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> I long for a curated list of such sites. I don't know if this is good news but I started doing this a while back and found so many sites that it was futile t

> I long for a curated list of such sites. I don't know if this is good news but I started doing this a while back and found so many sites that it was futile to keep them in one list. These days I tend to keep them in contextual notes or databases. Also many of them fail to pass one or two annoyance tests, but I find that they're worth it anyway. For example they are not mobile friendly in some minor way, like the touch target for their menu is annoyingly small, or they are a little bit cluttered, or use more CPU than I'd like (specific mapping sites). So it's not easy to fit a perfect list, but it's impressive to me just how deep the less-discovered, high quality web really is. (Also I try to make my own obscure personal sites all the time as my contribution to this mess...)

leavenotracks 5y ago
> …but it's impressive to me just how deep the less-discovered, high quality web really is. Would that there were a search engine out there that prioritised the indexing of these high quality ‘well behaved’ sites.
- simonmales 5y ago
  That would be a joy to have.
- fouc 5y ago
  Interesting it occurs to me that google search could do this, but they have a conflict of interest - adsense.
  - abhinavsharma 5y ago
    Million short sort of does this
- WA9ACE 5y ago
  You’re looking for https://millionshort.com/ https://millionshort.com/ I’ve found very many niche sites, blogs, and information dumps with this engine. It’s astounding how much is never surfaced on google or DuckDuckGo.
  - asdff 5y ago
    How do you use it like that? I typed in "falafel" as a test and the first result was JS heavy foodnetwork.com.
    - WA9ACE 5y ago
      You have to tell it how many of the top sites you want removed from the results. For instance you can remove the top 1000 sites and it will remove that foodnetwork.com result.
AnIdiotOnTheNet 5y ago
My god, the web has become so garbage that we're going back to web directories...
- matheusmoreira 5y ago
  Maybe we should have never left. It's Google search and their advertising that destroyed the web we all used to enjoy.
  - abraxas 5y ago
    This is not the case. At least it wasn't the case in the late nineties and early naughts. The web then was full of banner and popup and pop under ads (punch the monkey, remember?). Google was a breath of fresh air then with a clean site and text only ads. No question they strayed from that early vision but they are still far from the worst offenders.
    - gunapologist99 5y ago
      Exactly. After they bought Doubleclick and promised they wouldn't merge the two third-party cookies and the associated data, everyone breathed a sigh of relief. No display advertising ever again! And the web smelled like roses ever since.
    - rapnie 5y ago
      > but they are still far from the worst offenders. Maybe in the type of ads they show. But don't forget increasingly garbage search results that are also indirectly related to the whole ad-tech business they facilitate.
      - mr_mitm 5y ago
        Which search engine do you find shows better search results? I keep coming back to Google because no one else even comes close to the quality of search results. That was true even more so when Google started out. Their competition was Yahoo and AltaVista, which were practically useless. I'd argue that Google has done a lot for the web. But I can agree with the sentiment that they took a turn for the worse at some point.
asdff 5y ago
Someone needs to just scrape the web for light weight websites then offer a search engine just for these sites. Rid the corruption from the web please.
- freediver 5y ago
  Did that here https://teclis.com https://teclis.com Very fun project and still working on expanding the index. The condition to get into the index is no/low bloat/tracking/spam.
  - eloisius 5y ago
    I was interested to check this out but it looks like it's offline
    - freediver 5y ago
      Try http://teclis.com http://teclis.com
- hardwaresofton 5y ago
  But would anyone pay for it? Basically a relatively closed and essentially almost manually curated web ring seems like it'd offer a lot of value, but who pays? Maybe it could work if you charge users a super small base fee (let's say $1/month), and charge commercial sites that want to be listed in certain verticals?
  - asdff 5y ago
    I'd be happy to pay per month but if a commercial site can just buy sponsored posts I'm out.
    - hardwaresofton 5y ago
      Well I didn't think about it too much but the idea is that the more "salesy" the site (i.e. the further they stray from the ideals of the webring/directory), the higher the price. Also, I wasn't thinking of a stream-of-posts type thing -- more like private, curated search but I guess having a stream makes sense too. Either way, the question then becomes would enough people pay whatever monthly fee would keep the site viable (pay for the curation, bandwidth, etc) to prevent the people running the service from making compromises on the vision...
fjfaase 5y ago
I have an old style HTML (and a little CSS) personal website, but making it responsive (mobile compatible) is a lot of extra work. It would take me a few months spare time to fix all my hunderds of pages.
- z3t4 5y ago
  Even if your site design consist of static table td cells - modern smartphones should be able able to read it, for example Opera mobile browser will realign the text. Old sites tend to be designed for 800x600 screens and that will also be fine on a modern smartphone. Making a site mobile friendly is tricky as you need to allow users to zoom and change the text size - no element can be static in size. Often old web sites does that by default - while many modern sites think they are printed media.
- zo1 5y ago
  As an alternative suggestion: don't. The web was fine when you had to zoom in and out. If anything, make it "responsive" with dynamic font-size scaling.

leavenotracks 5y ago

> …but it's impressive to me just how deep the less-discovered, high quality web really is. Would that there were a search engine out there that prioritised the indexing of these high quality ‘well behaved’ sites.

simonmales 5y ago
That would be a joy to have.
fouc 5y ago
Interesting it occurs to me that google search could do this, but they have a conflict of interest - adsense.
- abhinavsharma 5y ago
  Million short sort of does this
WA9ACE 5y ago
You’re looking for https://millionshort.com/ https://millionshort.com/ I’ve found very many niche sites, blogs, and information dumps with this engine. It’s astounding how much is never surfaced on google or DuckDuckGo.
- asdff 5y ago
  How do you use it like that? I typed in "falafel" as a test and the first result was JS heavy foodnetwork.com.
  - WA9ACE 5y ago
    You have to tell it how many of the top sites you want removed from the results. For instance you can remove the top 1000 sites and it will remove that foodnetwork.com result.

AnIdiotOnTheNet 5y ago

My god, the web has become so garbage that we're going back to web directories...

matheusmoreira 5y ago
Maybe we should have never left. It's Google search and their advertising that destroyed the web we all used to enjoy.
- abraxas 5y ago
  This is not the case. At least it wasn't the case in the late nineties and early naughts. The web then was full of banner and popup and pop under ads (punch the monkey, remember?). Google was a breath of fresh air then with a clean site and text only ads. No question they strayed from that early vision but they are still far from the worst offenders.
  - gunapologist99 5y ago
    Exactly. After they bought Doubleclick and promised they wouldn't merge the two third-party cookies and the associated data, everyone breathed a sigh of relief. No display advertising ever again! And the web smelled like roses ever since.
  - rapnie 5y ago
    > but they are still far from the worst offenders. Maybe in the type of ads they show. But don't forget increasingly garbage search results that are also indirectly related to the whole ad-tech business they facilitate.
    - mr_mitm 5y ago
      Which search engine do you find shows better search results? I keep coming back to Google because no one else even comes close to the quality of search results. That was true even more so when Google started out. Their competition was Yahoo and AltaVista, which were practically useless. I'd argue that Google has done a lot for the web. But I can agree with the sentiment that they took a turn for the worse at some point.

asdff 5y ago

Someone needs to just scrape the web for light weight websites then offer a search engine just for these sites. Rid the corruption from the web please.

freediver 5y ago
Did that here https://teclis.com https://teclis.com Very fun project and still working on expanding the index. The condition to get into the index is no/low bloat/tracking/spam.
- eloisius 5y ago
  I was interested to check this out but it looks like it's offline
  - freediver 5y ago
    Try http://teclis.com http://teclis.com
hardwaresofton 5y ago
But would anyone pay for it? Basically a relatively closed and essentially almost manually curated web ring seems like it'd offer a lot of value, but who pays? Maybe it could work if you charge users a super small base fee (let's say $1/month), and charge commercial sites that want to be listed in certain verticals?
- asdff 5y ago
  I'd be happy to pay per month but if a commercial site can just buy sponsored posts I'm out.
  - hardwaresofton 5y ago
    Well I didn't think about it too much but the idea is that the more "salesy" the site (i.e. the further they stray from the ideals of the webring/directory), the higher the price. Also, I wasn't thinking of a stream-of-posts type thing -- more like private, curated search but I guess having a stream makes sense too. Either way, the question then becomes would enough people pay whatever monthly fee would keep the site viable (pay for the curation, bandwidth, etc) to prevent the people running the service from making compromises on the vision...

fjfaase 5y ago

I have an old style HTML (and a little CSS) personal website, but making it responsive (mobile compatible) is a lot of extra work. It would take me a few months spare time to fix all my hunderds of pages.

z3t4 5y ago
Even if your site design consist of static table td cells - modern smartphones should be able able to read it, for example Opera mobile browser will realign the text. Old sites tend to be designed for 800x600 screens and that will also be fine on a modern smartphone. Making a site mobile friendly is tricky as you need to allow users to zoom and change the text size - no element can be static in size. Often old web sites does that by default - while many modern sites think they are printed media.
zo1 5y ago
As an alternative suggestion: don't. The web was fine when you had to zoom in and out. If anything, make it "responsive" with dynamic font-size scaling.