[HN Gopher] Show HN: I built a frontpage for personal blogs
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Show HN: I built a frontpage for personal blogs
With social media and now AI, its important to keep the indie web
alive. There are many people who write frequently. Blogosphere
tries to highlight them by fetching the recent posts from personal
blogs across many categories. There are two versions: Minimal (HN-
inspired, fast, static): https://text.blogosphere.app/ Non-minimal:
https://blogosphere.app/ If you don't find your blog (or your
favorite ones), please add them. I will review and approve it.
Author : ramkarthikk
Score : 604 points
Date : 2026-04-03 12:33 UTC (10 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (text.blogosphere.app)
(TXT) w3m dump (text.blogosphere.app)
| chistev wrote:
| Great job.
|
| Submitted my blog.
| ramkarthikk wrote:
| Thank you. I approved your blog. Quick note: It looks like your
| feed items don't have published date which makes it hard to
| store and sort recent posts.
| chistev wrote:
| >Thank you. I approved your blog.
|
| Can't find it.
|
| > It looks like your feed items don't have published date
| which makes it hard to store and sort recent posts
|
| Okay, you mean the RSS feed?
| obsidianbases1 wrote:
| Something like this is very much needed.
|
| I hope to see more things like this.
|
| What would be really cool is if there was a personalized
| algorithm (for you page) that stored data and processed locally.
| ramkarthikk wrote:
| Thank you. I wanted to mostly stay away from algorithmic feed
| to stay true to RSS. On the non-minimal version of the site,
| you can sign up and follow blogs to have a "For You" tab, but
| it's still recent posts from blogs you follow.
| Miraltar wrote:
| Instead or in addition to following blogs, what I'd love to
| have is a way to filter out those I don't like.
| obsidianbases1 wrote:
| Local keyword exclusions (to keep the server requirement
| minimal) might be pretty high impact.
| ramraj07 wrote:
| give people the ability to curate their own collections and
| publish them
| ramkarthikk wrote:
| On the non-minimal version, you can signup for an account and
| follow blogs (curate your fav blogs). I will add an option to
| making your list public.
| Hard_Space wrote:
| Incredible that we are regressing back to webrings and hand-
| curated lists like this, both of which I remember well. That's
| not a criticism! I guess that the quality-drop in search wasn't
| quite enough to make it happen, but the advent of AI content
| predomination will be.
| nate wrote:
| Similarly, I feel like book publishers are about to become a
| thriving business soon again. With any book being most likely
| just a bot creation, trusting "Random House" sounds like a
| thing more of us will start paying attention to to make sure
| we're buying a human made thing.
| RobotToaster wrote:
| That's assuming publishers don't decide to replace all their
| authors with AI.
| avanwyk wrote:
| I wouldn't even call this a regression. Hand curated and edited
| feels like the future I want right now.
| coldpie wrote:
| > Incredible that we are regressing back to webrings and hand-
| curated lists like this
|
| One of these hand-curated blog aggregator websites pops up on
| HN about every month. They're cool and good on the author for
| trying to solve the problem, but it seems like the wrong
| approach to me. They're too disorganized, a random collection
| of mostly tech- and politics-related writing from random people
| with zero way to vet the _quality_ of the writing. They also
| require the creator /owner to care about the project for the
| long-term, which is unlikely. I never revisit the aggregators.
|
| I wonder if webrings are a better fix here. The low-tech
| version could be to put a static-URL page on my blog that links
| to other blogs I like, with a short description. Then people
| who find my blog interesting might also enjoy the blogs that I
| enjoy. That could be powerful if it caught on widely.
|
| Maybe a clever person could come up with some kind of higher-
| tech version that could present a more interesting & consistent
| interface to users, encourage blogs to link back to each other,
| and also solve the dead-link problem.
| Wojtkie wrote:
| Couldn't you technically crawl all these blogs for their
| "blog's I'm reading" and create a social graph? You could
| start vetting based on how often other blogs link to that
| one, sort of like an impact factor in research.
| travisjungroth wrote:
| That sounds like PageRank, Google's original algorithm.
| cosmicgadget wrote:
| I think Marginalia does bidirectional link analysis if that
| helps.
| RobotToaster wrote:
| I'm honestly not sure what these do that federated link
| aggregators like lemmy/mbin/piefed don't already do.
| glenstein wrote:
| It's a good question, and I think worth trying to answer. I
| think the key thing is that discovery is derived from a
| curated index rather than social link posting and voting,
| and the darwinian race to the bottom/popularity/campaigning
| that drives link aggregators is replaced by a more
| deliberate human curation with all of its good and bad. You
| find new things, you feel a slower pace, but maybe get
| bored more frequently too.
| flir wrote:
| I think we're going to reinvent Google's "circles" mechanism
| from G+. We all (well, the terminally online, at least) are
| going to be part of several more or less overlapping
| villages, and the people in those villages are going to trust
| each other to not be bad faith actors. Everything else...
| everything that tries to scale... everything public...
| wasteland.
|
| Something something Dunbar's number, Tragedy of the commons.
| Yokohiii wrote:
| Interesting. Each time I think about how we could reboot
| the (social) web I have this on mind. I don't want exposure
| to everything, so kind of whitelisting the
| contacts/peoples/blogs is the first thought. I guess it
| could work to carve your own cozy echo chamber that once in
| a while lets something new in. The conflict I cannot
| penetrate is that some things (could) need a larger
| exposure surface. I.e. OS projects, maintainers that will
| naturally generate a large following. There are also
| individuals that want to maximize exposure, mostly for the
| sake of it. The latter could be neglected but the former
| not. That leaves an natural backdoor to turn any networking
| into the same cesspools we have right now.
|
| I am not sure, maybe we have to subdue to the fact that a
| massive focus on a single thing will turn out into
| something bad. Considering the importance of Linus Torvalds
| to the software world, it can even work. He isn't really
| digitally socialized in a "modern" sense and he still is
| networked enough to manage an high impact project. Sure he
| is networked via the linux ecosystem, but that walls him
| away from direct interactions with the general public.
| couscouspie wrote:
| It seems like many people have the same or similar ideas.
| I was thinking of using a tool similar to bookmark-
| managers as the foundation of a new web. Where you
| subscribe to RSS-feeds of specific (or clusters of)
| people to specific topics as the "follow" primitive and
| you publish your own feed(s), which bookmark-managers
| btw. already allow. The missing pieces are commenting on
| the feeds of friends and a layer of federated ML for
| ranking, which the user controls by simple sliders that
| set the mark for dimensions like retrieval-vs-discovery,
| hightrust-vs-highnovelty, recency-vs-trendingimpetus and
| so on.
| landdate wrote:
| The few niche social media websites I have seen able to
| prevent rapid deterioration in quality without dying in
| active user count typically have a high barrier of entry.
| Reminds me evilzone one of the few decent hacking
| websites on the clearnet that actually had a decent
| community. They had some challenge you had to complete I
| can't even remember what it was, but it prevented new
| users from joining unless they could solve it. Was very
| simple iirc but it stopped large amount of the skids/hf
| peeps.
| gibsonsmog wrote:
| I think a web ring combined with some kind of web of trust
| style system would be nice. Ideally they could be both
| centralized where an initial creator holds the keys to what's
| allowed and decentralized where it just sort of exists. I
| haven't quite been able to sketch out a reasonable way to
| keep sites persistent and consistent except DNS records,
| though. DNS of course making it hard or impossible for
| smaller and less tech-savvy creators while also having it's
| own issues regardless.
|
| I'm a big web ring person though so I might be biased and
| trying to use a hammer in place of a screwdriver.
| Imustaskforhelp wrote:
| > I wonder if webrings are a better fix here. The low-tech
| version could be to put a static-URL page on my blog that
| links to other blogs I like, with a short description. Then
| people who find my blog interesting might also enjoy the
| blogs that I enjoy. That could be powerful if it caught on
| widely.
|
| I have been doing this by linking my linkhut profile with
| either my profile picture (I used to) or just mentioning it
| in comments like I am doing right now
|
| https://ln.ht/~imafh , Although not really entirely to blogs,
| I have this place to recommend cool musicians,projects,links
| that I have found and I write a short note in all of them as
| to why I really liked the link. But with tags you can
| especially have a #blog #webring and use linkhut with notes
| feature
|
| What do you think about linkhut, I had submitted it to
| hackernews as a submission after finding it but there wasn't
| really much traction to it, I am not going to lie when I say
| this when this feature really resonated with me so much.
|
| I hope more people come to know about linkhut, I hope I am
| doing my part in making people know about it :)
| cosmicgadget wrote:
| That is a cool project. Sorry to see it not get out of
| /new.
| Imustaskforhelp wrote:
| I have submitted it again after reading your comment. I
| definitely feel like certain discussions can happen on
| linkhut side which will be both interesting to read/write
| on.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47629452
| palata wrote:
| > The low-tech version could be to put a static-URL page on
| my blog that links to other blogs I like
|
| I think OpenRing does that? [1]. Not my blog, just linking
| for illustration, but you can see how it looks here at the
| bottom of the page:
| https://drewdevault.com/2020/02/06/Dependencies-and-
| maintain...
|
| [1]: https://git.sr.ht/~sircmpwn/openring
| Lerc wrote:
| I like the idea of tree curation. People view the branch of
| their interest. Anyone can submit anything to any point but
| are unlikely to be noticed if they submit closer to the
| trunk. Curated lists submit their lists to curators closer to
| the trunk.
|
| The furthest branches have the least volume (need filters to
| stop bulk submission to all levels, but still allow some
| multi submission). It allows curators to contribute in a
| small field. They then submit their preferred items to the
| next level up. If that curator likes it they send it further.
| A leaf level curator can bypass any curator above but with
| the same risk of being ignored if the higher level node
| receives too much volume.
|
| You could even run fully AI branches where their picks would
| only make all the way up by convincing a human curator
| somewhere above them of the quality. If they don't do a good
| job they would just be ignored. People can listen to them
| direct if they are so inclined
| cosmicgadget wrote:
| > people who find my blog interesting might also enjoy the
| blogs that I enjoy. That could be powerful if it caught on
| widely.
|
| Imho this is better at the blog _post_ level of granularity.
| Sometimes I will like someone 's writing style, much more
| often I will be interested in topical recommended reading.
| cxr wrote:
| > The low-tech version could be to put a static-URL page on
| my blog that links to other blogs I like, with a short
| description. Then people who find my blog interesting might
| also enjoy the blogs that I enjoy. That could be powerful if
| it caught on widely.
|
| That has both caught on, is well-supported by WordPress and
| lots of other tools since forever, and is notable enough that
| there's a glossary entry for it on Wikipedia:
|
| <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blogroll>
|
| It's partly why OPML exists.
| armchairhacker wrote:
| Aggregate the aggregators, then add a search box and ranking
| algorithm. You'll have something like early-internet search,
| because these blogs are reminiscent of the early internet,
| and higher signal-noise (even if you think it's still low, at
| least there's less obvious marketing).
| blackbrokkoli wrote:
| Instead of having that one god-author who has to keep
| maintaining everything, I think a better option may be to
| have the whole comprehensively community-maintained. Which
| opens up the question: How do you open source structured data
| and maintenance?
| sneak wrote:
| I know people don't like to hear this, but blockchains are
| great for publishing an append only public log that gets
| widely replicated.
| mlinsey wrote:
| I feel like every new iteration of ways to find good content
| online: webrings, blogrolls, user upvoting/downvoting, giving
| everyone their own microblog to share interesting links, ML
| to learn your own preferences by your behavior - they _all_
| worked really well at first, but then eroded significantly
| once people figured out how to game them.
|
| The economic incentive is overwhelming to corrupt these
| signals, either directly (link sharing schemes, upvote rings,
| bots to like your content) or indirectly (shaping your
| content itself to have the shape of what will be promoted,
| regardless of its quality).
|
| What you almost want is to use any of these ideas and hope
| for it to catch on widely enough in your small niche to be
| useful, but not so much that it comes an optimization target.
| KPGv2 wrote:
| Smolnet might be the answer. There really isn't a feasible
| mechanism for monetizing it. At worst, you could have some
| text ad embedded. No images. Minimal semantic markup
| (links, lists, quotes, code, generic text) in the case of
| gemini/gemtext.
| KPGv2 wrote:
| Thanks to a post here a week or two ago, I started looking at
| Gemini and the Smolnet in general. It looks really appealing
| to me. No layout. Just the data and accompanying meta
| semantics (this is a list item, this is a quote, etc.).
| There's even a Geocities-like hosting service that is
| completely free and without ads, and it provides a Gemtext ->
| HTML conversion for people accessing via HTTP instead of
| gemini:
| chromacity wrote:
| I think the simple reason why small web / webring sites don't
| work is that if you're in the mood of "let's pull the handle
| on the internet slot machine and see what it surprises me
| with today", then social media does a better job. Without
| fail, it gives you something to be outraged about or
| impressed with.
|
| And if you're looking for something specific - "I want to
| learn category theory" - then you don't visit a small web
| site because the content you're looking for is probably not
| on any woefully short, hand-curated list of URLs. So you do a
| normal web search (or ask your chatbot).
|
| Another problem with web rings is that if you're hopping
| sites at random, you more often than not end up someplace
| weird in 3-5 hops. I guess it's the internet version of six
| degrees of separation: you're always at most six clicks away
| from neo-Nazis or SEO spammers.
| renegat0x0 wrote:
| I follow awesome lists. These are curated lists of software. It
| reverts google indexing, because search is awful.
|
| About personal blogs... I have many many personal blogs in my
| repository. Around 4k. Respository below. The real problem is
| to find quality stuff. You can have millions of them, but if
| they are not worth my time, then what is the point?
|
| I cannot verify and decide what is good manually. Obviously.
|
| I think we cannot also rely on Google to provide rating, nor
| any corporation.
|
| So I have my own ratings, because at least I will be able to
| find what I found worth before.
|
| Link to my repo:
|
| https://github.com/rumca-js/Internet-Places-Database
| blackbrokkoli wrote:
| Do you have any idea what killed webrings?
|
| It seems to be simply a great idea...like...should we bring it
| back? Could we?
| Mezzie wrote:
| Search.
|
| There was some overlap between the webring age and the early
| search age, but once search became entrenched and useful,
| webrings faded. Blogrolls survived for a little bit longer,
| but it was search.
|
| Specifically, once search became the way you found the first
| page/site to begin with. Before search as default, you found
| sites in a bunch of scattershot ways: advertisements, word of
| mouth, lists in books, or lists on websites that updated
| periodically (that you had to have found/heard about one of
| the other ways) for example. Then you crawled out from there
| because that was the only way to find things. You had to
| either know the URL or use a link. And not all of the
| links/sites in the webrings were good.
|
| Once search got good enough, people found the initial site
| via search and instead of taking their time clicking through
| a webring which might at any point lead them somewhere dead
| or useless, it was quicker to go _back_ to the search page to
| find something else.
|
| Page access went from being a chained together web of back
| and forth links to a 2 step process of search -> page.
| voxleone wrote:
| We're heading to a future where (when) friction is a luxury.
| Anyways, I thank the organizers for the rare opportunity. Long
| live Blogosphere.app, long live blogs.
| sailfast wrote:
| I love the idea of returning to this to be honest. What was
| missing was the big awesome list of RSS feeds haha.
|
| This is actually a great idea. The key is to actually continue
| to do this and not gatekeep and charge money for promoted crap
| and add algorithms once it seems profitable to do so. If that
| happens we're just recreating the wheel!
| ml- wrote:
| Nice job. A small suggestion, unless I completely missed it, an
| option to filter by post / blog language.
| ramkarthikk wrote:
| Great feedback. I will add search to this minimal version. The
| non-minimal version comes with search. Filter by language is
| something neither has and will be a great addition.
| setnone wrote:
| This is great. I'm curious what's your vision on adding comments?
| ramkarthikk wrote:
| If you're referring to comments on the website, I plan to keep
| it minimal (the text version is a static site).
|
| If you're referring to comments on blogs in general, I have
| many thoughts. Back in the day, comments used to be how you
| connected with people and let other people find you. It also
| came with spam (spam plugins could only do so much).
|
| With the rise of static site generators, most people don't have
| comments on their blogs now. It is something I miss though.
| AndrewStephens wrote:
| I haven't had comments on my blog for over a decade now and I
| don't miss them. For every useful and informative comment I
| got several spammy or rude reply. Anyone who wants to let me
| know something about my blog can message me on social media.
|
| I've seen blogs that do not host comments themselves but
| instead automatically surface social media (usually mastodon)
| comments which I think is a useful technique.
| paulnpace wrote:
| > Anyone who wants to let me know something about my blog
| can message me on social media.
|
| But, can they?
| ramkarthikk wrote:
| Yes, unfortunately spam and rude replies come with
| comments. I also don't have comments on my blog. I instead
| have one of those email masking services that allows to
| people to email me (and I have found this effective).
| l72 wrote:
| Isn't that that point of POSSE[1]? Host your blog, post a
| link to it on social sites like Mastodon, and let the
| conversation happen on Mastodon.
|
| [1] https://indieweb.org/POSSE
| bookofjoe wrote:
| I've had comments (open, anonymous, no screening) on my
| blog since it started in 2004. Back in the day when it was
| very popular, most of my blog posts were the result of
| reader tips/advice/heads-up/etc. I have to work MUCH harder
| now that comments have pretty much dried up.
| setnone wrote:
| My literal brain pictured blogosphere's frontpage as
| something with users, rankings and comments on the websibe.
|
| But moderation and spam are still the hardest problems
| indeed.
| Siecje wrote:
| There is cusdis[1] for comments on a static site.
|
| 1: https://cusdis.com/
| AndrewStephens wrote:
| I love this (and submitted my blog) - people bemoan the death of
| the Old Web(tm) but in reality there is still heaps of great
| content being created.
| SirFatty wrote:
| Did you use Frontpage to create your frontpage?
| reconnecting wrote:
| <meta name="generator" content="FrontPage 4.0">
| cr125rider wrote:
| Then add A BUNCH of extra XML to bloat the page nicely
| reconnecting wrote:
| Back in the day, MS FrontPage was indeed synonymous with
| nested and unreliable page structure.
|
| I wish I could go back and tell them it is nothing compared
| to what passes for web output in the 21st century.
| postalcoder wrote:
| If anyone looking for something even more minimalist, give the HN
| x Small Web RSS feed a try
|
| https://hcker.news/feeds/atom?period=day&limit=50&smallweb=t...
| randusername wrote:
| Great work, I haven't updated my public site in years while I
| waited for the LLM stuff to play out, but you've inspired me to
| put it back out there and submit.
| mmargenot wrote:
| Very cool! This was a good impetus to actually add RSS to my
| blog.
| sebastianconcpt wrote:
| Yeah we need to make curated human signals stronger.
| Biologist123 wrote:
| Nice. I can see a version of this working for ever more niche
| areas. Curated reading lists for areas of interest. At which
| point a curated list of curated lists becomes viable!
| jasoneckert wrote:
| This is great, thanks! It sort of feels like browsing for gems in
| a used bookstore and stumbling onto authentic, personal writing.
| I'm always up for that, and plan on spending plenty of time
| exploring the list.
|
| I've submitted mine as well - cheers!
| glenstein wrote:
| >It sort of feels like browsing for gems in a used bookstore
| and stumbling onto authentic, personal writing
|
| I don't know that I've heard a better description of the thing
| the so-called small web is about than that. It's the clearest
| answer to the "why" of having a small web of discoverable
| personal blogs and sites.
| ramkarthikk wrote:
| That is such a lovely way to put it. Do you mind if I add it to
| the about page and link to this comment?
| jasoneckert wrote:
| Of course not - please do :-)
| nextaccountic wrote:
| Question, is this strictly chronological, or is there anything at
| all to make this an "algorithmic feed" like HN, reddit, twitter,
| or facebook? (list is roughly in the order of less shitty to more
| shitty, but note that none of them are chronological, unlike,
| say, a RSS reader aggregating some set of blogs)
| ramkarthikk wrote:
| This is strictly chronological. No voting, no algorithm.
| dchuk wrote:
| Very clean site, well done. I've built something similar, but it
| also has an algorithmic front page option as well based on the
| "standard" algorithm from Reddit/HN: https://engineered.at
|
| I also have it wired up to gpt nano for topic extraction and
| summary creation per post, if you register for an account (free)
| you can also follow sources and topics to fine tune things.
|
| I have a big list of features to continue adding to it, like an
| ability to "claim" your site so you can get some analytics from
| the site, and potentially to boost your site in the algorithm.
| Might also add a jobs board.
|
| If you're interested, while this site is closed source, the feed
| monitoring rails engine is open source:
| https://github.com/dchuk/source_monitor
| Yokohiii wrote:
| Not sure if you want feedback on this, but mine is free.
|
| The lists are impenetrable for my eye, I think an key mistake
| is that you don't use an accent color for titles in lists (i.e.
| look at a google serp).
|
| That you don't directly link the content, felt like an offense,
| followed by a slap in the face looking at an AI generated
| summary.
|
| The layout feels too reddit and too industrialized and the way
| you plan to progress the project, rings my "pet project to slam
| ad's on" bells.
|
| I think the pure intent of OPs site naturally makes it more
| approachable and likeable.
| lemiffe wrote:
| Great idea! Could you add a "music" category please for blogs?
| danielszlaski wrote:
| Nice and clean.
| LostMyLogin wrote:
| Love this! New homepage for me. Do you have a buy me coffee
| button to help keep it live?
| glenstein wrote:
| Right! My concern with these tools is sometimes they are too
| good for this world and likely to live a few months.
| ramkarthikk wrote:
| Appreciate it :) I don't have one. This is hosted on Cloudflare
| as a static site and a cron that runs on a $5 VM (that also
| hosts other things). So it doesn't cost me much to keep it
| alive other than the domain cost. I built it this way
| intentionally so that I can keep this running forever.
| glenstein wrote:
| Love this! I very much appreciate the inclusion of a lightweight
| version, as I think _lightweight_ discovery for blogs and the
| small web is where good tools and apps are needed.
|
| Also, given that the lightweight version is very hn styled format
| it naturally leads my brain to imagining a version with upvotes
| and commenters (which may be a good or a bad thing) but with the
| link submission part automated. Not necessarily the intent here
| but it was the first time that particular combination of
| possibilities occurred to me as a way to do things.
|
| Also curious about how these blogs are indexed/reviewed. Is the
| list ever pruned over time due to inactivity?
| ramkarthikk wrote:
| Thank you. The initial list was from blogroll.org (mentioned in
| the about page, and I emailed the person who built that). From
| then on, I review every submission that happens via the form.
|
| The scheduler flags blogs that fail and doesn't try to fetch
| after a few tries. I'm still working on an effective way to re-
| review and prune. Open to any feedback.
| glenstein wrote:
| I suppose my dream would be that the protocolization of this
| from back in the day gets revived in some way. Like a google
| pagecrawl style index built up from blogrolls (though I don't
| know if the blogroll itself was ever literally protocol-
| ized), combined with some checking of RSS feeds for activity.
| Or webrings, or something else.
|
| Though in some respects these are less smart than what you're
| already doing, but I would like to think there's an elegant
| way to make an index emerge organically to minimize the
| editorial burden of any one person.
| thesuitonym wrote:
| I'd say a periodic job that looks at the last update of all
| your blogs, and removes those that haven't updated in over a
| year would be generally agreeable.
|
| If you want to be exceptionally kind, you can also email the
| submitter and tell them their blog has been removed due to
| inactivity, so they'll remember to submit if they start
| blogging again.
| bovermyer wrote:
| There's also this: https://minifeed.net/global
|
| However, I think (text.)Blogosphere has a nicer interface,
| personally. Maybe I'm just used to HN.
| Imustaskforhelp wrote:
| Yes!! I found a new website to use :-)
|
| I just hope if you can add dark-mode, I use hackernews essential
| which adds dark mode and more features which I really like in
| hackernews, Perhaps something like this can be added but overall
| I really like it!
|
| You have (essentially) just made something which I imagined 2
| years ago:
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41789661: Ask HN: Are you
| interested in a Hacker News alternative which doesnt focus on AI
| (Oct 9 2024)
|
| My point, which has only grown to an even larger degree is that
| Hackernews has too many AI discussions, which both feels a bit
| fomo to me and also I am seeing AI generated blog posts and
| comments now on Hackernews as well.
|
| At some point, I want a website where I can talk about the more
| human aspects, some occasional AI mention is fine but not if a
| quarter or half of front page is hackernews and some genuinely
| nice projects don't get the attention :(
|
| I had joined hackernews to read those content pieces and fell in
| love with the human discussion aspect but now there are
| definitely moments of browsing hackernews which makes me feel as
| to what I had written in the ask HN
|
| my last line within the ask HN was: I just want people who don't
| want the latest ai hype to gather around and discuss some other
| cool things which are "not" AI. This kind of fits into that
|
| Adding my submissions of blog-posts into it in sometime :) See
| you there!
| rednafi wrote:
| This is great. But I've bookmarked at least 10 of these
| aggregators over the years, and I never revisit any of them.
| Partly because I don't have the time to browse and discover new
| content.
|
| I also don't read the blog spam from prolific writers who pop up
| here every two days, especially the low-quality ones constantly
| yapping about AI. So the number of blogs I revisit is a handful,
| and I have a page on my site listing them [1]. Some of the blogs
| I've listed also have backlinks to my site. It's super simple and
| works fairly well for me. Plus there's rss.
|
| [1]: https://rednafi.com/blogroll/
| efilife wrote:
| This doesn't have an RSS feed? bummer
| gorfian_robot wrote:
| yeah +12 if it had an rss feed
| ramkarthikk wrote:
| It's the next item on the list I plan to add. Likely will be
| adding it today.
| Kye wrote:
| Variety! I appreciate that it's not all tech writing from tech
| blogs from people in tech like almost every blog list/aggregator
| thing on HN.
| arrty88 wrote:
| super dope. now make it infinite scroll and put ads all over the
| place! /s
| joenot443 wrote:
| I love it.
|
| I'd love a search bar and maybe a means to sort by popularity
| (however you define it.)
|
| I like that it's free and clean and direct; I hope it remains
| that way!
| BrokenCogs wrote:
| Now please build a frontpage for all the frontpages on blogs
| colejhudson wrote:
| Lovely!
|
| Those who enjoy this might also like:
|
| - https://kagi.com/smallweb
|
| - https://blogroll.org/
|
| - https://minifeed.net/welcome
|
| - https://ooh.directory/
| peterspath wrote:
| https://powrss.com
|
| and https://slashpages.net is also a nice way to discover new
| blogs...
| bryanhogan wrote:
| Any plans on adding a way to filter out "lower quality" posts
| which usually dominate chronologically sorted post lists?
|
| And, possibly a way to filter type of content more in-depth than
| just one category?
| ramkarthikk wrote:
| No plans to add a filter for "lower quality" since that takes
| away from the ethos of RSS. Certainly looking to add more ways
| to filter. Open to ideas.
| kypro wrote:
| It's refreshing to to see something intentionally uncurated.
|
| I think "low quality" content has it's place. A lot of my
| favourite blogs back in the day could be considered "low
| quality", but for whatever reason I liked them and read their
| stuff... Same was true of my own blog. It wasn't particularly
| high quality but back then even a lowish quality blog would
| still occasionally be surfaced on Google if the right key
| words were searched for.
|
| I miss this about modern YouTube too... I used to love
| watching content from small creators even if their content
| was "lower quality", but it's so hard to discover that type
| of content today.
|
| Everywhere you go there is an algorithm pushing you towards
| larger and more professional creators. And that can be fine,
| but it's nice to have some balance.
| BizarroLand wrote:
| If you think about it, Shakespeare's first poem was
| probably crap. If his entire career were judged from that,
| then we wouldn't have Hamlet.
| krapp wrote:
| "quality" is something you care about if you want to virtue
| signal your professional or intellectual capability,
| usually as part of a monetization scheme. Hacker News cares
| so much about quality because this forum is attached to a
| billion dollar startup incubator, and for many people here
| their persona is business. Posting on substack is business
| for most people. Posting on medium is business for most
| people. "Quality" is just another kind of influencer
| culture.
|
| Writing blogs shouldn't be about marketing and reading
| blogs shouldn't be about maximizing information density.
| The vast _vast_ majority of blogs on the old web that
| everyone yearns to return to weren 't "high quality." You
| were just writing about whatever, likely in a style that
| would get you downvoted on HN for being insufficiently
| substantive, and if you were lucky someone else might read
| it.
|
| I wouldn't even call it "low quality" so much as "non-
| commercial."
| _HMCB_ wrote:
| Superb! Thank you. Psychologically, the minimal version feels
| perfect; as if it were more connected with the spirit of
| blogging.
| sodapopcan wrote:
| Very nice, this is great! Love that you give the two UX options.
|
| FYI (bug report): In the non-minimal version, navigating by
| category is janky in FireFox. The logo briefly disappears with
| the nav jumping up in its place every time you click a category.
| ramkarthikk wrote:
| Ah, thank you. I will check this.
| sodapopcan wrote:
| Just following up to say "You fixed it!" :)
| wonger_ wrote:
| FWIW hackr.news has a smallweb filter:
| https://hcker.news/?smallweb=true
|
| But kudos for different people working on similar good ideas
| napolux wrote:
| scoring will bring spam and voting brigades if not managed
| properly
| AnonyMD wrote:
| It's a very modern and clean design.
| highspeedbus wrote:
| That's great. I wish we could convince more people to use similar
| tools regularly, myself included.
|
| It may not 'scale' as well as algorithmic feeds, but maybe that's
| what will save the Web. We need more sweat and passion, both in
| curation of content and in the effort to find it.
| robertheadley wrote:
| Great concept, I miss the ability to like things though.
| robertheadley wrote:
| ah, looks like the .app version covers that. I will have to
| check it out outside of work.
| siva7 wrote:
| This feels so Yahoo-1994. Love that we are getting back to our
| origins thanks to AI.
| bookofjoe wrote:
| That's so funny: I just reactivated my Yahoo email address.
| reedlaw wrote:
| I've come to the conclusion that Hacker News is the best
| aggregator out there. Substack knows my interests yet gives
| terrible recommendations. Youtube constantly recommends the same
| videos or exaggerates my interest in a topic based on a few
| views, spamming me with related content until I watch something
| unrelated. The only downside of Hacker News is that its focus is
| narrower than other sites. But perhaps because the focus is
| "Anything that good hackers would find interesting" there is a
| bias towards things I find interesting with less noise than more
| commercial offerings.
| l72 wrote:
| I always thought the "planets"[1][2][3] were a neat idea. I wish
| there were more of them for dedicated topics. Then I can just
| subscribe to specific planets which pulls curated feeds from
| various blogs on that topic.
|
| [1] Planet Gnome: https://planet.gnome.org/
|
| [2] Planet Debian: https://planet.debian.org/
|
| [3] Planet GNU: https://planet.gnu.org/
| 8organicbits wrote:
| I've been building an index of planets and related projects.
| There's a lot, especially for technical topics, but I also wish
| there were more.
|
| Ctrl-F for planet: https://alexsci.com/rss-blogroll-
| network/blogrolls/
|
| There's an older list at
| https://web.archive.org/web/20170823064412/http://planetplan...
| notanormalnerd wrote:
| Hahahahha... I was trying to build something like this for a
| while. Seems like I wasn't the only one with this idea. So happy
| someone finally did it!
| tombert wrote:
| Interesting. I submitted mine.
| gorbiesRedScar wrote:
| perfect.
| riceballs_tlp wrote:
| How do you curate the blogs that are being added to this? I see
| that there's a way to submit your own blog, but was there a list
| you started with initially? Thanks for making this!
| gosingk wrote:
| Nice project
| akshitgaur2005 wrote:
| Hey, I am just getting started with blogging, could/should I
| submit my website too?
| tpemist wrote:
| Thanks for sharing, it's a great idea! but the site is not
| reachable now, it stuck.
| trvz wrote:
| This is silly.
|
| RSS readers exist. Feed a Fever was even better.
| ronb1964 wrote:
| Funny timing -- I tried to submit my own Show HN today for a
| small Linux app I've been building and got blocked because my
| account is too new. Spent the afternoon reading through HN
| threads to build up some karma instead. Feels like the indie
| software equivalent of the same problem this project is trying to
| solve -- it's getting harder for small, genuine projects to find
| an audience without gaming some system first. Appreciate what
| you've built here!
| caaqil wrote:
| I will be that guy: how is this different from HN? Or the many
| niche subreddits that already do this? I am seriously asking.
|
| To me, it seems like a poor version of subreddits with HN shell
| to wash it down.
| susam wrote:
| This is a very nice project! Thank you for creating it and
| sharing it here on HN. I like the minimal version more but the
| modern version is quite nice too. I would probably stick to the
| minimal version but since it seems to lack the search feature I
| end up using the modern version for that.
|
| By the way, some minor issues I found:
|
| 1. In the minimal version, when browsing the list of blogs I
| cannot get past page 12. The last page the UI lets me navigate to
| is https://text.blogosphere.app/blogs-12 which shows blogs up to
| names starting with 'M'. I can reach page 13 by manually editing
| the URL to https://text.blogosphere.app/blogs-13 which shows two
| blogs starting with 'N'. However, pages 14 and beyond just load
| the home page. Surely there are more blogs with names starting
| with 'O', 'P', etc.?
|
| 2. The modern version at https://blogosphere.app/ uses infinite
| scroll, which makes it impossible to reach the footer. Each time
| I scroll down, more content loads and pushes the footer further
| away. I was only able to view the footer by modifying the DOM in
| the browser's developer tools. It would be nice if there were a
| straightforward way to access the footer.
| ramkarthikk wrote:
| Thank you for the detailed feedback. I'm glad you like this
| project.
|
| 1. Yeah, there are definitely more blogs. Seems like an issue
| paginating and fetching it at build time. I will check this. 2.
| I generally don't prefer infinite scroll but since people are
| used to it on social media, I kept it on the modern version. It
| does make it impossible to see the footer. I will figure out a
| way around this. In the meantime, the "Submit" page should
| display the footer.
|
| I'm also going to add search to the minimal version since I
| also prefer it over the modern version and search is useful.
| sphars wrote:
| Regarding the infinite scroll with the footer, I like the
| path Valve has taken with the Steam store homepage. The
| footer is part of the infinite scroll, as in, when you reach
| the footer, the infinite scroll continues.
| dalmo3 wrote:
| TBH I'd love to see that idea as a /blogs list here at HN.
| freetonik wrote:
| Very cool! Love the minimal design a lot, unsurprisingly.
|
| My Minifeed [1] started with a similar goal of having a "HN for
| blogs", but then it grew to include search, related
| recommendations, custom feeds, lists, etc. I don't have
| categories though.
|
| [1] https://minifeed.net/
| evanjrowley wrote:
| Addition of a "Dark Mode" button would be much appreciated!
| zahlman wrote:
| > Minimal (HN-inspired, fast, static):
| https://text.blogosphere.app/
|
| Could you add a form submission button next to the filter, so
| that it doesn't require JavaScript? (Or actually that can
| probably be done easily enough with some kind of CSS variable-
| setting trick...?)
| getaid wrote:
| Cool project.
| sourcegrift wrote:
| "A woman had sex with identical twins and now it's impossible to
| tell who is the father", is this a blog post or news or sarcastic
| news or what the hell
| gray_wolf_99 wrote:
| Great idea!
| holtwick wrote:
| Small web, try this one https://bubbles.town
| viermalbe wrote:
| Bubbles is different, because the front page is created by real
| people voting. It also supports comments, blogs in EN and DE,
| as well as following blogs.
| Johnny_Bonk wrote:
| One recommendation is to keep header fixed on scroll so you can
| always nav away. most sites fail to do this it seems
| mm263 wrote:
| Fixed header isn't always a good thing, it can also be a
| mistake. Since content is the product, let the content take up
| all available space and use your browser navigation
| capabilities to navigate if necessary
| givemeethekeys wrote:
| This is a great idea. I think you should ask people to pay a
| subscription for commenting. Turn it into a community supported
| site from the get go!
| skeptrune wrote:
| This is awesome! I'm happy someone made this exist.
| ashwinne wrote:
| I would love a old-school search engine that pulls results purely
| from a well curated list of websites and blogs.
| swyx wrote:
| https://kagi.com/smallweb/
| blue_hex wrote:
| i can't describe how happy this project makes me feel. Honestly,
| i don't even know why. I mean, the idea is great but it's nothing
| "extra", still it just feels right. Like breath of fresh air.
| rodarima wrote:
| Amazing that the minimal version works in Dillo, except for the
| categories menu which uses JS (using a form and submit button
| inside a noscript tag would work as a fallback).
| nelsonfigueroa wrote:
| Ooooh I love these indie web aggregators. I wrote about some of
| my favorite ones here if anyone's curious:
| https://nelson.cloud/how-i-discover-new-blogs/.
|
| But here are some of my fav ways to discover blogs:
|
| - https://minifeed.net/welcome
|
| - https://indieblog.page/
|
| - https://1mb.club/
|
| - https://512kb.club/
|
| - https://250kb.club/
| busymom0 wrote:
| I'd like to submit my own aggregator to your list:
|
| https://limereader.com/
|
| It aggregates the top articles on STEAMD topics (Science,
| Technology, Engineering, Arts, Math, and Design) from various
| forums and displays them in chronological order.
|
| This includes forums like Hacker News, Tildes, Lobsters,
| Slashdot, Bear, and some science, tech & programming related
| subreddits.
|
| You can read more here:
|
| https://limereader.com/about
| rahkiin wrote:
| I should create an aggregator aggregator
| eleventen wrote:
| A few more:
|
| - https://powrss.com/
|
| - https://blogroll.org/
|
| - https://ooh.directory/
| landdate wrote:
| This is awesome. I find myself seeking out blogs nowadays as many
| of the best forums have died out and reddit has dropped in
| quality significantly.
|
| I typically use marginalia and wiby to make finding posts from
| blogs easier, but I like the idea of providing hn style mechanics
| to blog posts, so many of which lack the ability to
| comment/discuss the material. At the same time, while I think
| this is a useful tool, I am a little weary of the aggregation and
| consolidation of the web.
| KronisLV wrote:
| Vaguely related, I did an extremely basic RSS feed combiner ages
| ago: https://hn-blogs.kronis.dev/ when there was that one post
| where people could share their blogs and many of those had RSS
| feeds.
|
| That said, it got its list of feeds from the repo that someone
| made which hasn't been updated in a few years, so even if new
| blog content gets pulled, the list of blogs doesn't change. Oh
| well, wasn't a super serious project.
| glerk wrote:
| Sweet! Glad to see so many active personal blogs. We should push
| to bring back RSS feeds somehow. I really miss that era.
| rpgbr wrote:
| Very cool!
|
| We have something similar -- asort of "planet" -- for personal
| blogs in Brazil. It's open source, maybe it can be useful for
| someone: https://github.com/manualdousuario/lerama
|
| Our instance: https://lerama.pcdomanual.com
| boxedemp wrote:
| Very cool!! It's actually full of blogs! I've seen lots of claims
| for this kind of thing, glad to see you followed through!
| millionclicks wrote:
| Awesome idea. You should launch this on Buildfeed.co.
| quanwinn wrote:
| Love this! Was the UI done with Claude or some LLM? Not a
| critique, just curious because the designs give off that vibe to
| me.
| matheusmoreira wrote:
| > If you don't find your blog, please add them.
|
| > RSS / Atom Feed URL *
|
| I really need to implement an RSS/Atom feed in my static site
| generator, the lack of this feature is really starting to hurt. I
| can probably get Claude to help me with this.
| dllu wrote:
| I vibe coded RSS feed for my static site generator a few months
| ago: https://github.com/dllu/dllup-
| rs/blob/main/src/main.rs#L850
|
| and was pleasantly surprised to see my blog was already on this
| website!
| stevenicr wrote:
| I see the footer, then it disappears - (next scroll kicks in) -
| see foot, disappears, repeat.. (desktop, firefox)
|
| It's time we bring back webrings and optional auto-check for
| recip links - with options to check for nofollow and do a thing
| or not.
|
| Webring code anyone can self host - have notification and
| approval and accept nofollow links as okay by default should work
| fine.
|
| Thinking of them getting bigger, might need to give surfers and
| option to sort by tags / categories / newest / oldest. have
| option for website owner to prioritize or highlight a few as
| first seen each month..
| OpFour wrote:
| I made something similar, but for Linux news and information!
| thelinuxreport.com :D
| jadbox wrote:
| No voting? How is it curated?
| paulpauper wrote:
| "All submissions are manually reviewed before appearing in the
| directory."
|
| it's like the late 90s early 2000s again
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