Hello, Leaflet 👋🏼🍃

So I'm moving again, this time to a home I see myself in for the foreseeable future.

Will it be the last time I move? Probably not. But that's the beauty of the open web and, more specifically, the open social web.

I can start somewhere to do a bunch of stuff and build relationships. Then, I can take that stuff and my relationships, go somewhere else, and pick up right where I left off.

Look, ma, I'm doing the thing!

But why am I moving? Let me explain.

I Stopped Writing

Thing is, when I started my own self-hosted and self-maintained blog, I got deep into the weeds of making it a better platform for myself. I started building little tools and integrations, I started cleaning up the design, and even considered building a CRM.

And everyone knows it's fun to build a CRM.

As I got deep into playing with the blog, I stopped doing the thing I loved: blogging.

While I was building instead of blogging, I looked around at existing @standard.site platforms like @leaflet.pub, @pckt.blog, and @offprint.app, and realized they were all already building features I wanted. They're building the future together, and it's clear they have a better vision than I will on my own.

I was building a walkman while the others were shipping smartphones, and I got hit with some hard FOMO with every new feature they dropped.

I loved using @sequoia.pub for Atmospheric publishing (I even contributed features!), and I think it's a valuable tool I recommend to anyone who wants to syndicate their static blogs to the Atmosphere. But while publishing was easy, my writing experience was terrible.

I just wanted to write, and my biggest blocker was me building the experience from scratch. And I just didn't have the time to commit when I already have a pile of projects in-flight.

So I went shopping - and just in time! Bluesky dropped discounts for the Big Three standard.site platforms. I took it as a sign, and sped up the process.

Why Leaflet?

I think pckt and Offprint are phenomenal tools. Pckt has a playfulness I miss from the early web, and Offprint reminds me of Ghost - the CRM I started augment on.

I went with Leaflet for three reasons:

1. Mobile experience, because I want to draft any and everywhere (I wrote most of this on my phone!)
2. Collaboration tools, because I share my essays with a number of people before publishing and I want to start doing some collaborative publishing here as well (interviews, app reviews, etc.)
3. The design works with the vibe I want for this era of augment

This isn't a one-way door, though! If there's anything I've learned with this migration, I can change my mind and switch tools any time I want.

So it's Leaflet, for now. Let's see if something else clicks eventually.

That said, let's talk about the migration experience on the Atmosphere.

How was the migration?

The good news? Doable.

The bad news? Not doable unless you really know what you're doing.

Currently, there's no cross-standard.site migration tools (nerd-snipe). Building one is the only choice, but you need to understand atproto, standard.site, and have some basic programming knowledge.

1 - Record Edits

Sequoia does basic standard.site publishing, but most other tools and platforms, like Leaflet, have their own embedded structure. This allows for flexibility for platforms, but means you sometimes need to change the way the existing records are shaped for compatibility.

With Claude, I was able to quickly spin up a script that would use my handle and an app password to enrich my existing standard.site records to include Leaflet blocks and fill in any gaps (like inline images) using the RSS feed. I reviewed the code and had to make minor changes, but it was more or less good to go.

I had a dry-run mode so I could validate the results, a single-publish mode to test a single document with blob uploads, then one to enrich all the other documents.

Worked like a charm in a single go! I could've easily done this to migrate to any other standard.site platform (nerd-snipe intensifies).

Then came the Leaflet end, which was much easier.

2 - Domain Migration

This was pretty simple, but had some quirks. In theory, all I had to do was move my domain over, which worked for the homepage.

But then - a bug! While all the links on the homepage were pointing to the right article destinations, Leaflet wasn't able to find the articles themselves.

To be fair, I was clearly doing this in a janky way, so this is of no fault of Leaflet. I'd also already warned @awarm.space (lead dev at Leaflet) about the horrors I was committing, so he was ready for me to find some weird edge cases. So, I poked Jared, and he quickly figured the issue out (thank you!!).

And, then - all of a sudden, my entire blog was on Leaflet 🍃

3 - Quirk!

There is one remaining quirk, though: posts that weren't drafted and published using Leaflet aren't editable in Leaflet. Based on my conversation with Jared, it sounds like it's an artifact of their pre-atproto days.

But, to me, that's a minor issue since I probably don't need to go back and edit much. And there's other tools like @standard.horse where I can make Leaflet-compatible edits to those articles. The magic of the Atmosphere!

That's about it. Not perfect, but not impossible. Which means building a good UX around standard.site migration isn't impossible, especially if you already run a platform (nerd-snipe fully directed).

Reader Impact

So, you may wonder, dear reader, how this impacts you. In short: it mostly shouldn't.

If you follow augment via RSS, subscribe to the publication on the Atmosphere, or follow my Atmosphere account over Bridgy Fed in the Fediverse, nothing changes for you.

If you've subscribed over email, there will be an address change after this post since I'll be moving off of Buttondown to Leaflet's email distribution. Chances are, unless you have complex filtering set up, this should still land in your inbox as it always has. For those with filtering or want to make sure it doesn't land in spam, the new email address will be augment.ink@email.leaflet.pub.

Thanks for reading, and I hope this helped make the current state of standard.site migrations clearer for you. This was a fun live experiment for me, and I'm so happy to have a new home for my blog. I hope you like it as well.

Until next time!