[HN Gopher] A directory of handmade webpages
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A directory of handmade webpages
Author : cookingoils
Score : 112 points
Date : 2021-03-13 13:46 UTC (9 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (gossipsweb.net)
(TXT) w3m dump (gossipsweb.net)
| tomcooks wrote:
| Pity it costs money to submit sites,but I'm glad projects like
| this exist
| oneeyedpigeon wrote:
| I can't imagine the fee causes any kind of practical problem,
| unless someone doesn't have a credit/debit card -- it IS a
| shame it doesn't support any other payment means. I'm currently
| earning less than I'm paying out, and even I was happy to pay
| the dollar! It makes the site that much more valuable that it
| isn't overwhelmed by spam.
| tomcooks wrote:
| I'm not judging, it's the author's choice.
|
| As I said, big up for the idea. Cheers.
| rchaud wrote:
| I think a nominal fee is necessary to ward off bots. $1 to
| potentially get your site listed someplace where like-minded
| people might see it is not bad.
|
| The majority of these sites will never have enough content to
| rank in the top 10 for some query on search engines. And if
| you're not top 10, your site is essentially invisible.
|
| without some kind of old-school directory/webring structure
| that users can peruse, the odds of people continuing to make
| and share personal websites (that aren't shilling a course or
| product affiliate links) will dwindle to nothing.
|
| Just today, I discovered this site by pure chance:
| http://ratbehavior.org/PawPaintingRats.htm
|
| An extremely information-dense site about rats, hand-coded
| sometime in the '90s and last updated in 2012. A site like this
| to me is fascinating, but increasingly a very rare breed.
| mproud wrote:
| Why do they all have to be so damn ugly?
| alphabet9000 wrote:
| it's an interesting thought experiment to try and make sense of
| what it is about a website that makes it seem ugly, or not
| ugly. at what point does an 'ugly' web site become beautiful?
| is there a threshold?
|
| i'd like to see an example of a site that you feel is not ugly,
| not so i can be a contrarian and say 'well, i think _those_ are
| ugly! ' but, just to get a feel for what you believe is
| exemplary of beauty.
| bandie91 wrote:
| de gustibus non est disputandum
| eplanit wrote:
| That's what I say about most all commercial or "mainstream"
| sites.
| klyrs wrote:
| Some of the best content on the internet is "ugly." And by
| that, I mean specifically this site: https://www.agner.org/
| superkuh wrote:
| >It costs $1 to submit.
|
| No thanks. I'll just keep my handmade websites to myself and let
| people find them by surfing.
| TedDoesntTalk wrote:
| Aren't all webpages handmade to one extent or another? Or are
| these webpages that don't use frameworks like React and Angular?
| not_knuth wrote:
| I don't think "handmade" should be taken to literally, but
| rather be attached the meaning as described below.
|
| In my experience there tends to be a strong correlation between
| a website being hand-written and the quality of the content on
| the website.
|
| My hypothesis is that it somehow hits the sweetspot between:
|
| - creating your own SSG and only writing mundane blogposts
| about how you wrote that SSG (am guilty of this)
|
| - and pumping out raw thoughts on
| Twitter/Wordpress/Medium/Substack etc.
|
| I think that is at least part of what this website is trying to
| capture.
| masswerk wrote:
| In my experience, markdown doesn't offer much advantage over
| HTML, as writing a few short tags isn't much of a burden.
| (Even more so, if you use the old-style `b` and `i` phrase
| elements, which are apparently considered ok again.
| Personally, I still use `strong`, etc, which may be the most
| annoying feature for hand-written HTML. But this can be fixed
| by an editor shortcut.) Otherwise, a bit of server-side
| scripting for adding headers and footers and providing
| navigation is fine, but probably already outside the specs of
| "entirely handmade".
| yoz-y wrote:
| For me the difference between writing markdown and writing
| HTML directly is that if I use the latter, I won't actually
| write the darn article. HTML is pretty bad for re-reading
| and editing, as the tags get in the way.
| dheera wrote:
| I find the opposite. I almost never use Markdown unless
| forced to.
|
| I find it much easier to remember <a
| href="https://foo.com"><img src="foo.jpg" width="300"
| alt="foo"></a>
|
| that some [foo(foo.jpg)]
|
| or is it
| (http://foo.com)[(foo.jpg)(alt=alt text)]
|
| or is it [foo.com(foo.jpg) width=300]
|
| or is it (foo.com)[foo.jpg](alt
| text)[::width="300"]
|
| ...? I can never remember the goddamn inconsistent
| syntax.
|
| and is it 2 asterisks for bold, 1 for italic, or 1 and 2,
| or is it 2 and 3? With html it's
| <b>this is bold</b> <i>this is italic</i>
| <b><i>this is bold and italic</i></b>
|
| Much easier to remember.
| TedDoesntTalk wrote:
| Same problem for me.
|
| these syntaxes now suffer the same problem that forum
| software went through... each has their own syntax and
| they are not usually compatible.
|
| HTML, for better or worse, is the syntax we all know by
| heart and is universal.
| masswerk wrote:
| Same here.
| reaperducer wrote:
| I just write the article in the code editor, then go back
| and add the tags.
|
| Seems obvious to me, but maybe because back when I was a
| journalist, that's how we did it. The tags (how and what
| varied by system) triggered chryons and video playback
| and other events.
| stan_rogers wrote:
| The "strong" and "b" tags don't mean the same thing, nor do
| the "em" and "i" tags. HTML, used properly, will tell you
| _why_ the typography appears as it does, which means that
| the meaning isn 't locked up in the typographic conventions
| of the day (which change, often making old documents
| confusing to read, and are not accessible). Markdown is
| lazy.
| franklampard wrote:
| adjective: hand-written written with a pen, pencil, or other
| handheld implement.
|
| ...?
| judge2020 wrote:
| All websites are the result of a human pushing power
| through a cpu and sending low voltage signals to it via a
| keyboard, so in a way all are handmade. That's why so many
| are wondering what qualifies as handmaid to this site's
| author - site builders like Wix-created sites probably
| don't count but do SSGs count? What about using _any_ css
| framework?
| swayvil wrote:
| Tho it's hard to define, it's pretty easy to distinguish.
|
| I think this could be said about much of reality.
| reaperducer wrote:
| _adjective: hand-written written with a pen, pencil, or
| other handheld implement._
|
| Lately I've been writing my personal web pages on my TRS-80
| Model 100. I can hold that in my hands.
| itsamoreh wrote:
| Handmade in the sense that they don't use frameworks like React
| or Angular. Just like how technically a box cake mix cake is
| "homemade" but usually if someone says "homemade cake" they
| made it from scratch.
| pmlnr wrote:
| "handmade" in this context usually refers to writing the raw
| HTML yourself; no framework, no nothing.
| qznc wrote:
| So using Markdown or something similar disqualifies? Even if
| i write the HTML template and generator script myself?
| rzzzt wrote:
| It depends. Did you write the scripting language?
| stephenhuey wrote:
| If you look at the submission form, he excludes "website
| builders" which I think would exclude things like
| Squarespace, Wix, etc. I suppose if one of those builder
| tools let you use Markdown, that would not qualify, but if
| you are using Markdown with something like Hugo or Jekyll,
| that seems legitimately "handmade" to me, but I don't
| operate that site. :)
| lemonberry wrote:
| At least one site is created using Roam Research. Does this
| really qualify as handmade?
|
| https://www.rodrigofranco.com/How_is_this_website_made.html
| cookingoils wrote:
| Thanks for letting me know. Some things slip through the cracks
| and sometimes it's pretty hard to tell when a site is actually
| coded by hand. I'll take a look at the submission in question.
| lemonberry wrote:
| You're welcome. I like the site in question, but it may not
| fit the criteria you're using.
| CA0DA wrote:
| I think https://neocities.org has some of these same vibes,
| except neocities also has hosting.
| icsllaf wrote:
| There are just so many websites on this page, all of which have
| their own art style and their own experiments. Honestly makes me
| feel very small on the internet but also happy that there are so
| many people who do this kinda stuff.
| eplanit wrote:
| I really like a.slow.cab
| imagine99 wrote:
| Yes, me too. I actually wonder how the header graphic was made?
| Looks very nice.
|
| Although I must admit, I have no idea what this site is
| supposed to be. Could be random musings from GPT-3 for all I
| know (even the explainer is very cryptic). But as with all art,
| one probably shouldn't ask too many questions :-)
|
| Edit: Found a small arrow at the bottom that does in fact lead
| to more content. Looks like it's from an actual person after
| all ;-)
| meetapoorvgupta wrote:
| Looks like it got a lot of traffic. The author seems to have
| removed all the links on the homepage and Google and archive.is
| do not seem to have it in their indices either.
| gchokov wrote:
| How do we create a search engine which looks into hand crafted
| sites only? Back to the roots!
| ehonda wrote:
| you should try wiby.org
| mtarasevicius wrote:
| Cool collection, but it seems like it's just modern examples.
| Surprised scaruffi.com is not in this directory
| rchaud wrote:
| Seems like a collection of websites that were manually
| submitted by their creators. Scaruffi has been online for
| decades, I doubt that person would be interested in submitting
| to a website directory.
| bwh2 wrote:
| Cool idea and I submitted my site. You've got a minor bug - on a
| tag page, the submit link goes to /tags/submit.
| cookingoils wrote:
| Thanks for letting me know. Fixed.
| alexchamberlain wrote:
| What definition of handmade does this use?
| marijnz0r wrote:
| Is it possible to pay with a different method than credit card?
| avipars wrote:
| why would it cost $1 to submit?
| oneeyedpigeon wrote:
| > The $1 submission fee goes toward running/maintaining the
| directory (I make about $3-5/month on submissions so it's not
| about the money).
|
| Seems utterly reasonable to me.
| cookingoils wrote:
| Hey, it's Elliott (creator of Gossip's Web, Special Fish
| https://special.fish, and other projects
| (https://elliott.computer). Thanks for checking out Gossips.
| There's a renewed interest in building websites by hand using
| basic but powerful tools (HTML/CSS/a little JavaScript). Gossip's
| is a directory of some of these sites and lets you submit your
| own.
|
| The submission criteria is pretty straight forward (no links to
| social media or website builders). Also, please don't submit your
| latest startup : ) . Personal websites, web experiments, and
| small community sites are all very welcome. The $1 submission fee
| goes toward running/maintaining the directory (I make about
| $3-5/month on submissions so it's not about the money). Happy to
| answer any questions the HN community might have and have a nice
| weekend!
| meowster wrote:
| What is the color picker for?
| oneeyedpigeon wrote:
| Looks like each site is assigned a color which displays as a
| square 'thumbnail' alongside it in listings.
| meowster wrote:
| I don't see any meaning to the colors, so I guess it's
| whatever color you feel represents your site?
| esoter wrote:
| A word of warning: you'll have to browse or crawl these pages
| periodically at minimum.
|
| Best case would be to diff the latest page with various IPs and
| user-agents against the known and then let you know when it
| changes. Someone will inevitably submit a page that looks good,
| then changes later or dynamically depending on datetime, user-
| agent, request IP, etc. to become malicious.
|
| Unfortunately, these are the sorts of problems that many
| companies have to deal with automatically (like Google) or
| manually that startups don't typically.
|
| While you're charging, if someone can get by with paying $1 for
| installing ransomware, they may do it.
|
| It's a neat idea, but it's risky. I like what you've done,
| though, and hope the artisanal webpage index pays for itself
| and more quickly.
| reaperducer wrote:
| Or he could just take people's word that they're honest human
| beings. You know -- default to believing that people are
| good, not evil.
|
| Since he's charging to be on the list, there a very low
| chance that he'll get flooded with bots from China, India,
| and Russia pushing low-quality web sites.
|
| _someone can get by with paying $1 for installing
| ransomware, they may do it._
|
| Or some ransomware company may take over an abandoned domain
| that' s linked from his page. Or some ransomware company may
| buy one of the sites. Or some ransomware company...
| Nevermind. Just don't build anything ever anywhere, because
| of edge cases.
| swayvil wrote:
| I submitted. When does it appear in the directory?
| cookingoils wrote:
| Thanks for submitting. I got quite a few submissions from the
| HN traffic. Going through them now to make sure they meet the
| criteria.
| swayvil wrote:
| Hey there it is. If it was a snake it woulda bit me.
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(page generated 2021-03-13 23:02 UTC)