[HN Gopher] Show HN: Discover the IndieWeb, one blog post at a time ___________________________________________________________________ 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] ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2022-04-12 23:01 UTC)