Discovering Blogs

I enjoy discovering other people’s blogs online, whether it’s personal blogs, or gardens, or whatever you want to name thems. I’ve probably spent too much time just navigating other people’s websites, especially in what is called the Small Web. However, this Small Web is also not so small, and discovering new blogs is not always the easiest.

One way to find other blogs is via 💍 webrings. A webring is just a collection of different websites that are linked in a circular way. Usually, they all have a specific theme in common, either educational or social. According to Wikipedia, they were the most popular in the 1990s and early 2000s.

Nevertheless, there are still some webrings active today. This website is part of the IndieWeb Webring, for example. You can find the link on the footer, and navigate to other websites on the same webring. There are some webring directories, which list a lot of existent webrings. Besides the IndieWeb Webring, I’m also a fan of the XXIIVV Webring, the Fediring and The Forest.

Another way to discover new blogs is via websites 📁 directories. There are quite a few out there, but I’d like to mention the PersonalSit.es and The Big List of Personal Websites. Both of them are places where I’ve found interesting blogs before. More recently, there’s also the ooh.directory, which links to more than 2000 blogs, spread across different topics. A nice thing about this one is that you can search in categories.

Another way I usually find interesting blogs is via 🗞️ blogrolls. A blogroll, for those who don’t know, is someone’s list of links to other blogs they follow. I also have one. The chance that someone I follow also follows someone that would interest me is quite high. After all, we already have some interests in common. Today, there’s also blogroll.org, which is more sort of a website directory - aren’t they all after all? -, but inspired by the idea of a blogroll.

Then, there are some other niche initiatives that I have been following since lately, such as the 📒 Internet Phone Book, which is an actual, physical, book, resembling the good ol’ yellow pages. I haven’t gotten my hands on one of those yet, but that’s on my wishlist!