Micro.blog is an indieweb platform I use as an interesting melding of blogging and social media. I’m a big fan of its approach to an online presence. As it continues to get better and better, I wanted to toss out some improvements I’d like to see.

Highlight titled micro.blog posts in the feed

Perhaps using a light background color, to make these longer posts stand out more in the feed. Right now, they’re completely de-emphasized, especially compared to quick photos with four photos, and therefore very easy to miss. That’s a shame, as those posts are nearly always longer, well authored blog posts that deserve more attention.

Show Bluesky photos

I know there’s some issue with how Bluesky (or AT Proto?) deals with photo attachments that makes this hard, but it very much detracts from following bsky accounts/conversations within micro.blog, especially replies to crossposted posts. Fixing this, if possible, would allow for following Bluesky posts from within micro.blog, which is just too problematic without image support, at least for me. At minimum, I’d like to see a placeholder or some other indicator that an image is not being displayed.

Multiple photo upload

This would make micro.blog much better for photo-rich and travel blogs. Uploading them one-by-one feels like unnecessary friction. I’d especially appreciate a feature that allows you to insert markdown/html for all items uploaded at the same time, as Mimi Uploader did. Multi-select uploads makes it so much easier to scroll through my photo album, pick which ones I want to share (which often involves selecting and deselecting until I’ve decided on the four that work best together), and upload them all at one time. Right now, I end up uploading unnecessary photos because I add one that I later decide doesn’t make the “top 4 cut”…so now I have to go back and delete that unintentional upload (haha, no I don’t, I just leave it there as clutter because I’m too lazy to spend more time trying to fix it).

Reorder photos prior to posting on iOS + MacOS app

This would make things much easier for a similar reason as above. Because the first photo is often used as the image in social media previews, you might want to decide on the photos to be shared, then rearrange for the most appropriate one to be highlighted in the social preview. Right now, the easiest way to do this is to simply start an entirely new post and then go copy pasta each of the individual uploads in the new order. Or, like me, you just say fuck it and start a new post and re-upload each one because that’s less.

Select multiple photos on upload page

I’d like to be able to batch add to a collection, or copy markdown for a post. Again, selecting one by one and pasting into a post is frustrating—just so many extra clicks.

Allow replies with photos

Disallowing photos in replies actively inhibits substantive replies, imo. And while I know about the upload/markdown workaround, about 80% of the time that’s enough friction to dissuade me from commenting.

Make the category field persistently visible in apps, if desired.

I understand wanting to keep a simple interface for writing, but for those of us who want to categorize each post (without having to use workarounds for filtering) it’s just unnecessary clicks/taps for no good reason. I love sharing a number of posts while traveling, for instance, and would love to add each of them to a specific trip category. But this requires a bunch of extra clicks each post. And because it’s “invisible” at the time of posting, I’ll often be in a hurry or simply forget and then that post is orphaned from the rest of the category. I’d love for the category field to remain persistent based on your last choice in displaying/hiding it.

Better documentation

There are so many great, but slightly hidden, features in micro.blog that don’t seem to be documented. For instance, one of my items above was going to ask for a link to all the photos that aren’t in any post. But before publishing, I went to doublecheck that it didn’t exist—and just discovered that on the uploads page, a linked date means that that upload is associated with a post. Well, that’s definitely not in the documentation.

That’s my list!

The best platforms are the ones that continue to improve, and micro.blog definitely continues to get better and better. I’m a happy member and am always excited to share its vision with friends.