether using the website or the WP app, it just felt increasingly complicated. Posting from iA Writer was my usual choice but it would often time out, forcing me to go to the website or app fairly often and I dreaded it. Blogging with WP always felt like a chore.

Micro.blog was simpler. I’d been using and participating in the community timeline off and on since the early days of the service so I decided to try moving my blog there. After a month or two I decided to move my domain over and really settle in. It’s been 19 months since I started hosting here and it’s time for a check-in/review.

What I love:

• Posting from iA Writer works every time and so posting was easy.
• Posting from Obsidian works every time and is my new preferred process.
• Manton. He’s always on the timeline. He’s invested and cares. He participates and is a blogger himself. He obviously cares about blogging. Even better, he gets and cares about the open web and making sure that micro.blog ties in with the larger Fediverse.

What I tolerate:

• Composing on the Micro.blog website works which is to say, it functions. I guess because it’s Micro.blog the text field is tiny. I’m glad I can write and post from iA Writer and Obsidian, otherwise the tiny text field would be a deal breaker for me. Yes, there’s an app, I’ll get to that.
• Thankfully editing a post presents a larger text field so it’s an improvement over composing. But generally the interface is the complete opposite of WordPress, which is to say, bare bones. For Comparison, here are two screen shots. One of a relatively new blogging service, Pika.page and, below it, Micro.blog:

  

  

  Maybe it’s just me but pika.page, while simple, has a much friendlier, functional design. It’s beautiful. By comparison micro.blog feels basic, less functional and looks like it’s designed for entry of a record into a database. There’s nothing delightful about it.

  Okay, okay. But micro.blog has apps! Let’s look at the compose window for the app on the iPad:

  

  It’s better than the website with a much larger window here but still very basic. There is a very minimal formatting bar at the bottom though it’s not as functional as the Pika.page website which has quite a few formatting options. Oh, and I’m guessing this is a bug but there’s no way to assign a category to a post while using the iPad app. So, the micro.blog app is better than the website but basic and sort-of broken.

  And, since I’m comparing it to Pika.page, I should note that, outside of the writing experience, Micro.blog has far more to offer. Some of the most notable Micro.blog features include:

  • Categories for posts
  • ActivityPub support
  • Easy cross posting to other services
  • Comments via the community timeline. This includes anyone with a free or paid Micro.blog account as well as users in the Fediverse.
  • Customizable via Hugo themes and plugins
  • A new built-in blog roll feature

  In my experience using the app on an iPad, it’s poorly designed but mostly functional. If this were an App Store rating it would be a 2/5. And it’s buggy. Currently, trying to scroll through the timeline it’s repeating, showing me posts over and over, sort of in a loop.

  Images in the timeline look fine but if I tap on a landscape image to view a larger version it does not scale to the current window size but requires that I scroll sideways to see the rest of the image - come on! That’s a terrible user experience. Is the iPad app even tested? Or perhaps it’s just not a priority? Also worth noting, when using the app on the iPad with a hardware keyboard, neither the keyboard down arrow or space bar can can be used to scroll. The trackpad can be used to scroll but using it to click or tap a post to view the conversation does nothing.

  When compared to any number of apps available for Mastodon, say, Mona, Ice Cubes, or Ivory, it just seems like it’s not finished, an app in beta testing. In comparison to those apps there are far fewer features and yet the features it does have are either not fully supported on the iPad or are broken by bugs. As recently as a week ago the share sheet was not working.

  Browsing the timeline on the website is, like much of the rest of the experience, functional but often frustrating. The page scrolling is limited. After a bit of scrolling the user encounters a “Show More” button that has to be tapped to load more of the timeline. My guess is that the idea here is to protect users from themselves? If so, I don’t appreciate it. I’m an adult and don’t need or want to an artificial barrier put in front of me. But even worse, let’s say I tap that button a few times then get to a post with a conversation that I want to check out. I tap into it, leave a comment and go back to the timeline via the back button or swipe gesture. Sometimes I’m taken back to the timeline where I left off. Other times? Back to the top of the timeline. This also occasionally happens if tap a link to a full blog post. Upon returning I may find myself where I left off or I may be back to the top of the timeline.

  I’ve already written about my frustrations concerning other aspects of using the community feed and the Discovery feed: Here, here and here.

  I’m still satisfied with my choice to move away from WordPress and I’ve recommended Micro.blog many times. But with new options like Pika.page and Scribbles becoming available, Micro.blog is no longer the obvious choice. While those services lack built in ActivityPub support, comments, the community timeline and other features, they can be used in conjunction with an account at Mastodon or BlueSky. If I were making the move from WordPress today I’d certainly be considering those and other options. And if I were not using Obsidian or iA Writer, but rather relying on the web to write and manage my posts, I would most definitely chose another service.