You can use hashtags on your Bear blog now
Hello fellow Bear-bloggers. We're very excited to announce that all blogs on Bear can start using octothorpes right now.
What are octothorpes what does that mean
It means you can use hashtags on your Bear blog.
They can connect you directly to other Bear blogs using the same tags, and anyone can discover your posts through your hashtags on the Octothorpe server. (There's a lot more you can do with octothorpes but we'll stick to hashtags for now).
Ok how do i do this
All you need to do is add a couple lines of HTML and/or Javascript on your page. Paste the following into the header of your blog:
<link rel="preload" as="fetch" href="https://bearblog.octothorp.es/?uri="> <script async="" defer="" type="module" data-register="https://bearblog.octothorp.es/" data-plugins="linkfill" src="https://bearblog.octothorp.es/tag.js"></script>
You can find where to do that at https://bearblog.dev/YOUR-BLOG-NAME-HERE/dashboard/directives/ which you get to in the Settings menu of your dashboard
This means you do have to have a paid Bear account, because free accounts can't use javascript or add header directives. We think Bear's worth it, but we're not trying to upsell you. The Octothorpe Protocol project is totally separate from Bear. We just like the Bear, and Herman was real helpful and nice when we approached him with this idea.
Once that's been added to the head of your blog, you can put octothorpes anywhere in your post by writing
<octo-thorpe>hashtag</octo-thorpe>
and it'll turn into this:
That sends it to the server, and also serves as an embedded list that will update whenever anyone else uses the same hashtag.
Check out some of the more active tags on the main server to see it in action: #Nature or #hummingbirds
Bear Blog is special
On the main server, you have to register your website first for moderation purposes. But the Bear community is really cool and good at moderation. So we made you your own server that automatically accepts octothorpes from any legit Bear Blog.
That means you're ready to go right now. No registration required.
Doesn't Bear already have tags
Sure does, but those only apply to your blog. Octothorpes can connect to any Bear blog using them. If you want to turn all your tags into Octothorpes automatically, go for it. That requires some HTML knowhow, but we'll post a tutorial on this blog soon.
I want to know more
Great! Follow this blog for more posts about using Octothorpes on Bear and follow - Octothope News for updates about the project. That's a link to an octothorpe on the main server, but we'll cross-post here for Bear-related
Here are some resources