• dend 7 days ago |
    Look at the front page of HN - see my project randomly. Thank you for sharing! The goal with this site is precisely that, share people's digital gardens.

    If you have a site to add, please open a GitHub issue: https://github.com/blogscroll/blogscroll/issues/new?assignee...

    If your site is self-hosted (that is, not on medium.com or Substack or the likes, or if it is - has a custom domain), I'd be happy to add it. My goal for this year is to massively grow the list.

    • pmlnr 7 days ago |
      You could create an alternative, OPML version of the page, which is/was specifically for blogrolls :)
    • 0xEF 7 days ago |
      Does it have to be self-hosted? My sites, for example, are generally hosted on one of the various VPS services, some big and well known like Linode, others smaller like 1984.hosting. I move around too much to be worried about setting up servers in my homes, etc, but fully support the smolweb movement and love making my own tiny html places.
      • fm2606 7 days ago |
        Not the OP but I think hosting on a VPS is valid. "Self-admin" may be a better term, I don't know. You are still "indie" and not bound to any corporate culture.

        You are in full control down to the OS but not the hardware so yeah it counts.

        I once questioned if hosting on VPS was covered under the term self-hosting and got down voted. It was a legit question, as is your question, but I guess people took it as if I was saying that it isn't self-hosting.

    • yakkomajuri 7 days ago |
      Love to see people thinking about this!

      You might be interested in some of the ideas here: https://github.com/yakkomajuri/recess/blob/main/manifesto-is...

      Happy to have a chat if you think it makes sense. I dropped the project above a year ago.

  • bigfatkitten 7 days ago |
    As much as I love the idea, I can't help but see some irony in an index of sites outside the Big Tech walled gardens being hosted on a major walled garden.
    • dend 7 days ago |
      The beauty of this site is that it's just HTML with minimal styling and JavaScript. If the current walled garden doesn't fit my needs at some point in the future, throwing it on another host takes less than 10 minutes, plus whatever the delay will be from DNS propagation. That's a built-in future resiliency, IMO.
      • A1kmm 7 days ago |
        I think it right to base the assessment of whether it is a walled garden on how easy it is for outsiders to access, and how easy it is to leave and take your community.

        For viewing, I think you are doing well - your own domain name, which you can host where you like, and which currently doesn't impose many restrictions on who can view without signing up to anything.

        But part of your community engagement is about having the community submit changes to you. And having that via GitHub is a walled garden - you can't make a PR without a GitHub account - or even search the code. And they say you are only allowed one free account - so one identity only - and I've heard credible reports they actively enforce it by IP matching etc..., and ban people if they suspect them of having two accounts.

        Moving off GitHub isn't always that easy - you'd need to retrieve all your PRs, but then the problem is people who have GitHub accounts to engage with you would need to migrate their method of engagement.

        So GitHub is absolutely a walled garden, and if you have a public GitHub, it is part of how you engage with your community.

        Walled gardens do have the benefit of more people being in them - there is some barrier to entry to signing up on a random Gitea or Forgejo instance - but then you are beholden to the policies of the walled garden.

        • dend 7 days ago |
          Fair point - I will add a note to the top that if you don't want to contribute via GitHub, you can send me a note to [email protected]. I will make the change myself.
          • yawpitch 7 days ago |
            admiration++ for responsiveness in adding the email option.
        • 7speter 7 days ago |
          Wait you can only have one github account?
        • kittikitti 7 days ago |
          If you use GitHub the wrong way, that Microsoft is prescribing, then yes it's a walled garden. However, it's meant to simply be a git host.
      • mahirsaid 6 days ago |
        i do miss these sites. A bit nostalgic to them times where visiting a site had the information you are looking for and only the information you're looking for
    • pmlnr 7 days ago |
      github is not walled in the same sense as requiring login to view content.
    • jazzyjackson 7 days ago |
      GitHub is more like a public cemetery
    • pjmlp 7 days ago |
      Same here.
    • blitzar 7 days ago |
      Not being vendor locked to one garden is about as much as you can ask for these days.
  • diegocg 7 days ago |
    Funny how we have gone back to web directories
    • mikro2nd 7 days ago |
      Webrings are also seeing some revival. Seems that actual curation by actual human beings is better than algorithmic or "AI" slop.
    • mxuribe 7 days ago |
      I don't know if its only me...but years ago when google was in its early days, i considered google to have authority because of its "completeness", and its unobtrusive experience. For some time now, i have not thought of google in that same, good way. Hence, if i wish to find quality content and good results, i use other mechanisms which have earned my trust and respect...some of those include open directories, web rings, old school type blogrolls, RSS feeds, suggestions from the fediverse, recommendations from family, friends, and colleagues, etc. Do i still use a search engine? Sure! I use DDG (which behind the scenes isn't much better than google since they're dependent on Bing/MS)...but nowadays i diversify my expedition a bunch more when searching for something. Gone are the days where i depend as much on big tech (or at least, try my damn best to minimize my dependence on big tech in as many areas of my on/offline life).
  • freetonik 7 days ago |
    Very cool! As someone else mentioned already, OPML export would be cool, especially if it’s per category (personal, design/ux, etc.)

    I also curate a list of blogs as part of my blog discovery/search engine/reader project: https://minifeed.net/blogs

    • dend 7 days ago |
      Great job on building a delightful experience! I really like the design.

      For OPML, tracking the enhancement here: https://github.com/blogscroll/blogscroll/issues/198

    • nelsonfigueroa 7 days ago |
      I remember discovering minifeed.net not too long ago here on HN. Cool project! I like how you show related posts from other blogs when viewing an item. It's nice for discovering new blogs.
      • freetonik 7 days ago |
        Thanks! I still don't feel ready to do a proper "Show HN" with it though :)

        The related posts are generated with the help of a vector database (Cloudflare Vectorize [1]). I take post titles and descriptions as input, vectorize and store the results in the vector DB. Then for each post, I find 10-15 related posts and store the results in a separate table (it's a plain one-to-many SQL table). This is done because querying the vector DB is not super fast, and I wanted Minifeed to load under 500ms (according to my status page tracking, users in Europe for some reason experience the fastest loading times of 100-200ms! [2]). I also set up a scheduled job which regularly updates the relations (since there are new posts every day, and some of them may become "related" to existing posts).

        I've been meaning to write a blog post about the overall architecture of Minifeed, there are lots of small components related to RSS parsing, updates, caching, etc.

        1. https://developers.cloudflare.com/vectorize/ 2. https://status.minifeed.net/

        • rednafi 7 days ago |
          Do a write up on explaining the architecture and maintenance cost. This looks sleek. It'll fly on hackernews.
          • freetonik 7 days ago |
            Thanks for the encouragement, I've started drafting the article. By the way, I've added your blog to Minifeed a while ago (https://minifeed.net/blogs/kF8K4M)
            • rednafi 7 days ago |
              Yeah. I saw that. I've found so many good stuff on minifeed. Thank you :D
    • rednafi 7 days ago |
      This looks fantastic. Damn, there's even a detail page with related blog entries.

      Surprised to see my blog[1] there :)

      [1]: https://minifeed.net/blogs/kF8K4M

  • MrThoughtful 7 days ago |
    Some are examples of good design ideas.
  • lemming 7 days ago |
    Kagi also has an occasionally delightful small web index: https://blog.kagi.com/small-web. It’s nicely integrated into their search results too.
    • ajmurmann 7 days ago |
      And of course there is always https://marginalia.nu
      • sunaookami 7 days ago |
        and https://wiby.me/ with a "Surprise" button
        • mxuribe 7 days ago |
          Thanks for this refresher! For the life of me i recalled that there was a sort of search engine for the smol web, but could not recall its name! Thanks to you for finding it again for me! :-)
    • rpastuszak 7 days ago |
      In case anyone's interested, I keep a small list of indie sites here: https://untested.sonnet.io/notes/places-to-find-indie-web-co...

      Included: gardens, personal websites, zines, and toys.

    • misfitgentleman 7 days ago |
      You can get RSS feeds of random indie web posts. I’ve found a few good sites this way.

      https://indieblog.page/rss

      • mahirsaid 6 days ago |
        do you mean the RSS feeds you're getting are about new indie sites and domains for them? if so i would like to know some of the RSS feeds your using.
        • misfitgentleman 6 days ago |
          They are random posts from random sites. You never know what you will get. But I always find them interesting.
  • j3s 7 days ago |
    cool, a garden index! love that they included an RSS feed too (https://blogscroll.com/index.xml) - i'm sticking that in my feed reader immediately. it sounds nice to have a few random new digital garden sites to peruse once in awhile.
  • openrisk 7 days ago |
    Cool but this will grow unworkable as the number of entries increases and will require some sort of filtering / searching.

    Even pure signal can be overwhelming these days when so much good stuff exists.

    Which brings us to the (as far as I know unsolved) question of supporting large scale discovery of the web without drifting into enshittification.

    Some sort of decentralized index that will be distributed in a torrent-like manner might work but that requires curation too: Who and with what criteria can add an entry etc.

    Bottom line is that the walled gardens did not exist, they evolved because the original web was missing critical components of usability. They exploited a vacuum.

    To fill the vacuum with something more benevolent we need to go back and solve these problems. The rest will be history.

    • dend 7 days ago |
      Yeah, I am still thinking how to evolve this into a useful, yet minimalist design as it grows. I am quite inspired by high-density websites (things that were de-facto in the late 90s), so will have to see how to incorporate that.

      That being said, the meta-point about at-scale discovery is astute - it's largely unsolved for personal sites/digital gardens. And I certainly don't want to be the bottleneck long-term. Will have to think through a solution as more content gets added.

    • klez 7 days ago |
      > that requires curation too: Who and with what criteria can add an entry etc.

      IMHO that's the beauty of it. Sometimes I want to be hit with everything the web has to offer.

      But some other times I do want curated lists of links organized by category with opinionated criteria for inclusion.

  • rednafi 7 days ago |
    Love the idea, but I’m not sure how well it will scale. I’ve seen similar lists before and even went out of my way to include my blog there, only to never find that page again.

    That said, I’m loving this renewed interest in building our own little corners on the internet. I have mine[1] too.

    [1]: https://rednafi.com

    • mahirsaid 6 days ago |
      With the current state of the internet today,having control of your digital assets and identity make more sense. i would like to see them more useful and sophisticated but i understand its hard without large capital. It's amazing what some people can create on their own. Leaving your identity to be represented by big tech is turning out to be only in their interests.
  • mikae1 7 days ago |
    Weird. I love a good link list, but most links I clicked were just regular portfolio websites, not digital gardens in the gardens vs. streams[1] sense.

    Does the creator not know what a digital garden is?

    [1] https://archive.org/details/gardens-and-streams-wikis-blogs-...

    • dend 7 days ago |
      Fair feedback. In my eyes, I treat any personal site as a digital garden - I am not really sticking to the "pure" definition. If you are putting an effort to curate and grow your own site, is that not a digital garden? I think it is, but that's my own take on it.

      I intentionally try to avoid sites that are in any shape _not_ personal or otherwise representative of an individual trying to stake their little corner of the internet.

      • mikae1 7 days ago |
        Thanks for replying. :)

        > If you are putting an effort to curate and grow your own site, is that not a digital garden?

        That's really stretching the definition IMO.

        What characterizes a garden is the slow growth and constant pruning — the making of a personal wiki. https://indieweb.org/digital_garden and https://maggieappleton.com/garden-history are good intros to gardens.

        Most of the websites I visited seemed to be and forget sites targeted at potential employers.

        • dend 7 days ago |
          I amended the description to better reflect the work. Thank you for the feedback, I appreciate the pointers to the IndieWeb and Maggie's sites.
        • wink 7 days ago |
          I dunno, sounds more like some gate keeping, or maybe I'm biased because I hate the term for no discernible reason.

          > has content of different levels of development, is imperfect and often a playground for experimentation, learning, revising, iteration, and growth for diverse content

          So because I polish my "posts" to a certain degree before publishing it's not a digital garden? Because 50% of my blog posts are "timeless" in a sense that they're about... stuff that exists.. not current dvelopments it's not a digital garden? Becuase I never delete stuff (as if people with wikis would delete stuff :P)... and so on.

          I mean, I couldn't care less but I feel (and this seems to be a common theme) that the indieweb people are mostly dogmatic about their definitions and not very encouraging (also why I tried to take part in the irc channel years ago and left, frustrated).

          But yeah, if someone want to own the definition of blog and digital garden and not accepting a certain overlap with "personal website", sure.

          • mikae1 7 days ago |
            > I dunno, sounds more like some gate keeping, or maybe I'm biased because I hate the term for no discernible reason.

            I'm not too fond of the term either, but I think that's because it got gentrified and somewhat misunderstood. Everything personal on the web was suddenly a garden.

            > But yeah, if someone want to own the definition of blog and digital garden and not accepting a certain overlap with "personal website", sure.

            Of course there's a overlap. My point was not that the listed sites had to fulfill the criteria for classification, but if there's not a single hint of gardening going on, then we might as well call en.wikipedia.org a blog?

            Also, is a website "personal" if it's just there to market your services? Sure, it's personal as in your website, but content wise it's not particularly personal. Gardens or personal wikis are usually not there to market services, but to build some kind of personal knowledge base (that other nerds, not employers, might find interesting).

            • wink 7 days ago |
              Point taken, maybe I got a little sidetracked with the direction of the discussion and not the original website and its content. FWIW, I think there are wikis that are non-personal (wikipedia, tech, etc) and there can be websites by individuals that are just "marketing" in the wider sense, but I would not call them personal website. (i.e. jsut a portfolio or "here are my socials")
              • econ 3 days ago |
                I don't care much for labels. I have one rule for websites that everyone should follow (lol): whatever you are doing, keep doing it, stick to the theme/topic, stick to the update frequency. It is only wrong if you change either.
      • zeroq 6 days ago |
        No, it's not.

        If you keep calling your dog a "cat" it won't start meowing.

        The list is really disappointing, not only it's hard to find an actual digital garden on the list, most aren't even blogs, but simple resumes or portfolios.

    • mtsolitary 7 days ago |
      Agree with this. Added my digital garden to the list and then was excited to dig through all the other sites, a little disappointed to find most were just personal landing pages (but very nice looking and professional ones!) I guess Maggie and Kasper’s lists are still the gold standard for digital garden indices :)
    • kubb 7 days ago |
      To be fair, if watching this almost 3 hours long recording is the only way to learn the difference between a garden and a stream, I can completely understand why people wouldn’t know it.
      • nobrains 7 days ago |
        A stream is timeline based serial content (like twitter "following"). A garden is exploratory, with content not being serial in time.
        • mikae1 7 days ago |
          Or even simpler: a garden is a wiki and a stream (feed) is a blog.
      • ParetoOptimal 7 days ago |
      • diggan 7 days ago |
        "Garden" is basically a wiki, but not necessarily collaborative. A stream is basically a blog, but not necessarily with the typical long blogposts, but can be mixed with smaller thoughts too.
      • simondebbarma 7 days ago |
        https://maggieappleton.com/garden-history

        How about a digital garden post about digital gardens:?

        • bovermyer 7 days ago |
          That's an awesome link, thank you!
    • mahirsaid 6 days ago |
      sorry for the late response. I think this is a good example of a digital garden, because this is simply a corner the internet where the creators have control over their content. i agree some are weird but that's what makes it special.

      A-lot more of these exist but i don't know about them yet or i forget about them after sometime of not visiting them.

    • fxnn 4 days ago |
      Even if I don’t care much about the „digital garden“ concept, I was much surprised to visit a page called „blogscroll“, click on a link, and then not find a blog.
  • nomemory 7 days ago |
    Not a garden but I also curtate links that I find interesting here:

    https://www.andreinc.net/links/

    And maintain an active blogroll with blogs I follow:

    https://www.andreinc.net/blogroll

  • BaudouinVH 7 days ago |
    How outside the "Big Tech" gardens is blogging on Github ?

    https://news.microsoft.com/announcement/microsoft-acquires-g...

    My definition of property is more restricted : either having hosting somewhere as independent as possible or self-hosting on Raspberry Pi e.g.

    My two cents

    • vedranm 7 days ago |
      I have a website [1] on GitHub Pages. It's extremely easy to move out of GitHub, since it is on a domain I control, which is not the case with e.g. social profiles. That fact that the site is static makes it really easy to host it basically anywhere where a web server exists.

      The site is deployed using a GitHub Actions workflow, which happens to be the only GitHub-specific feature, but a similar script could easily be written in the future for another hosting if necessary.

      [1] https://group.miletic.net/

  • vouaobrasil 7 days ago |
    These days, I prefer smaller websites more and more. But I do like Substack because they are sort of like a personal website, since there are very few social features and generally you can just visit one person's Substack without seeing ANY content from anywhere else.
  • khafra 7 days ago |
    When reading the title I thought of "walled gardens," as in collaborative sites with heavy moderation/curation, but a lot of these seem to be just personal sites with careful attention to aesthetics, function, and content. And how can I trust any list like that which doesn't include gwern.net?
    • nilsherzig 7 days ago |
      A walled garden usually refers to a nice to use software ecosystem (the garden) with the twist that it stops users from escaping / communicating with the outside (the wall). Apple products tend to be the example for that.

      The title properly refers to the fact that these sites aren't hosted on substack / medium / some other pre build environment.

  • prmoustache 7 days ago |
    Bring back the webrings!
  • Emigre_ 7 days ago |
    Really nice, but you could consider to move away from Big Tech altogether; there are alternatives to GitHub.
  • flpm 7 days ago |
    The Internet has a big discoverability problem now that search has a big advertising conflict of interests. The only way to find web "human" content is to rely on the curation of other humans.

    Funny enough mining those links is what made Google the giant it is now. But this time around we will not be fooled by the next "don't be evil" tech giant :D

    • yakkomajuri 7 days ago |
      I already posted a top-level comment about this but I tried to tackle this specific problem when I built Recess (https://github.com/yakkomajuri/recess) which might interest you. Never got any traction so I dropped it.

      The idea was to be a content aggregator for what I called "siloed content" (personal websites, blogs, etc). The ideas are outlined here if anyone's keen:

      https://github.com/yakkomajuri/recess/blob/main/manifesto-is...

      I'm happy for someone to take this over too even if they're interested. It's MIT-licensed.

  • deafpolygon 7 days ago |
    Isn't GitHub a "Big Tech" walled garden?
    • scarface_74 7 days ago |
      Anyone can view and download content from it and transferring content to another site involves three commands “git pull …”, “git remote set-url origin…”, and “git push”.
  • yakkomajuri 7 days ago |
    I've thought about this problem before and built Recess as one way to approach this and related "issues".

    It never got traction so I dropped it but someone might be interested in the ideas behind it: https://github.com/yakkomajuri/recess

  • sylware 7 days ago |
    "walled" is too nice for what Big Tech is actually doing.

    What they are doing is literaly digital jails "for you own security........"

  • clircle 7 days ago |
    Yeah but can any of them write well?