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MATRIX LIVE - LIVEBLOGGING BASED ON MATRIX

Liveblogging is reporting about events -- with text and pictures -- as they
happen. Matrix is a new, powerful messaging platform for instant communication.
We believe the two belong together. That's why we have created Matrix Live.

With Matrix Live, you can create a room in Matrix, and while you use your
favorite Matrix client (such as Riot) to write text and post pictures in this
room, your users will see them appear live on the web - either here or right on
your blog or website.

We believe this provides the optimal combination. By building on an established
messenger, a few interesting features come "for free":

 * You can post updates on the road. Riot offers apps for both iOS (iPhone and
   iPad) and Android that let you quickly write updates and post pictures.
 * Multiple team members can write on the same liveblog. Just invite them to
   your room.
 * Matrix Live (and Riot) supports Markdown, so you can quickly format text,
   lists etc.


TRY IT

How does it look like in practice? You can try it out. We have prepared two demo
versions for you, which are both fully functional Matrix Live implementations:

 * Our first demo shows Matrix Live in its link version, when you choose not to
   embed it into your own site. It displays a demo liveblog. This demo gives you
   a good impression on how pictures and text look like in Matrix Live. However,
   we cannot liveblog all the time, so you probably will not be able to observe
   the real-time behavior when new items are posted.
 * That's why our second demo uses Matrix Live to show the public Matrix room
   #matrix:matrix.org. We have chosen this room because it is relatively active,
   so you can observe how updates happen in real-time. However, this is a chat
   room and not a liveblog, so the content itself will not make much sense in
   Matrix Live. Also, due to the large number of users in this room (contrary to
   a liveblogging room, where only you and your blogging team will join) initial
   loading takes quite a long time. This demo also demonstrates that you can
   embed the Matrix Live liveblog into your own website.

Note that they are using the standard layout of Matrix Live. You can customize
our CSS style sheet if you need a different look.


USE IT

How do you get your own liveblog using Matrix Live? Start by setting up the
Matrix room you want to use, afterwards generate the link or embed code to
Matrix Live, include it on your website / blog and you are ready to go.


STEP 1: SET-UP MATRIX ROOM

If you are not yet a Matrix user, head over to Riot and use either the web or
one of the mobile clients to register an account in the Matrix ecosystem. Within
Riot (screenshots are from Riot Web) you can then create a new room to liveblog
in by clicking on the “Plus” sign. You can assign a room name and should end up
with an empty room as in the screenshot below.

Afterwards, you need to set this room to publicly viewable (such that Matrix
Live and your visitors can access it) and obtain its internal ID, which is used
to access the room in Matrix Live:

Access settings for the room

In the room settings, you can set the room to world viewable but keep it as
invite-only (to avoid others posting on your live blog):

Set room to readable by anyone, then scroll down

Scroll down to find your internal room ID:

Write down your internal room ID and save your changes

If everything has saved correctly, Riot should inform you that your room history
is now viewable by anyone:

Alex made future room history visible to anyone.

Using the internal room ID, you are now ready to generate your Matrix Live link
or embed code.


STEP 2: GENERATE LINK OR EMBED CODE

Just head over to the Matrix Live Generator. Fill in the home server and room ID
you want to use and the other optional fields and click on “Generate”. The tool
will check whether the homeserver and room ID are valid and correctly configured
(you need to use a homeserver that allows guest access and your room needs to be
configured as world-readable as per the above). If everything checks out, you
will receive two options to use Matrix Live:

 1. A link that you can link to and that will display your liveblog on a
    separate page.
 2. Pieces of HTML code that you can embed in your website or blog post and
    which will make your live blog appear within your website at the point where
    you insert the <hello-matrix> tag.


STEP 3: USE ON YOUR WEBSITE OR LINK TO FROM SOCIAL MEDIA

You can use either the link or the embed code to make your liveblog go “on air”.
As soon as you have promoted the link or embedded the embed code, you already to
start liveblogging!


STEP 4: START LIVEBLOGGING

When a visitor visits your liveblog, he or she will see the latest entries you
made (the newest will be at the top; by default a bit less than sixty are
displayed, see the generator for details) immediately. Afterwards, the
connection remains active as long as the visitor remains on the site and any new
stuff you write or pictures you send to your room in Matrix will be pushed to
the visitor and displayed at the top of the liveblog.

So just go ahead, grab the Matrix client of your choice (we recommend Riot) and
start liveblogging! If you have invited other users into your room, they can
also write and upload pictures, those will also be displayed to your readers (so
be careful who you let into your room).

You can use Markdown to format text in your messages. If you want to embed
videos, Matrix Live supports YouTube, Vimeo and DailyMotion. You can add the
link to the video’s page using Markdown’s syntax for inline images:

![Video](https://vimeo.com/161820611)


Matrix Live will recognise that this is a reference to a video site and will
embed this site’s inline player for you.

You can also upload pictures, videos and other files directly using your Matrix
client. If you upload pictures, a thumbnail will be displayed in the live blog.
If the picture is larger than the thumbnail size, a hyperlink will allow the
user to access the full-size picture. For videos, a HTML5 video player will be
displayed. For other files, a generic download link will be generated.

If you have made a mistake and want to remove a message you have written, you
can do so with any Matrix client that supports redactions, as long as you are
administrator in your room (you will be if you have created the room yourself as
described above). In Vector Web, click on the three dots next to the message you
want to remove and then on “Redact”:

Click on the "three dots" and then on "Redact"

The message will disappear for users who are receiving the live stream and will
not be displayed for any new visitors accessing the liveblog. As Matrix is a
messaging application, you cannot edit existing messages or backdate new ones.


STEP 5: THAT'S IT - TELL OTHERS

Was your liveblog a success? Great! Feel free to spread the word! Did anything
not work out as expected? Let us know: Send us an email at
hello@hello-matrix.net or join #matrix-live:matrix.org to discuss Matrix Live.


ROLL YOUR OWN

You don’t want to embed some stranger’s JavaScript on your own page? You want to
modify Matrix Live to support some specific feature for your blog? No problem.
Matrix Live is an open source project on Gitlab. You can either download Matrix
Live in a zip file, upload its contents to your web host and - voilà - you now
have your own generate.html script that will generate links to your local Matrix
Live copy.

Or (if you want to dive into the code) you can roll your own Matrix Live by
cloning our Gitlab repository, downloading the required modules (requires
installed npm) and building the minified version using our build script:

git clone https://gitlab.com/argit/matrix-live
npm install
npm run-script build  


The build will be stored in the dist/ folder and should be equivalent to the zip
file you can download from our website.


FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS

Any questions not answered here? Send them along via email to
hello@hello-matrix.net or join #matrix-live:matrix.org to discuss Matrix Live.


WHY USE MATRIX LIVE?

It’s free, very easy to use and by building on Matrix you get the stability and
features of Matrix as a communications platform for free. There are a lot of
liveblogging services out there, but they are often overkill for a simple, short
liveblogging session. Also, Matrix Live is open source, so you don’t have to
rely on us maintaining our version but you can just use your own.


CAN I DELETE OR EDIT MESSAGES IF I HAVE MADE A MISTAKE?

Yes, you can delete (or “redact”) messages if you are an administrator in the
room you liveblog in (which you should be, as you should have created a new
room). See above under “Step 4”. You cannot edit (or backdate) messages.


DOES MATRIX LIVE WORK WITH END-TO-END ENCRYPTED ROOMS?

No. The whole point of Matrix Live is to make the content of your room publicly
available in a nicely formatted and auto-updating way. This does not correspond
to secure end-to-end communication, thus Matrix Live cannot work if a room has
end-to-end encryption enabled. Your homeserver should support HTTPS encryption,
however, so your visitors will retrieve your liveblog over an encrypted channel.


ROADMAP / WHAT’S MISSING

Currently, the following features are planned for future updates:

 * Internationalisation, i.e. providing the interface in other languages (if you
   want to help with a translation into your native language, let us know)
 * Enabling simple design changes (such as base colour) with configuration
   options instead of requiring to modify the CSS