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Hunting the Nearly-Invisible Personal Website

cheapskatesguide.org

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Re: Hunting the Nearly-Invisible Personal Website

#22

Post by merlinscholz »

jefftk wrote: post #12
searchableguy wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have seen few people with webrings on HN as of recent. Hard to tell if it's gaining momentum or I am just lucky? Example: I was reading https://www.jefftk.com/index yesterday which also included webring.

My site is also using Drev DeVault’s openring, which is a relatively new tool.

Opening really is a godsend for starting a webring, especially in combination with some static site generator like Hugo.

Re: Hunting the Nearly-Invisible Personal Website

#23

Post by wonder_er »

I love this.

I love finding out-of-the-way personal websites.

A while back I did my own implementation of "lets make hard-to-discover things slightly more discoverable"

Every time you visit the website, you get a different personal website, as submitted by hacker news users a while back:

https://random-hn-blog.herokuapp.com/

Re: Hunting the Nearly-Invisible Personal Website

#26

Post by layoutIfNeeded »

text_exch wrote: post #9

I run an email newsletter[1] that aims to highlight the interesting content found on personal blogs. It's a single link every other day to something interesting, the kind of blog posts that you come across every once in a while that really make you think. The overwhelming feedback is that being able to read the kind of non-viscerally-targeted news and analyses that aren't easily found online is incredibly valuable. […

Things like this are sorely needed in the age of "content marketing", fake reviews and other kinds of astroturfing. Thank you!

Re: Hunting the Nearly-Invisible Personal Website

#28

Post by kradeelav »

I'm tangential to the indie comics scene and it's interesting seeing a personal (not portfolio) site revival in those circles in the last six months, particularly with NSFW artists getting booted from patreon/instagram/twitter. Being able to host your own works on a place that'll never be taken down according to whims of legislation is ... massively reassuring.

Set up a links page for a few of them, if anyone's curious in a personal site scene that's different from tech: http://www.kradeelav.com/link.html

Re: Hunting the Nearly-Invisible Personal Website

#29

Post by yobuko »

I really enjoy the articles put out on this website, as well as the points the author raises in each. I always enjoy seeing it appear on HN.

A query though - Is it possible to have some verification of the "top 100" personal sites claim? For example, years ago if you searched for "Sumerian gods" - you would get all manner of results, but nowadays you will always get Wikipedia as the top link, junk mixed in, and then other factual sources if you keep digging.

Wikipedia having top spot is not always necessarily a bad thing because ultimately most people searching likely want a factual source - or at least a source they trust. However, as a result of the two algorithms (and no doubt many more) we have a bunch of "junk" links in between the top link and the other interesting links. Even Britannica ranks lower than the junk links.

What I mean by "junk" links is the "Top 10 Best Sumerian Gods", etc. These frequently contain content lifted from other sources - including each other, spam-like advertising, and simply prey on the search engine's algorithms to get on to the front page beating the interesting content down into pages 3,4,5 and beyond. There's entire sites devoted to "how to" game the search engines, as is to be expected with any automated system.

Yes, the algorithms could be better - Britannica and other factual sources shouldn't be below "Top 10" lists, but so could the ethics of those who run sites purely for advertising revenue.

Conversely, better results are shown on page 1 for "Elizabeth I".

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