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

susam.net

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

#71

Post by pibaker »

susam wrote: post #2

Hello HN! This tool is inspired by Kagi Small Web (recent thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47410542 ). A common concern raised here is that Kagi Small Web currently accepts only blogs, comics and YouTube channels. It does not accept arbitrary small websites. That limitation motivated me to build Wander. Wander is fully decentralised. Anyone can host it on their own website. It consists of just two files:…

> This tool is inspired by Kagi Small Web

To me the way Kagi curates its small web directory always feel contradictory to the spirit of independent web publishing because it seems like you have to submit entries through GitHub — a highly centralized platform owned by one of the largest tech companies.

kudos to you for figuring out a decentralized solution.

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

#72

Post by susam »

neuroelectron wrote: post #66
collabs wrote: post #64

I love the idea. One small thing - Ran into a problem almost immediately -- Nightly Can’t Open This Page To protect your security, drkhsh.at will not allow Nightly to display the page if another site has embedded it. To see this page, you need to open it in a new window.

My problem is I didn't understand what this was, refreshed the page and lost what i was reading to the ether.

If you are on a computer, you might be able to see the previous links that were loaded in your web browser's Developer Tools > Console. The Wander console tool writes logs there to describe what it is doing internally.

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

#74

Post by erxam »

pibaker wrote: post #67

I hope platforms like these find a way to attract people outside tech circles. I looked at around a dozen recommended sites and only two of them isn't the personal website of someone who works in tech and writes mostly about tech, which gets boring rather quickly. There is a world of non-tech bloggers writing stuffs about history, culture and nature who would likely never learn about this project simply because they…

It doesn't seem very hard to implement in your own site, so it might gain some traction? It's not super-complex, I understand it is some sort of interconnected spin on webrings, which are still somewhat popular among small websites.

If anybody wants to find truly random small websites, I recommend using Wiby (search engine). It has some neat stuff.

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

#75

Post by susam »

hamdingers wrote: post #45
susam wrote: post #2

Hello HN! This tool is inspired by Kagi Small Web (recent thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47410542 ). A common concern raised here is that Kagi Small Web currently accepts only blogs, comics and YouTube channels. It does not accept arbitrary small websites. That limitation motivated me to build Wander. Wander is fully decentralised. Anyone can host it on their own website. It consists of just two files:…

This is so delightful! I'll be deploying this and sharing a link on the issue. One issue I see: If I get you to include a link to my console but I don't link to any others, I can trap wanderers within my recommendations until they refresh. If that's not desirable, it could be avoided by having the client keep a running list of all the consoles it has discovered this session and choosing from that list at random.

> If that's not desirable, it could be avoided by having the client keep a running list of all the consoles it has discovered this session and choosing from that list at random.

Implemented in https://codeberg.org/susam/wander/commit/f4d95fa>. Thanks again for the discussion!

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

#76

Post by pibaker »

erxam wrote: post #74
pibaker wrote: post #67

I hope platforms like these find a way to attract people outside tech circles. I looked at around a dozen recommended sites and only two of them isn't the personal website of someone who works in tech and writes mostly about tech, which gets boring rather quickly. There is a world of non-tech bloggers writing stuffs about history, culture and nature who would likely never learn about this project simply because they…

It doesn't seem very hard to implement in your own site, so it might gain some traction? It's not super-complex, I understand it is some sort of interconnected spin on webrings, which are still somewhat popular among small websites. If anybody wants to find truly random small websites, I recommend using Wiby (search engine). It has some neat stuff.

> It doesn't seem very hard to implement in your own site

Depends on how technically sophisticated the author is. Many of the blogs I was thinking about were not written by people familiar with web stuffs. They are hosted on managed hosting services like wordpress.com and blogspot, or on hosting providers with streamlined services that require no technical skills to use. Setting up this tool may very well be beyond what the authors are comfortable with or capable of.

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

#79

Post by prox »

susam wrote: post #75
hamdingers wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is so delightful! I'll be deploying this and sharing a link on the issue. One issue I see: If I get you to include a link to my console but I don't link to any others, I can trap wanderers within my recommendations until they refresh. If that's not desirable, it could be avoided by having the client keep a running list of all the consoles it has discovered this session and choosing from that list at random.

> If that's not desirable, it could be avoided by having the client keep a running list of all the consoles it has discovered this session and choosing from that list at random. Implemented in https://codeberg.org/susam/wander/commit/f4d95fa >. Thanks again for the discussion!

It would be nice if it wasn’t so framed in. How about a simpler “wander” overlay button that stays fixed (a bit like google recaptcha in the bottom corner) and pops up the console with links?

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

#80

Post by prox »

erxam wrote: post #74
pibaker wrote: post #67

I hope platforms like these find a way to attract people outside tech circles. I looked at around a dozen recommended sites and only two of them isn't the personal website of someone who works in tech and writes mostly about tech, which gets boring rather quickly. There is a world of non-tech bloggers writing stuffs about history, culture and nature who would likely never learn about this project simply because they…

It doesn't seem very hard to implement in your own site, so it might gain some traction? It's not super-complex, I understand it is some sort of interconnected spin on webrings, which are still somewhat popular among small websites. If anybody wants to find truly random small websites, I recommend using Wiby (search engine). It has some neat stuff.

There is also https://marginalia-search.com/

It has indexed lots of different websites categories

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