Would it be possible to see this list of 'small web' blogs? As you write the pockets of the old web are largely discovered through personal recommendations.
I really like 'Old Hollywood' (especially Warner Bros) and I actually find tons and tons of niche little pockets of the web by using Yandex.
Even with search operators Google/Bing just...doesn't make it easy to find the little blogs (that are still publishing!) that cite niche little fan-hosted websites with literal treasure troves of pictures, media, newspaper scans.
I might be thinking the 'old-web' in a different sense than others here - but you find a lot just by poking around websites you find elsewhere and see where it takes you. Sites like neocities is really good for it but I'll just list some below.
https://tilde.town/users.html - kinda like neocities with tons of little self-made project sites that are easy to open 1 million tabs from
https://www.pointlesssites.com/ - just remembered this; it was something i used to check out every few weeks as a kid and it led me to being a fan of https://www.newrafael.com/websites/ who makes some fun stuff reminiscent of what is my age groups 'old web' from around 2008-onward lol
https://wiby.me/surprise/ - wiby is a cool project that was posted about here around the time i joined; i added it to my bookmarks bar so it can just take me to a random site every now and then - it's also a search engine so you can use it to just find other cool sites instead of their surprise feature https://wiby.me/
Not parent, but Marginalia's list[0] of blogs is a great aggregation. I've also stumbled upon some webrings through some of the blogs (have them open somewhere among my 3000 open tabs haha).
dannyphantom|2 years ago
Even with search operators Google/Bing just...doesn't make it easy to find the little blogs (that are still publishing!) that cite niche little fan-hosted websites with literal treasure troves of pictures, media, newspaper scans.
I might be thinking the 'old-web' in a different sense than others here - but you find a lot just by poking around websites you find elsewhere and see where it takes you. Sites like neocities is really good for it but I'll just list some below.
https://tilde.town/users.html - kinda like neocities with tons of little self-made project sites that are easy to open 1 million tabs from
https://512kb.club/ - little sites, often link to other niche sites
https://1mb.club/ - same as above, just different size
http://oh-hi.info/ - just a website for street photography of humans
https://www.pointlesssites.com/ - just remembered this; it was something i used to check out every few weeks as a kid and it led me to being a fan of https://www.newrafael.com/websites/ who makes some fun stuff reminiscent of what is my age groups 'old web' from around 2008-onward lol
http://www.explodingdog.com/ - just a cute little site of someone who drew submissions people sent in
https://wiby.me/surprise/ - wiby is a cool project that was posted about here around the time i joined; i added it to my bookmarks bar so it can just take me to a random site every now and then - it's also a search engine so you can use it to just find other cool sites instead of their surprise feature https://wiby.me/
stianlaa|2 years ago
[Edit] Huh, I'm surprised to find lichess.org in the <512 kb club!
Given_47|2 years ago
[0]: https://github.com/MarginaliaSearch/PublicData/blob/master/s...
stianlaa|2 years ago