This is a very nice project! Thank you for creating it and sharing it here on HN. I like the minimal version more but the modern version is quite nice too. I would probably stick to the minimal version but since it seems to lack the search feature I end up using the modern version for that.
By the way, some minor issues I found:
1. In the minimal version, when browsing the list of blogs I cannot get past page 12. The last page the UI lets me navigate to is https://text.blogosphere.app/blogs-12 which shows blogs up to names starting with 'M'. I can reach page 13 by manually editing the URL to https://text.blogosphere.app/blogs-13 which shows two blogs starting with 'N'. However, pages 14 and beyond just load the home page. Surely there are more blogs with names starting with 'O', 'P', etc.?
2. The modern version at https://blogosphere.app/ uses infinite scroll, which makes it impossible to reach the footer. Each time I scroll down, more content loads and pushes the footer further away. I was only able to view the footer by modifying the DOM in the browser's developer tools. It would be nice if there were a straightforward way to access the footer.
show comments
Hard_Space
Incredible that we are regressing back to webrings and hand-curated lists like this, both of which I remember well. That's not a criticism! I guess that the quality-drop in search wasn't quite enough to make it happen, but the advent of AI content predomination will be.
show comments
glerk
Sweet! Glad to see so many active personal blogs. We should push to bring back RSS feeds somehow. I really miss that era.
glenstein
Love this! I very much appreciate the inclusion of a lightweight version, as I think lightweight discovery for blogs and the small web is where good tools and apps are needed.
Also, given that the lightweight version is very hn styled format it naturally leads my brain to imagining a version with upvotes and commenters (which may be a good or a bad thing) but with the link submission part automated. Not necessarily the intent here but it was the first time that particular combination of possibilities occurred to me as a way to do things.
Also curious about how these blogs are indexed/reviewed. Is the list ever pruned over time due to inactivity?
show comments
l72
I always thought the "planets"[1][2][3] were a neat idea. I wish there were more of them for dedicated topics. Then I can just subscribe to specific planets which pulls curated feeds from various blogs on that topic.
Vaguely related, I did an extremely basic RSS feed combiner ages ago: https://hn-blogs.kronis.dev/ when there was that one post where people could share their blogs and many of those had RSS feeds.
That said, it got its list of feeds from the repo that someone made which hasn't been updated in a few years, so even if new blog content gets pulled, the list of blogs doesn't change. Oh well, wasn't a super serious project.
This is awesome. I find myself seeking out blogs nowadays as many of the best forums have died out and reddit has dropped in quality significantly.
I typically use marginalia and wiby to make finding posts from blogs easier, but I like the idea of providing hn style mechanics to blog posts, so many of which lack the ability to comment/discuss the material. At the same time, while I think this is a useful tool, I am a little weary of the aggregation and consolidation of the web.
This is great, thanks! It sort of feels like browsing for gems in a used bookstore and stumbling onto authentic, personal writing. I'm always up for that, and plan on spending plenty of time exploring the list.
I’ve submitted mine as well - cheers!
show comments
reedlaw
I've come to the conclusion that Hacker News is the best aggregator out there. Substack knows my interests yet gives terrible recommendations. Youtube constantly recommends the same videos or exaggerates my interest in a topic based on a few views, spamming me with related content until I watch something unrelated. The only downside of Hacker News is that its focus is narrower than other sites. But perhaps because the focus is "Anything that good hackers would find interesting" there is a bias towards things I find interesting with less noise than more commercial offerings.
dchuk
Very clean site, well done. I’ve built something similar, but it also has an algorithmic front page option as well based on the “standard” algorithm from Reddit/HN: https://engineered.at
I also have it wired up to gpt nano for topic extraction and summary creation per post, if you register for an account (free) you can also follow sources and topics to fine tune things.
I have a big list of features to continue adding to it, like an ability to “claim” your site so you can get some analytics from the site, and potentially to boost your site in the algorithm. Might also add a jobs board.
This is great. But I’ve bookmarked at least 10 of these aggregators over the years, and I never revisit any of them. Partly because I don’t have the time to browse and discover new content.
I also don’t read the blog spam from prolific writers who pop up here every two days, especially the low-quality ones constantly yapping about AI. So the number of blogs I revisit is a handful, and I have a page on my site listing them [1]. Some of the blogs I’ve listed also have backlinks to my site. It’s super simple and works fairly well for me. Plus there’s rss.
Could you add a form submission button next to the filter, so that it doesn't require JavaScript? (Or actually that can probably be done easily enough with some kind of CSS variable-setting trick...?)
freetonik
Very cool! Love the minimal design a lot, unsurprisingly.
My Minifeed [1] started with a similar goal of having a "HN for blogs", but then it grew to include search, related recommendations, custom feeds, lists, etc. I don't have categories though.
However, I think (text.)Blogosphere has a nicer interface, personally. Maybe I'm just used to HN.
rodarima
Amazing that the minimal version works in Dillo, except for the categories menu which uses JS (using a form and submit button inside a noscript tag would work as a fallback).
ml-
Nice job. A small suggestion, unless I completely missed it, an option to filter by post / blog language.
How do you curate the blogs that are being added to this? I see that there's a way to submit your own blog, but was there a list you started with initially? Thanks for making this!
sodapopcan
Very nice, this is great! Love that you give the two UX options.
FYI (bug report): In the non-minimal version, navigating by category is janky in FireFox. The logo briefly disappears with the nav jumping up in its place every time you click a category.
show comments
bryanhogan
Any plans on adding a way to filter out "lower quality" posts which usually dominate chronologically sorted post lists?
And, possibly a way to filter type of content more in-depth than just one category?
show comments
givemeethekeys
This is a great idea. I think you should ask people to pay a subscription for commenting. Turn it into a community supported site from the get go!
blue_hex
i can't describe how happy this project makes me feel. Honestly, i don't even know why. I mean, the idea is great but it's nothing "extra", still it just feels right. Like breath of fresh air.
Johnny_Bonk
One recommendation is to keep header fixed on scroll so you can always nav away. most sites fail to do this it seems
show comments
randusername
Great work, I haven't updated my public site in years while I waited for the LLM stuff to play out, but you've inspired me to put it back out there and submit.
highspeedbus
That's great. I wish we could convince more people to use similar tools regularly, myself included.
It may not 'scale' as well as algorithmic feeds, but maybe that's what will save the Web. We need more sweat and passion, both in curation of content and in the effort to find it.
skeptrune
This is awesome! I'm happy someone made this exist.
AndrewStephens
I love this (and submitted my blog) - people bemoan the death of the Old Web™ but in reality there is still heaps of great content being created.
nextaccountic
Question, is this strictly chronological, or is there anything at all to make this an "algorithmic feed" like HN, reddit, twitter, or facebook? (list is roughly in the order of less shitty to more shitty, but note that none of them are chronological, unlike, say, a RSS reader aggregating some set of blogs)
show comments
LostMyLogin
Love this! New homepage for me. Do you have a buy me coffee button to help keep it live?
show comments
tpemist
Thanks for sharing, it's a great idea! but the site is not reachable now, it stuck.
evanjrowley
Addition of a "Dark Mode" button would be much appreciated!
Biologist123
Nice. I can see a version of this working for ever more niche areas. Curated reading lists for areas of interest. At which point a curated list of curated lists becomes viable!
akshitgaur2005
Hey, I am just getting started with blogging, could/should I submit my website too?
joenot443
I love it.
I'd love a search bar and maybe a means to sort by popularity (however you define it.)
I like that it's free and clean and direct; I hope it remains that way!
_HMCB_
Superb! Thank you. Psychologically, the minimal version feels perfect; as if it were more connected with the spirit of blogging.
dalmo3
TBH I'd love to see that idea as a /blogs list here at HN.
obsidianbases1
Something like this is very much needed.
I hope to see more things like this.
What would be really cool is if there was a personalized algorithm (for you page) that stored data and processed locally.
show comments
siva7
This feels so Yahoo-1994. Love that we are getting back to our origins thanks to AI.
show comments
SirFatty
Did you use Frontpage to create your frontpage?
show comments
robertheadley
Great concept, I miss the ability to like things though.
show comments
lemiffe
Great idea! Could you add a "music" category please for blogs?
sourcegrift
"A woman had sex with identical twins and now it's impossible to tell who is the father", is this a blog post or news or sarcastic news or what the hell
setnone
This is great.
I'm curious what's your vision on adding comments?
show comments
mmargenot
Very cool! This was a good impetus to actually add RSS to my blog.
AnonyMD
It's a very modern and clean design.
tombert
Interesting. I submitted mine.
sebastianconcpt
Yeah we need to make curated human signals stronger.
napolux
scoring will bring spam and voting brigades if not managed properly
gray_wolf_99
Great idea!
chistev
Great job.
Submitted my blog.
show comments
ramraj07
give people the ability to curate their own collections and publish them
Variety! I appreciate that it's not all tech writing from tech blogs from people in tech like almost every blog list/aggregator thing on HN.
efilife
This doesn't have an RSS feed? bummer
show comments
Imustaskforhelp
Yes!! I found a new website to use :-)
I just hope if you can add dark-mode, I use hackernews essential which adds dark mode and more features which I really like in hackernews, Perhaps something like this can be added but overall I really like it!
You have (essentially) just made something which I imagined 2 years ago:
My point, which has only grown to an even larger degree is that Hackernews has too many AI discussions, which both feels a bit fomo to me and also I am seeing AI generated blog posts and comments now on Hackernews as well.
At some point, I want a website where I can talk about the more human aspects, some occasional AI mention is fine but not if a quarter or half of front page is hackernews and some genuinely nice projects don't get the attention :(
I had joined hackernews to read those content pieces and fell in love with the human discussion aspect but now there are definitely moments of browsing hackernews which makes me feel as to what I had written in the ask HN
my last line within the ask HN was: I just want people who don't want the latest ai hype to gather around and discuss some other cool things which are "not" AI. This kind of fits into that
Adding my submissions of blog-posts into it in sometime :) See you there!
gosingk
Nice project
gorbiesRedScar
perfect.
trvz
This is silly.
RSS readers exist. Feed a Fever was even better.
caaqil
I will be that guy: how is this different from HN? Or the many niche subreddits that already do this? I am seriously asking.
To me, it seems like a poor version of subreddits with HN shell to wash it down.
BrokenCogs
Now please build a frontpage for all the frontpages on blogs
arrty88
super dope. now make it infinite scroll and put ads all over the place! /s
ronb1964
Funny timing — I tried to submit my own Show HN today for a small Linux app I've been building and got blocked because my account is too new. Spent the afternoon reading through HN threads to build up some karma instead. Feels like the indie software equivalent of the same problem this project is trying to solve — it's getting harder for small, genuine projects to find an audience without gaming some system first. Appreciate what you've built here!
This is a very nice project! Thank you for creating it and sharing it here on HN. I like the minimal version more but the modern version is quite nice too. I would probably stick to the minimal version but since it seems to lack the search feature I end up using the modern version for that.
By the way, some minor issues I found:
1. In the minimal version, when browsing the list of blogs I cannot get past page 12. The last page the UI lets me navigate to is https://text.blogosphere.app/blogs-12 which shows blogs up to names starting with 'M'. I can reach page 13 by manually editing the URL to https://text.blogosphere.app/blogs-13 which shows two blogs starting with 'N'. However, pages 14 and beyond just load the home page. Surely there are more blogs with names starting with 'O', 'P', etc.?
2. The modern version at https://blogosphere.app/ uses infinite scroll, which makes it impossible to reach the footer. Each time I scroll down, more content loads and pushes the footer further away. I was only able to view the footer by modifying the DOM in the browser's developer tools. It would be nice if there were a straightforward way to access the footer.
Incredible that we are regressing back to webrings and hand-curated lists like this, both of which I remember well. That's not a criticism! I guess that the quality-drop in search wasn't quite enough to make it happen, but the advent of AI content predomination will be.
Sweet! Glad to see so many active personal blogs. We should push to bring back RSS feeds somehow. I really miss that era.
Love this! I very much appreciate the inclusion of a lightweight version, as I think lightweight discovery for blogs and the small web is where good tools and apps are needed.
Also, given that the lightweight version is very hn styled format it naturally leads my brain to imagining a version with upvotes and commenters (which may be a good or a bad thing) but with the link submission part automated. Not necessarily the intent here but it was the first time that particular combination of possibilities occurred to me as a way to do things.
Also curious about how these blogs are indexed/reviewed. Is the list ever pruned over time due to inactivity?
I always thought the "planets"[1][2][3] were a neat idea. I wish there were more of them for dedicated topics. Then I can just subscribe to specific planets which pulls curated feeds from various blogs on that topic.
[1] Planet Gnome: https://planet.gnome.org/
[2] Planet Debian: https://planet.debian.org/
[3] Planet GNU: https://planet.gnu.org/
Vaguely related, I did an extremely basic RSS feed combiner ages ago: https://hn-blogs.kronis.dev/ when there was that one post where people could share their blogs and many of those had RSS feeds.
That said, it got its list of feeds from the repo that someone made which hasn't been updated in a few years, so even if new blog content gets pulled, the list of blogs doesn't change. Oh well, wasn't a super serious project.
Ooooh I love these indie web aggregators. I wrote about some of my favorite ones here if anyone's curious: https://nelson.cloud/how-i-discover-new-blogs/.
But here are some of my fav ways to discover blogs:
- https://minifeed.net/welcome
- https://indieblog.page/
- https://1mb.club/
- https://512kb.club/
- https://250kb.club/
This is awesome. I find myself seeking out blogs nowadays as many of the best forums have died out and reddit has dropped in quality significantly.
I typically use marginalia and wiby to make finding posts from blogs easier, but I like the idea of providing hn style mechanics to blog posts, so many of which lack the ability to comment/discuss the material. At the same time, while I think this is a useful tool, I am a little weary of the aggregation and consolidation of the web.
Lovely!
Those who enjoy this might also like:
- https://kagi.com/smallweb
- https://blogroll.org/
- https://minifeed.net/welcome
- https://ooh.directory/
This is great, thanks! It sort of feels like browsing for gems in a used bookstore and stumbling onto authentic, personal writing. I'm always up for that, and plan on spending plenty of time exploring the list.
I’ve submitted mine as well - cheers!
I've come to the conclusion that Hacker News is the best aggregator out there. Substack knows my interests yet gives terrible recommendations. Youtube constantly recommends the same videos or exaggerates my interest in a topic based on a few views, spamming me with related content until I watch something unrelated. The only downside of Hacker News is that its focus is narrower than other sites. But perhaps because the focus is "Anything that good hackers would find interesting" there is a bias towards things I find interesting with less noise than more commercial offerings.
Very clean site, well done. I’ve built something similar, but it also has an algorithmic front page option as well based on the “standard” algorithm from Reddit/HN: https://engineered.at
I also have it wired up to gpt nano for topic extraction and summary creation per post, if you register for an account (free) you can also follow sources and topics to fine tune things.
I have a big list of features to continue adding to it, like an ability to “claim” your site so you can get some analytics from the site, and potentially to boost your site in the algorithm. Might also add a jobs board.
If you’re interested, while this site is closed source, the feed monitoring rails engine is open source: https://github.com/dchuk/source_monitor
This is great. But I’ve bookmarked at least 10 of these aggregators over the years, and I never revisit any of them. Partly because I don’t have the time to browse and discover new content.
I also don’t read the blog spam from prolific writers who pop up here every two days, especially the low-quality ones constantly yapping about AI. So the number of blogs I revisit is a handful, and I have a page on my site listing them [1]. Some of the blogs I’ve listed also have backlinks to my site. It’s super simple and works fairly well for me. Plus there’s rss.
[1]: https://rednafi.com/blogroll/
> Minimal (HN-inspired, fast, static): https://text.blogosphere.app/
Could you add a form submission button next to the filter, so that it doesn't require JavaScript? (Or actually that can probably be done easily enough with some kind of CSS variable-setting trick...?)
Very cool! Love the minimal design a lot, unsurprisingly.
My Minifeed [1] started with a similar goal of having a "HN for blogs", but then it grew to include search, related recommendations, custom feeds, lists, etc. I don't have categories though.
[1] https://minifeed.net/
I would love a old-school search engine that pulls results purely from a well curated list of websites and blogs.
There's also this: https://minifeed.net/global
However, I think (text.)Blogosphere has a nicer interface, personally. Maybe I'm just used to HN.
Amazing that the minimal version works in Dillo, except for the categories menu which uses JS (using a form and submit button inside a noscript tag would work as a fallback).
Nice job. A small suggestion, unless I completely missed it, an option to filter by post / blog language.
Small web, try this one https://bubbles.town
How do you curate the blogs that are being added to this? I see that there's a way to submit your own blog, but was there a list you started with initially? Thanks for making this!
Very nice, this is great! Love that you give the two UX options.
FYI (bug report): In the non-minimal version, navigating by category is janky in FireFox. The logo briefly disappears with the nav jumping up in its place every time you click a category.
Any plans on adding a way to filter out "lower quality" posts which usually dominate chronologically sorted post lists?
And, possibly a way to filter type of content more in-depth than just one category?
This is a great idea. I think you should ask people to pay a subscription for commenting. Turn it into a community supported site from the get go!
i can't describe how happy this project makes me feel. Honestly, i don't even know why. I mean, the idea is great but it's nothing "extra", still it just feels right. Like breath of fresh air.
One recommendation is to keep header fixed on scroll so you can always nav away. most sites fail to do this it seems
Great work, I haven't updated my public site in years while I waited for the LLM stuff to play out, but you've inspired me to put it back out there and submit.
That's great. I wish we could convince more people to use similar tools regularly, myself included.
It may not 'scale' as well as algorithmic feeds, but maybe that's what will save the Web. We need more sweat and passion, both in curation of content and in the effort to find it.
This is awesome! I'm happy someone made this exist.
I love this (and submitted my blog) - people bemoan the death of the Old Web™ but in reality there is still heaps of great content being created.
Question, is this strictly chronological, or is there anything at all to make this an "algorithmic feed" like HN, reddit, twitter, or facebook? (list is roughly in the order of less shitty to more shitty, but note that none of them are chronological, unlike, say, a RSS reader aggregating some set of blogs)
Love this! New homepage for me. Do you have a buy me coffee button to help keep it live?
Thanks for sharing, it's a great idea! but the site is not reachable now, it stuck.
Addition of a "Dark Mode" button would be much appreciated!
Nice. I can see a version of this working for ever more niche areas. Curated reading lists for areas of interest. At which point a curated list of curated lists becomes viable!
Hey, I am just getting started with blogging, could/should I submit my website too?
I love it.
I'd love a search bar and maybe a means to sort by popularity (however you define it.)
I like that it's free and clean and direct; I hope it remains that way!
Superb! Thank you. Psychologically, the minimal version feels perfect; as if it were more connected with the spirit of blogging.
TBH I'd love to see that idea as a /blogs list here at HN.
Something like this is very much needed.
I hope to see more things like this.
What would be really cool is if there was a personalized algorithm (for you page) that stored data and processed locally.
This feels so Yahoo-1994. Love that we are getting back to our origins thanks to AI.
Did you use Frontpage to create your frontpage?
Great concept, I miss the ability to like things though.
Great idea! Could you add a "music" category please for blogs?
"A woman had sex with identical twins and now it's impossible to tell who is the father", is this a blog post or news or sarcastic news or what the hell
This is great. I'm curious what's your vision on adding comments?
Very cool! This was a good impetus to actually add RSS to my blog.
It's a very modern and clean design.
Interesting. I submitted mine.
Yeah we need to make curated human signals stronger.
scoring will bring spam and voting brigades if not managed properly
Great idea!
Great job.
Submitted my blog.
give people the ability to curate their own collections and publish them
FWIW hackr.news has a smallweb filter: https://hcker.news/?smallweb=true
But kudos for different people working on similar good ideas
Nice and clean.
Hahahahha... I was trying to build something like this for a while. Seems like I wasn't the only one with this idea. So happy someone finally did it!
If anyone looking for something even more minimalist, give the HN x Small Web RSS feed a try
https://hcker.news/feeds/atom?period=day&limit=50&smallweb=t...
Cool project.
Variety! I appreciate that it's not all tech writing from tech blogs from people in tech like almost every blog list/aggregator thing on HN.
This doesn't have an RSS feed? bummer
Yes!! I found a new website to use :-)
I just hope if you can add dark-mode, I use hackernews essential which adds dark mode and more features which I really like in hackernews, Perhaps something like this can be added but overall I really like it!
You have (essentially) just made something which I imagined 2 years ago:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41789661: Ask HN: Are you interested in a Hacker News alternative which doesnt focus on AI (Oct 9 2024)
My point, which has only grown to an even larger degree is that Hackernews has too many AI discussions, which both feels a bit fomo to me and also I am seeing AI generated blog posts and comments now on Hackernews as well.
At some point, I want a website where I can talk about the more human aspects, some occasional AI mention is fine but not if a quarter or half of front page is hackernews and some genuinely nice projects don't get the attention :(
I had joined hackernews to read those content pieces and fell in love with the human discussion aspect but now there are definitely moments of browsing hackernews which makes me feel as to what I had written in the ask HN
my last line within the ask HN was: I just want people who don't want the latest ai hype to gather around and discuss some other cool things which are "not" AI. This kind of fits into that
Adding my submissions of blog-posts into it in sometime :) See you there!
Nice project
perfect.
This is silly.
RSS readers exist. Feed a Fever was even better.
I will be that guy: how is this different from HN? Or the many niche subreddits that already do this? I am seriously asking.
To me, it seems like a poor version of subreddits with HN shell to wash it down.
Now please build a frontpage for all the frontpages on blogs
super dope. now make it infinite scroll and put ads all over the place! /s
Funny timing — I tried to submit my own Show HN today for a small Linux app I've been building and got blocked because my account is too new. Spent the afternoon reading through HN threads to build up some karma instead. Feels like the indie software equivalent of the same problem this project is trying to solve — it's getting harder for small, genuine projects to find an audience without gaming some system first. Appreciate what you've built here!