Wander – A tiny, decentralised tool to explore the small web • Hacker News Board

Re: Wander – A tiny, decentralised tool to explore the small web

#21

Post by dreko » Wed, Mar 18, 2026, 5:27 PM UTC

dgb23 wrote: post #12

I want to like it, but I don't fully understand why one wouldn't just put a bunch of links on a /wander page and maybe randomize the order?

Because the discovery is transitive. When you wander, it fetches another console's wander.js and picks from their pages, so you're not just exploring one person's list, you're hopping across a graph of curated lists. A static link page can't necessarily do that.

Re: Wander – A tiny, decentralised tool to explore the small web

#22

Post by dreko » Wed, Mar 18, 2026, 5:28 PM UTC

This is really cool, I think the idea here is fantastic!

Re: Wander – A tiny, decentralised tool to explore the small web

#23

Post by ab_testing » Wed, Mar 18, 2026, 5:40 PM UTC

So like StumbleUpon

Re: Wander – A tiny, decentralised tool to explore the small web

#24

Post by shevy-java » Wed, Mar 18, 2026, 5:49 PM UTC

I don't know how useful this is, but I am getting tired of Google and co ruining the world wide web how it once was. Something has to be done. I have no idea whether this here can be of help or not but the more people think about this, the better. Otherwise the quality will continue to degrade.

Re: Wander – A tiny, decentralised tool to explore the small web

#25

Post by bovermyer » Wed, Mar 18, 2026, 5:55 PM UTC

So, is this a meta-webring, that allows for showing individual sites but also sites that show other sites?

Re: Wander – A tiny, decentralised tool to explore the small web

#26

Post by xnorswap » Wed, Mar 18, 2026, 5:56 PM UTC

So is this web rings all over again?

Re: Wander – A tiny, decentralised tool to explore the small web

#27

Post by pacoWebConsult » Wed, Mar 18, 2026, 5:56 PM UTC

We're inventing stumbleupon from first principles.

Re: Wander – A tiny, decentralised tool to explore the small web

#28

Post by moralestapia » Wed, Mar 18, 2026, 6:03 PM UTC

xnorswap wrote: post #26

So is this web rings all over again?

It is StumbleUpon over again.

Re: Wander – A tiny, decentralised tool to explore the small web

#29

Post by susam » Wed, Mar 18, 2026, 6:20 PM UTC

punknight wrote: post #15

I love this as a concept. The wander button is great, but it still needs some curating to decide what pages you like, and getting to the actual content. I guess I'd like to know the workflow moving forward? Just re-download the repo every couple weeks, and diff to see what new sites are on the list?

Thank you for taking a look at this project. I'm glad you like the concept. I am not sure I have understood your question accurately, but let me attempt a response anyway. If I get it wrong, please feel free to correct me or ask me again.

There is no need to re-download https://codeberg.org/susam/wander every few weeks. The setup is a one-time activity. From that repository, you copy exactly two files (index.html and wander.js) and place them on your web server, preferably within a /wander/ directory. After that, you only maintain the wander.js file.

You curate your own links and choose which other Wander consoles to link to as neighbours. The contents of wander.js are entirely yours to define. There is no need to diff or compare it with the version in the repository.

In fact, if you do not care about updating or curating links often, you can leave both files untouched indefinitely. The only downside is that some links may eventually succumb to link rot, which could affect the wandering experience. So it may help to review your links occasionally and remove dead ones, but beyond that no ongoing maintenance is required.

Re: Wander – A tiny, decentralised tool to explore the small web

#30

Post by susam » Wed, Mar 18, 2026, 6:28 PM UTC

dgb23 wrote: post #12

I want to like it, but I don't fully understand why one wouldn't just put a bunch of links on a /wander page and maybe randomize the order?

What you are describing sounds a bit like a blogroll, which many of us do indeed maintain. Mine is here, by the way: https://susam.net/roll.html

However, Wander is meant to be a bit like StumbleUpon, but without requiring a centralised service that everyone must go through. One limitation of a blogroll is that it does not provide a consistent way to discover recommendations recursively. For example, I might visit your website A, which recommends website B. I might then visit B, but B may not have any recommendations at all.

Every Wander instance, on the other hand, has a defined list of recommendations. It also links to the /wander pages of its neighbouring sites. If you visit the /wander page of website A, the tool can discover its neighbours (B, C, etc.), then the neighbours of those neighbours and so on. It can fetch recommended links from them and present the links within the same console.

Additionally, the tool provides a way to leave the current console and move to a neighbour's console if the visitor wants to continue browsing from there.