Blog: Add post about automation

content/blog/2023-11-22-xmpp-providers-automation.md

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+---
+title: XMPP Providers Automation
+date: 2023-11-22
+---
+
+## Automating the Automatable
+
+During the past year, the team behind the [XMPP Providers](https://providers.xmpp.net/) project worked on automating the process of gathering data about XMPP providers.
+Automating this process reduces manual work significantly (for example, checking websites by hand, verifying information, listing sources, etc.) and helps to sustain the team's efforts.
+Automation also enables the project to be up to date - every day!
+
+At the beginning of this year, work on automating the collection of several provider 'properties' (for example, available size for file uploads) started.
+An overview of all these provider properties gathered for each XMPP provider can be found on the [overview page](https://providers.xmpp.net/overview/).
+Some of these properties were already available in a machine-readable format, making it easy to be collected.
+
+A {{< external-link url="https://invent.kde.org/melvo/xmpp-providers/-/blob/master/TOOLS.md#automation" text="suite of tools" >}} has been developed since, providing the ability to query properties via XMPP and through the web.
+All of these tools are working together in a GitLab pipeline, which runs every night to keep the data up to date.
+
+**So far, the following properties are collected automatically:**
+
+- Account Creation via XMPP Apps: For determining whether a server supports the creation of accounts via XMPP apps, {{< external-link url="https://xmpp.org/extensions/xep-0077.html" text="XEP-0077: In-Band Registration" >}} is used.
+- Account Creation via Web Page: For retrieving a web page that can be used to create accounts, {{< external-link url="https://xmpp.org/extensions/xep-0077.html#redirect" text="XEP-0077: In-Band Registration - Redirection" >}} is used.
+- Server Software: For determining which software (including its version) a server runs, {{< external-link url="https://xmpp.org/extensions/xep-0092.html" text="XEP-0092: Software Version" >}} is used.
+- Support Addresses: For retrieving the support addresses of a provider, {{< external-link url="https://xmpp.org/extensions/xep-0157.html" text="XEP-0157: Contact Addresses for XMPP Services" >}} is used.
+Support addresses will be available in version 2 (`v2`) of the API.
+Please note that due to limitations of the standard, only one language is supported for addresses.
+- Upload Limits and Storage Durations: For determining how much users can upload to a server and how long those files are stored, {{< external-link url="https://xmpp.org/extensions/xep-0363.html#disco" text="XEP-0363: HTTP File Upload - Discovering Support" >}} is used.
+
+The [FAQ section](https://providers.xmpp.net/faq/#where-do-we-have-the-providers-properties-from) explains how these properties can be provided by server admins.
+
+## More Automation
+
+Not all of the properties collected by the XMPP Providers project are machine-readable yet.
+To enable automatic collection of the missing properties, the team works on extending existing standards and, if necessary, creating new ones.
+Due to the amount of manual work for maintaining all the provider properties, no new providers have been included in the recent past.
+With increasing automation and thus reduced manual intervention, the XMPP Providers project will soon be open for including new providers again!
+
+## Spread the Word
+
+The project lives from the community and client implementations, so {{< external-link url="https://fosstodon.org/@xmpp_providers" text="follow us and spread the word" >}}!
+
+{{< figure src="/images/xmpp-providers.svg" caption="XMPP Providers Logo" class="text-center w-100 pt-5" height="300" >}}