[HN Gopher] Show HN: Discover the IndieWeb, one blog post at a time
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Show HN: Discover the IndieWeb, one blog post at a time
Inspired by the "Ask HN: Share your personal site" last week, I
finally came around and built a thing I wanted for a long time: a
simple website to randomly explore all the awesome personal blogs
without having to subscribe to them all. So this is what I built
over the weekend. You click a button and indieblog.page will
redirect you to a random page from a personal page... I'm happy to
answer any questions you might have.
Author : splitbrain
Score : 183 points
Date : 2022-04-12 13:11 UTC (9 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (indieblog.page)
(TXT) w3m dump (indieblog.page)
| MrJagil wrote:
| I found http://owensoft.net/v4/item/2924/ Which seems to be just
| a photo of the wendys menu. Quite amusing and probably the most
| "old web" site i've visited in years.
| rodric wrote:
| Now invite the various blogs to which this links to embed it on
| their web pages, and bring back the web ring of old.
| dvtrn wrote:
| I think this is what you're looking for
|
| https://indieweb.xyz
|
| And here's how you link back:
|
| https://indieweb.xyz/howto/en
|
| (Not my site, I'm just a fan of indieweb)
| pmlnr wrote:
| You mean like https://xn--sr8hvo.ws/ and
| https://yesterweb.org/webring/ ? :)
| saperyton wrote:
| Read Something Interesting is very similar, but less focused on
| tech. https://readsomethinginteresting.com
| soco wrote:
| The moment the dev.to nonsense* folk discover you, it's gonna be
| useless.
|
| *Newly dev.to RSS feed is 90% either pill promotion or zero value
| "my first post" notifications. Or posts in languages I don't
| speak and have no way to filter out.
| EamonnMR wrote:
| Must have scraped the 'show me your blog' thread from last week,
| since my blog is already in there.
| AndrewStephens wrote:
| I love stuff like this. I just went to add my own site only to be
| told that somehow my feed was there already. I guess I am
| officially part of the IndieWeb!
| mattrighetti wrote:
| I will try this and see if I discover something nice, cool idea!
|
| Not a long time ago I wanted to build something where users could
| share their favorite RSS feeds/blogs (like Julia Evans does [0])
| so that others could, maybe, find something new and interesting.
| This is a similar concept.
|
| [0]: https://jvns.ca/blogroll/
| kixiQu wrote:
| I would like to advocate making one's OPML files human-
| readable. It can be done [simply] or [ridiculously] -- and then
| the result is aggregatable in its own right because it's an
| established format used by every RSS reader.
|
| [simply]: https://zylstra.org/opml/tonzylstra.opml
| [ridiculously]: https://maya.land/blogroll.opml
| mediocregopher wrote:
| Love this, reminds me quite a bit of stumbleupon.
|
| In putting together my own RSS feed recently, and trying to
| figure out the best way to sync it with all my devices, I
| realized the simplest way was to just turn the aggregated links
| into a webpage and publish that publicly. There's no reason not
| to, and now others can use it as well!
|
| It's at https://news.cryptic.io, if anyone wants to see the
| output. I recommend others do the same if you like.
|
| The difficult part of using RSS is the actual curation part, so
| it's cool to see a trend (2 datapoints is a trend?) of folks
| doing that work up front and sharing it with others.
| mhitza wrote:
| > and trying to figure out the best way to sync it with all my
| devices
|
| Store it as an email?
|
| I generate a daily digest for my subscriptions and have them
| emailed in my inbox.
| b3nji wrote:
| Amazing, I was just thinking, how would I be able to find all
| these wonderful personal sites?
|
| It's like Stumbleupon has been reborn!
|
| And now you have gone and done it. Thank you.
| flobosg wrote:
| > It's like Stumbleupon has been reborn!
|
| My thoughts exactly.
| devmunchies wrote:
| I'd love something like HN for a curated list of blog posts, but
| it's just technical or tech business (e.g. team dynamics,
| leadership, finance, product management, etc) blogs. No news or
| tweets or blurbs, just good high quality writings. Do I just need
| to start curating my own RSS feed?
|
| "Indie" is cool but I just care if it's good. But I guess this is
| just more for fun and child-like exploration, for the love of
| indie
| saperyton wrote:
| Check out Read Something Interesting, which is that exact
| premise. https://readsomethinginteresting.com
| asiachick wrote:
| isn't this effectively the curated list?
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/best
| devmunchies wrote:
| yeah but _" No news or tweets or blurbs, just good high
| quality writings"_
| [deleted]
| csw-001 wrote:
| This is cool! I read almost all my web content via RSS - I'd love
| an RSS feed of random posts from these sources, just to get a
| daily sample and see what's worth following.
| splitbrain wrote:
| That's an interesting idea. Would you expect one RSS item with
| let's say 5 links in the item body? Or 5 RSS items directly
| linking to the original post?
| csw-001 wrote:
| 5 items with direct links for sure.
| jrruethe wrote:
| I agreee that RSS would be awesome. I would prefer 5 RSS
| items with direct links to the original post.
| kevincox wrote:
| I definitely would prefer the second. That way I can read and
| dismiss them one-by-one.
|
| Maybe an option would be to pick a update rate and have
| something like hourly, daily, weekly and monthly feeds. It
| would be a cool way to trickle possibly interesting new blogs
| into my feed reader.
| mawise wrote:
| This would be really cool! A great way to add some
| discoverability to the feed-reader modus operandi.
| splitbrain wrote:
| RSS Feeds added. I may tweak this in the coming days.
| saperyton wrote:
| You might also enjoy Read Something Interesting! Unrelated to HN
| but there are great posts there.
| https://readsomethinginteresting.com
| bitwize wrote:
| This reminds me of the What's New and What's Cool buttons at the
| top of old-school Netscape.
| byteski wrote:
| cool idea! i like to explore someone's websites sometimes.
| legrande wrote:
| Anyone feel amazed at how many blogs are under a {user}.github.io
| domain? Github is not just about open source, it's a blogging
| platform too. People forget that.
| MaxLeiter wrote:
| I did some scraping of the same post as OP and found that 146
| (21%) of the HN comments on the "share your personal site" were
| github pages. It's popular!
| mxuribe wrote:
| I feel somewhat torn on folks having a blog hosted on
| {user}.github.io; well, at least an indie blog. One of the fun
| points of having an indie website is not depending/nor hosting
| it on a centralized service...though, i can totally acknowledge
| that sometimes cost is a factor. So for some folks - to avoid
| hosting/tech. costs - leveraging a free, though central
| platform might be one of the few ways to have a web presence.
| Then again, i would miuch rather live in a world where there
| are tons of indie websites, even if they have to live on
| github's infrastructure; the more indie, the better!
| MisterSandman wrote:
| This could do with a language setting, but not a huge deal.
| rodolphoarruda wrote:
| I have submitted my website's URL but didn't get any confirmation
| afterwards. Maybe it's just me and my browser, but it would be
| nice to have something like "ok, got that link! Thanks!"
| somewhere.
| splitbrain wrote:
| You should get exactly that. It might take a few seconds as I
| try to find the RSS feed right away... Just try submitting
| again, it will tell you if the link is already in the
| submissions.
| rodolphoarruda wrote:
| Yes, it told me it has been added already. Thanks.
| KaoruAoiShiho wrote:
| We used to call this a "blog-ring"
| aendruk wrote:
| It still is; [1] is listed as a source in the FAQ.
|
| [1] I typed <spider web emoji><ring emoji> but HN ate it.
| Apparently the name of this webring is unspeakable here.
| [deleted]
| teucris wrote:
| This is such a great idea. My only feedback is to try and add
| non-technical stuff too.
|
| How are you collecting sites to include in this?
| q-base wrote:
| Now that explains it. I was just looking at the stats from my
| WordPress site and found traffic from a indieblog.page - I
| thought it was some shady marketing page and ignored it. Here 10
| minutes later I am on HN and see this.
|
| Great idea and probs for shipping!
| mrzool wrote:
| Clicked several times on that button and this is what I've got:
|
| - Performant A/B Testing with Cloudflare Workers
|
| - 12 Useful Tools for DevOps
|
| - Simplest alternative IDs with Rails
|
| - How do I update my website using the iPad
|
| - Certified Blockchain Professional - Module 03: Blockchain
| Mining
|
| - Principles for the Metaverse
|
| - Overloading & Creating New Operators In Swift 5
|
| - Is Agility Related to Commitment? - Money Flows Part II
|
| Is the "IndieWeb" basically just English-written personal blogs
| from HN folks now? I'd have hoped to find a bit more of a diverse
| landscape.
| aendruk wrote:
| The sources of this database are largely outlets of self-
| promotion. I'd consider my own site part of the IndieWeb--I
| literally developed it at an IndieWebCamp--but you won't find
| it listed here due to that sampling bias.
| naravara wrote:
| I had the same observation. And I suspect the answer may be
| "yes." These are the only people remaining with the skillsets
| and inclination to maintain a personal website. The rest, if
| the mood strikes them to start a blog, will go for a Medium or
| Substack page. And even those are probably the 90th percentile
| users. The rest are just going to make big Facebook or Reddit
| posts.
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| manuelmoreale wrote:
| I share your sentiment. I maintain a similar project
| (https://theforest.link) and the vast, vast majority of the
| submissions I get are dev blogs, written in English.
|
| Why is that the case, that I don't know. I have two theories
| though.
|
| Theory one is that these are niche projects, and niche projects
| are discovered by people who browse the web in "unique" ways
| and those people tend to be, for the most part, developers.
|
| The other theory is that in 2022 web, it's developer that for
| the most part still run personal indie blogs. The majority of
| people have moved over social media or more recently on things
| like substack.
|
| EDIT: to add an extra bit of detail from my experience. While
| running projects like this one it's hard to decide what to do
| with sites that are written not in a language that you speak
| because you risk "promoting" all sorts of random stuff that
| maybe you don't want to help promoting. So it's safer to stick
| with content you understand and that ends up being English
| mrzool wrote:
| Hey man! Been following your blog for years. Always enjoy
| your writing.
| splitbrain wrote:
| Unfortunatly, it's currently heavily biased towards the HN
| crowd because of the sources I used to initially seed the list.
| rodolphoarruda wrote:
| Just for the records. I have added mine, which is written
| mainly in Brazilian Portuguese and has low tech content that
| derives from my day to day observations of this crazy world.
| weird-eye-issue wrote:
| Is that good though? This seems to be for an English speaking
| audience
| Shared404 wrote:
| I appreciate it - I know a little Portuguese, but even
| other languages I would support being added.
|
| Google translate is usually good enough, and there's a lot
| of content that is worth getting further perspectives from.
| mawise wrote:
| I really like a lot of what the IndieWeb community has come up
| with. There is a big focus on building things yourself within
| that community which means a lot of the members of the
| community are very dev-heavy. https://micro.blog seems to be
| the public-facing, easy-to-use platform that adopts most of the
| IndieWeb technology but for a non-tech crowd--very different
| community that you might also enjoy perusing.
| BaseballPhysics wrote:
| Oh man, it's StumbleUpon for the indieweb! I love it! I'll
| definitely using this in my spare time. My own site is part of
| the webring but I do love just being able to click a button and
| land on something surprising.
|
| Thanks for sharing!
| floren wrote:
| Looks great, look forward to poking around some more. Hope it
| doesn't get destroyed by spammers!
| Vox_Leone wrote:
| >>Inspired by the "Ask HN: Share your personal site" last week,
|
| I see you scraped the links on that thread [which was the smart
| thing to do]. Cool project. Good luck.
| splitbrain wrote:
| Luckily MaxLeiter already did that for me:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30963947
| marginalia_nu wrote:
| I've been dabbling in this general field as well, I do think
| there's new things to be made here. StumbleUpon was great, but I
| think it can be greater still.
|
| I started with <https://search.marginalia.nu/explore/random> but
| then I made <https://explore.marginalia.nu/> which I feel is the
| superior version.
| Etheryte wrote:
| As a heads up, it isn't compliant with the ePrivacy Directive
| (aka "the EU cookie law") that the site can't be used without
| giving consent. Consent must be given freely. If the cookie is
| purely functional and the site can't function without it, then
| consent is not required. If the cookie is optional then consent
| is required but it can't be forced.
| marginalia_nu wrote:
| The cookie is purely functional and necessary to the
| functionality, but I'll still ask for consent even if is not
| required.
| Etheryte wrote:
| It is not consent if the only option is to say yes.
| marginalia_nu wrote:
| I want the visitor to be informed that clicking the
| button places a cookie on their computer and why that is
| so that clicking the button is an informed choice. The
| other option is to not click the button.
| Etheryte wrote:
| To try and perhaps explain a different way, that's
| exactly what's not legal. According to the directive,
| consent must be free, and sites must also be usable if no
| consent is given. The setup where you either accept
| cookies or you can't use the site at all is exactly
| what's disallowed.
| marginalia_nu wrote:
| Right, but the site can't be used without the cookie
| since it's required for the functionality. Am I really
| not allowed to inform my visitors of this fact (even
| though I'm not required to)?
| mhitza wrote:
| If you'd like you can replace the "Cookie Consent" text
| with "Cookie Notice", and "Consent To The Cookie And
| Begin" with a single "Begin".
|
| I'm not a lawyer to understand the implication of asking
| consent on something that doesn't require consent. Sounds
| like a non-issue to me, and yak shaving. I would doubt
| that anyone would bat an eye at that.
|
| However, you that notice also states that "and which
| websites you would like to see more of.". I'm not sure
| how that information is stored in the backend and how
| often is deleted, but that could be considered profiling.
|
| You could have users consent to the preference
| information only, standard history cookies being
| implicit/essential functionality.
|
| Alternatively 2, just change the text to ~ "this
| functionality essentially requires cookie to avoid
| repetition, and drilling down based on preferences", with
| a "sounds good to me" button. Might want to have cookies
| expire on browser close.
|
| TL;DR don't sweat it.
| [deleted]
| ancientsofmumu wrote:
| Random drive-by user feedback: I like Random density better -
| the number of sites I don't want to visit is greater than the
| number which I'm interested in, Explore is too modal/singular
| at a time. The 20x density of the Random page is quicker to
| scan and discard results within seconds to try and find
| something I'm willing to click into that piques my curiosity,
| as I may reload the Random page a few times to get a hit I
| like.
| marginalia_nu wrote:
| Yeah I'm not planning on retiring any of the services. They
| require virtually no resources or maintenance, odds are I'll
| make even more attempts at exploring this domain in the
| future.
|
| Having both an exhaustive link database from the search
| engine, as well as 300,000 screenshots makes for _a lot_ of
| opportunities to experiment.
| [deleted]
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(page generated 2022-04-12 23:01 UTC)