Here's a guide to help you get started in 🚀Nostr to share your stories, wisdoms, messages and blogposts. Get the 🛠️tools to start your 🗞️publishing 👑empire with 🚫NO middle man! 🌅🗝️Welcome to Nostr!
Greetings!
Salutations, User! Ever wanted to publish articles or launch your own blog just for the sake of writing or imparting your knowledge? You can, right here in Nostr Wonderland! Let censorship, DE-platforming, shadow-banning be gone! You are the one that holds the keys to your empire here in NostrLand.
👉I’m here to help you OVERCOME the learning curve and take the plunge to SWITCH from conventional to Nostr Social media. If this is your first time, please read my Beginner’s Guide here or on the web. Otherwise, let’s 💃dance.
Why am I doing this?
I want to be your 🕯guiding light, dear user, to guide you when things get murky or confusing to find information. You probably have a ton of knowledge that you’d like to share with the world, but you haven’t because you’re afraid of the consequences or don’t know where to begin. I’m here to help you along the road by using this tutorial. So you may confidently share your knowledge with the rest of the world using Nostr. If you’d like, you can use long-form notes (Nip-23) to accomplish this.
📩P.S. Elon Musk should blush, because this is also one of the most modest ways, to stack SATs in a den full of sovereign Bitcoin lions.
The Tools of the Trade
As a writer, it’s important to learn new skills of the trade and add it to your arsenal. These are the current tools, which I utilize at my discretion. The list covers long form clients with random relays, NIP-65 compatible clients, communities, hashtags, Ai (optional), and finally 🌋 Obsidian. Obsidian is an excellent solution if you don’t want to log into a long form client to send your content. Just one shot into the ether.
The Nostr Bell Ringers: Choosing a Long Form Client to Distribute Your Content
Long form content is distinct, with its own NIP. The notes you usually see on your client are microblogging notes with NIP-01 or Kind-01 (which include hashtags). To the best of my knowledge, the following platforms currently support NIP-23: Stacker.news (via cross posting), Habla.news, Yakihonne.com, flycat.club, and highlighter.com.
✨Yakihonne.com is my preferred medium because of their support for curation and additional relays for long-form on their site. I’d like to add that Highlighter.com (which also has its own dedicated relay) is free and open source, putting content creators in the driver’s seat. They’re fulfilling this through the integration of subscription services for premium content powered by Bitcoin Lightning.💡🚨 Isn’t that awesome?
👉You can learn more about the Bell Ringers in my previous articles, The Publishing Forest of Nostr ✨Part One and ✨Part Two here.
Be a Relay anomaly; knowing what arena you’re in is half the battle.
Not all relays are identical. Some relays support specific NIPs, (Nostr Implementation Possibilities) more than others, while others are paid relays. This is where you can try out unconventional relays to discover your following. I encourage using odd ball relays to reach followers from all corners, rather than the “popular relays” that clients automatically push and 💥jam users to utilize. This is known as the 🦜Gossip method, which can be noisy and active with constant Notes. I’ve literally seen my articles buried in notes, memes, and everything in between. Another alternative is to run your own relay.
👉Publish to random relays using Bell Ringers clients. Please refer to the image above. What’s the reason? Because they don’t currently support NIP-65. So go ahead and publish to weird relays!
🚨This doesn’t mean to publish to 50+ relays, go somewhere in between 10-25.
👉It’s also typical (at least for me) to have failed attempts to publish onto relays so don’t get discouraged and try others. Click this link to see the relays list. Personally, I prefer German relays, but select any at your discretion.
✨Eventually, you will meet other users that will grant you access to their relays, this is through discovery. Just be patient, kind, and humble to receive these invites from other users that whitelist your npub to enable you to “write” onto their relays. These will become your “home” relays. Go where you’re treated best and support each other. Pura Vida!
Using clients with NIP-65 support.
👉Since, everyone doesn’t use the same relays, sometimes posts get delayed responses. To counteract this, I utilize Sir Mike Knight’s Gossip Desktop Nostr Client. Gossip facilitates the application of “NIP-65,” or “The Outbox Model.” You can read more about it online or within your app. Great client to cut out the excessive programming language on browsers which does slow you.
⛔The way this works is if other (N)ostriches use a client that also supports NIP-65 as well. Even if other nostriches don’t use supported clients, you’re still able to pull from their relays.
✨👉Another client you could use is knight hzrd146’s web client nostrudel which handles TOR quite lovely. NoStrudel also uses NIP-65 so you’ll never miss an article.
🚨Amethyst v0.87+ the app is currently working to integrate NIP-65(at the time of this publication). This is a win for the De-googled Android community!
Use Communities to expand reach within Nostr for a forum like style or for conversations
👉I use NoStrudel mostly to manage my community, “Children_Zone,” where I post all my articles and stories. It would be beneficial for you to look into communities where you might be able to share your articles, or stories, provided they are relevant. 🚨 Communities have moderators, so when you post to their board be mindful that it could get declined. You could build a relationship with the respective owners, or maybe even volunteer to manage postings. The last options is to create your own community.
⭐Tip⭐ ✨When you publish your long form content or NIP-23, at the same time you can create an njump.me link. The njump.me links are super easy to create and bridge the gap from Nostr back to web. To get the maximum coverage to all your followers, make a separate post with your njump.me link for users that are using clients that don’t support NIP-23.
👉To create njump.me links Simply Copy Note ID on your client, https://njump.me/ + paste note ID = shareable URL ✨Add a cute message to your new post with your shareable link.
⭐note⭐ For long form content you should get naddr1 and for regular notes you normally get nevents.
❗Example for clarification: If you’re reading this article within Amethyst, Damus, or Nos you can tap here to access my beginner’s guide within the app or click here for the web version. Both contain the same information, but the experience is slightly different.
🚨The important part is to do both. This creates unity among users between different clients. Yes, it is an additional step, but the reward is well worth it in unexpected ways.
^^Created by cryptowolf. If your not on an app you can view the event here on the web. Another artists you can check out is M. My friends in NostrLand are welcoming, so what are you waiting for? Nostr is permission-less. Just go for it!
Adding # Hashtags; 🍾the secret sauce
Similarly to X, you can use hashtags to search and scan for content. By using hashtags you can increase your visibility to the masses so don’t skip on step. I, occasionally try to squeeze myself into the coffeechain, gm, plebchain, zaps, art, ai, nostr, bitcoin, and catstr arena. For the purpose of this article I will squeeze myself into introductions and obsidian. Because I think there’s a possible chance, that a newbie may be interested in creating content. And with some 🍀luck they decide to🔖bookmark my article after getting acquainted with the Nostr.
🌟It would be the highest honor for me as a 🐹content creator, if you bookmarked this, and shared it with future nostriches, writers, and creators. Let’s fill Nostr with a vibrant community with creators that make other platforms look dismally disappointing.
🤖To Ai or not to Ai
Ai is what you make it. For me, it’s to create the beautiful art that you see in my articles. I engineer the prompts with the hope that the reader such as yourself might enjoy. I wouldn’t be surprised if I had followers that just scroll through to look at my Ai images. Furthermore, I use Canva.com to produce these. However, I have dabbled with others. I do think Sats4ai is worth a go because it’s open source and doesn’t record data as a possible Midjourney replacement for images. Another AI, that I dabble with is ~Openagents (FOSS, and crowdsourced) that is fun to play with.
Obsidian; A powerful markdown editor for Writers or just to write notes.
Did you notice the 💎🌋Obsidian earring my Hamster is wearing? I put it on intentionally on my character to symbolize the tool I’m using. Obsidian is a beautiful markdown editor, that you can download on iOs, Android, Windows, Mac, Linux, and even through the Zap.store. If you want to just publish without any clients, then Obsidian does the job.
✨I discovered Obsidian from James when he mentioned a plugin tool in an article, that would let users “Publish to Nostr” on 🐇yakihonne.
✨An awesome feature that the plugin does is pasting an image and automatically getting hosted via nostr.build, so you don’t have to manually upload it. The plugin supports short(NIP-01) and long form(NIP-23), and draft.
🚨Obsidian is a powerful tool, you can benefit by watching a few YouTube videos. Learn about the various tasks like RSS feeds, image converter, dictionary, and LanguageTool (for spell-check). 💋It has over 1,000 community plugins, so go 🎈play.
☠The developers of Obsidian have zero interest into turning this editor into FOSS. Don’t bother trying to pitch idea, they will dismiss and delete your request.
🌋💎Setting up Obsidian with Nostr.
Are you excited to use this amazing markdown editor? Here’s a quick guide to help get you rolling. Create breathtaking markdowns (for Long form) and distribute them like a beast to Nostr via Obsidian.
- Download for your preferred platform.
- Create a Vault, location, and name. Or open within an existing folder with other markdown(.md) files prior from using obsidian.
- Wait for the editor to load and open. Go to ⚙Settings on the bottom left.
- Locate Options on the top left window, select “Community plugins” and click “Browse.”
- In the search bar, type “nostr,” and select “Nostr Writer” by James McGauran. Install and enable.
- Read the mini guide, it should look similarly to this:
- Done. Now, show the world what you’re made of❗
👉If you felt this article brought you value, please consider adding it to your bookmarks so you can easily share it with an aspiring creator that you may come across in chat. 💋
🧧⚡Zaps⚡ are always appreciated, but aren’t required.
💜🧡Thank you💖💋
📢Special Shout-outs 📝James - Introducing me to Obsidian that I’ve made it my own. I wear on as an earring on my character.
npub10a8kw2hsevhfycl4yhtg7vzrcpwpu7s6med27juf4lzqpsvy270qrh8zkw
Also, a 👶beginner's guide if you're still new.
👉play the audio to listen to the article. https://media.nostr.build/av/749a03816c328c599054f31113588f9f5a47b5e67681e3a1eb9ee97c8f2e0dd3.mp3
Welcome to Nostr!
Introduction. Is this your first time here in Nostr? Welcome! Nostr has a oddball acronym for “Notes and Other Stuff Transmitted by Relays” with a simple goal, to be censorship-resistance. An alternative to traditional social media, communications, blogging, streaming, podcasting and eventually email (in development) with decentralization that empowers you, dear user. No more will you have to be plagued by ads, held by centralized entities and data hungry algorithms that monetizes you.
Allow me to be your host! I’m Onigirl! I’m on a quest to explore the world of Nostr, a decentralized communication protocol. I write about the tools, and the awesome developers within Nostr that bring this realm roaring with life.
Welcome to Nostr Wonderland
You’re about to step into another world that will explode your mind from all the decentralized apps, clients, web3 enabled sites that you can use. You’re never going to look at communications, logging in, 2FA, and social media the same way ever again. All thanks to Nostr’s cryptographic nature inspired by Bitcoin blockchain technology. Each user, when they create a Nostr account, they get two keys, a private and a public key. These are your keys to your very own kingdom. Whatever you write, sing, podcast, stream, anything you create –all of it belongs to you. The sky is literally the limit!
A Gold and Silver Key
A friend of mine and I, call this “Identity by Encryption” because your Identity is encrypted. You can share your silver key, “npub” to other users to connect and follow. Use your gold key, “nsec” to unlock your account to plugin into a plethora of applications. Keep this key safe at all times. There is no reason to be caged ever again by social platforms TOS henceforth!
👉Give it a whirl, you can follow me by copying and pasting my public key into your search bar on any client that you decide to use.
Onigirl
npub18jvyjwpmm65g8v9azmlvu8knd5m7xlxau08y8vt75n53jtkpz2ys6mqqu3Don’t have a client yet? Select the best option
Find the right App for you! This is where you can use your gold key, “nsec” to login into these wonderful tools. You can also visit Nostr’s app page here. Before you start pasting your gold key everywhere on apps, consider using a signers (for web3 enabled sites) please look at the next image for details, also refer to the legend.
Get a Signer extension via chrome webstore
A signer is an extension in the chrome webstore on Google. Nos2x and NostrConnect are widely accepted extension for logins. This simplifies the process of logging into web3 sites instead of copying and pasting your gold key, “nsec” each and every time, you keep it within the extension and give it permission(s) to sign you in.
👉⚡⚡Get a Bitcoin lightning wallet to send/receive Zaps⚡⚡ (This is optional)
Here on Nostr, we use the Bitcoin Lightning network (L2). You will need to get a lightning wallet in order to send/receive Satoshi. These are the smallest denominations of a Bitcoin. It is a one hundred millionth of a single bitcoin (0.00000001 BTC). Zaps are a form of “micropayment with sats” here on Nostr. If you enjoy a user content, it is the norm to “⚡zap⚡” a.k.a “tip” for their content. For example, If you like my content, you can zap me with SATs to reward my work. But you just arrived, you don’t have a wallet yet. No worries! I got you covered!
“Stacker.News” is a platform where users can earn SATs by writing articles and engaging with other users. You.
👉Stacker.News is also the easiest place to get a Bitcoin Lighting wallet address.
Log in with your “Signer” extension either “Nos2x or NostrConnect” click your profile which will be random letters and numbers in the upper right corner. You will see something like this:
Click “edit” and choose a name that you like, and if you don’t like it. You can change again later.
Click “save”
Create a bio and the SN community are very welcoming and will zap you some sats to welcome you.
You new Bitcoin Lightning Wallet address will appear like this:
^^Do not zap this address; this is purely for educational purposes!
With your New Bitcoin Lightning wallet address you can put this into any client or app of your choice. To do this, go to your profile page and under your wallet address under “LN Address,” enter your new address and hit “save” and there ya go. Congratulations!
👉✨Eventually, you may want to move to self custodial options and maybe consider to even self-host your own LN node for better privacy. Good news is stacker.news is also moving away from being a custodian wallet.
Nostr, the maverick of Servers
Instead of using a single instance or a centralized server Nostr is built to have several databases to exchange messages using “relays.” Relays, which are neutral and nondiscriminatory, store and broadcast public messages in the Nostr network. They transmit messages to all other clients connected to them, securing communications in the decentralized network.
My friends in Nostr welcome you!
Welcome to the tea Party, would you like a spot of tea?🍵
There’s so much more!
This is just the tip of the iceberg. Follow me as I continue to explore new lands and the developers, called “knights” behind this ever-growing ecosystem. Meet me here for more content like this and share this with future nostr users. Learn about the knights fighting for freedomTech within Nostr and the projects that are contributing to make it happen. Make your life more decentralized with Nostr. 💋
Onigirl @npub18jvyjwpmm65g8v9azmlvu8knd5m7xlxau08y8vt75n53jtkpz2ys6mqqu3
