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Does anyone remember websites?

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Re: Does anyone remember websites?

#221

Post by spc476 »

tonyarkles wrote: post #18

Last night I ended up, for some weird nostalgic reason, installing a Gopher client, just to see if there was anything still around. Amazingly, there's a bunch of blogs (called phlogs in Gopherspace) that people are updating regularly! Pretty amazing!

Last year I made some minor changes to my blogging engine [1] to support gopher, so now my blog [2] is also available via gopher [3]. The source code to the gopher server is online [4].

[1] https://github.com/spc476/mod_blog

[2] http://boston.conman.org/

[3] gopher://gopher.conman.org/

[4] gopher://gopher.conman.org/1Gopher:Src:

Re: Does anyone remember websites?

#222

Post by mirkules »

userbinator wrote: post #80
ambrosite wrote: post #30

I do remember those websites. For me, the difference is that now the Web is much more useful, but back then it was a lot more fun. True, you could sometimes waste hours following random links hoping to find something good, but the thrill of discovery when you stumbled across a gold mine of information was a huge part of the appeal. Nowadays, anyone with a basic understanding of search engines can find almost anything…

Nowadays, anyone with a basic understanding of search engines can find almost anything they want within seconds. Almost anything popular and rather insipid, yes. Try to find more detailed information on very specific topics, however, and you'll discover that search engines like Google have been optimising more and more for the former content, making it harder to find the latter. I don't think that's a good thing at a…

> search engines like Google have been optimising more and more for the former content, making it harder to find the latter

To emphasize this point, just the other day my 4-year-old asked me "how do seeds inside tomatoes grow?" The answer to such a simple question cannot be found in either DDG or Google because there are literally thousands of sites in this search that helpfully tell you how to grow tomatoes from seeds - the obvious search engine optimization to look for anything with "tomatoes", "seeds" and "grow" being definitely wrong in this case.

Re: Does anyone remember websites?

#223

Post by Illniyar »

fphilipe wrote: post #218
Illniyar wrote: post #213

"it was largely a collection of websites made by people who were interested in some subject enough to write about it and put it online. " Oh,you mean like blogs? Seriously, this sounds like being nostalgic for it's own sake. I fail to see how using dreamweaver and ftp is somehow better then using Wordpress and the cloud, writing your own html as a prerequisite to having a website was never a good idea - now everyone…

> Oh,you mean like blogs? Yes, but before they all looked the same and were hosted on the same platform. I miss the days where you would encounter a blog filled with great content and with a unique look and feel. It's as if it almost burned in in my memory. I still remember how the website looked of some great articles that resonated with me. That's one of the reasons I dislike Medium et al.

I don't think it matters where they are hosted, but I think it's disingenuous to say that all blogs look the same.

Sure everything on medium looks the same, but there are many many blogs not on medium.

Here, just after a simple search, a list of personal websites/blogs that look nothing alike:

https://www.themuse.com/advice/the-35-best-personal-websites...

Re: Does anyone remember websites?

#224

Post by kuschku »

moultano wrote: post #143
stevenwoo wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I swear the last five years or more of searching for products lead to the first two pages being fake reviews/ads. Google must make money from this otherwise they would fix it.

Do you have an example query handy?

Google for any game, and then check which of the articles doesn't just copy its enture text, images, and score from the stuff on the press server.

If you have access to, say, the bethesda press ftp, and compare the material there to any review of the games, you'll see that over 90% just copy-pasted without writing much themselves.

It's all fake.

Oh, and those that don't copy-paste often still review everything positively, because otherwise they won't get games before release anymore.

Re: Does anyone remember websites?

#226

Post by martinpw »

Zhenya wrote: post #184
dogcow wrote: post #167

Check out the search engine at http://wiby.me From their about page: Search engines like Google are indispensable, able to find answers to all of your technical questions; but along the way, the fun of web surfing was lost. In the early days of the web, pages were made primarily by hobbyists, academics, and computer savvy people about subjects they were interested in. Later on, the web became saturated with commercia…

My favorite website: http://www.otherhand.org/ And my favorite article on it: http://www.otherhand.org/home-page/search-and-rescue/the-hun... (No association)

That article was a fascinating read. Thank you.

Re: Does anyone remember websites?

#227

Post by qznc »

astura wrote: post #159
qznc wrote: post #34

They are still out there. Probably even more than ever. You just don't find them because the SEO-sites drain away all traffic. I believe my own site would qualify? http://beza1e1.tuxen.de/

Well it's uncommon to refer to yourself in the third person on the web like that. Makes it seem much more, um, impersonal and sterile I guess.

Yes, but that text gets copy-pasted when a short bio is needed. That is very convenient.

Re: Does anyone remember websites?

#228

Post by qznc »

krylon wrote: post #199
qznc wrote: post #34

They are still out there. Probably even more than ever. You just don't find them because the SEO-sites drain away all traffic. I believe my own site would qualify? http://beza1e1.tuxen.de/

The article on using Lua from D looks very interesting! I've been meaning to get to know D in more depth for a while now, this looks like a good starting point for a small toy project.

Thanks. I still believe it is one of the best examples how powerful D meta programming is.

Re: Does anyone remember websites?

#229

Post by djur »

Boothroid wrote: post #119
krapp wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The thing is, people do build personal websites, and that old web still exists. Do you really believe that, with (according to Quora) ~140,000 new sites being created per day, no one is putting amateur, personal stuff on the web anymore? It's just that the web has gotten bigger and more mainstream, and most of us now limit our browsing to a few silos and then act as if everything that no longer bubbles up the filter…

But so many personal websites are just self promotion of one kind or another, and that's fine, we all have to make a living, but I'd far rather read something where someone just wants to share what they know/love. And everything looks like the same set of off the shelf web design templates. I liked the weirdness of the old web. Kind of like games on the Amiga, every site was different, and that was part of the charm.…

My recollection is that for every interesting personal website with carefully compiled albeit idiosyncratic information, there were 10 sites along the lines of "Mikey's Ultimate Web Site!!!" with animated "under construction" GIFs, marquee tags, a guestbook script, and about ten webrings.

For better or worse, the closest thing today to the feeling of the old personal webpage era is Tumblr. The kids get up to some crazy stuff over there.

Re: Does anyone remember websites?

#230

Post by hawski »

mirkules wrote: post #222
userbinator wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nowadays, anyone with a basic understanding of search engines can find almost anything they want within seconds. Almost anything popular and rather insipid, yes. Try to find more detailed information on very specific topics, however, and you'll discover that search engines like Google have been optimising more and more for the former content, making it harder to find the latter. I don't think that's a good thing at a…

> search engines like Google have been optimising more and more for the former content, making it harder to find the latter To emphasize this point, just the other day my 4-year-old asked me "how do seeds inside tomatoes grow?" The answer to such a simple question cannot be found in either DDG or Google because there are literally thousands of sites in this search that helpfully tell you how to grow tomatoes from see…

What Google also loves to do is to show you results with a one term striked-out. The striked-out term happens to filter results the most so it's the most important one. Google decides to serve you more popular (and useless) search results.
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