#smolweb

You don’t have to have a blog like me. You just need to blog. Blog blog blog. Blog possibly should not be used as a verb, as I blog about here.

Weird Old Book Finder - clive

Go there now!

Overview

Hello there again! As you know, this site directory is now turned into it's own very site. Why? Because that's more cooler and somehow intuitive.

As I explain on the title, The Blue Pages serves as an old web counterpart to Yellow Pages, an item from the bygone era of traditional telephone where you open the book to find local businesses and services in your are to call in.

The Blue Pages serves as a much niche complement to both the White and Yellow Pages, instead of either providing a residential directory or a directory for local businesses, it's a directory of old web (and sometimes modern web) sites or platforms that you could visit or use nowadays.

But wait, isn't this Google?

Yes... and no. Yes, we are listing websites to search for just like Google, and no because I will do things differently.

See, even during it's 25 year old lifespan as a big tech company, Google slowly is becoming an advertising powerhouse and not only just only search engines. Google, Bing and other modern search engines rely too much on the algorithms, which is horribly being abused by mostly spammy websites, AI generated bullcrap and more than more often than not, Reddit is added to suffixes of most tech related search queries.

The Blue Pages differs by mimicking real life yellow pages. While yellow pages sites exists, it mimics the directories for something like hotels, so I decided to go with the same style as the physical yellow pages.

In this layout, while it is only alphabetical and categorized, it doesn't rely on algorithms, as it is already relevant to a particular audience. Much of the listings on the page are included by me or from submissions I saw on Mastodon, Discord or SpaceHey.

But how do I use it?

Easy! Go to the Blue Pages site, choose a category, and find which website do you want to visit!

How about putting my own site or my friend's?

Submit them to me! I'll review it myself and would put it there within days! You can send submissions on Mastodon, Discord, SpaceHey or Email, but I can\'t guarantee that I could read it immediately.

What if I put ads on it?

You can! But it's purely limited. I don't allow heavy use of JavaScript, server-side scripting or malicious code injected in the ad. Please send your code to me on a pastebin or in Codepen, as well as where to put it.

Available types

Inline - Put your ad as a listing only! Only uses text.

Single column - Occupy a single column.

Multi-column - More columns, more fun!

All columns - More^2 columns, more fun!

Why do this?

Because search engines are designed with a broader audience and this only aims an obviously smaller one.

It's cool and much more elaborate than a list only with descriptions.

Because I can.

To have something from the physical world to the digital, literally.

And, I could procrastinate for longer periods.

So what now?

The Blue Pages is open source, in fact I made it a specification so everyone could use it.

I wanted everyone to embrace it, and adapt it for their communities. The Blue Pages will connect sites together as the directory is relevant to your niche interests, but without the invasive stuff in it.

If you are wondering about the old site directory, then it would be archived but unlinked except for the sitemap.

By this, I hope that you could reflect onto what the internet was in ye olden days, and also to have fun browsing.

With the Blue Pages, you can Let Your Fingers Walk on Water. Quite literally. Yes, we literally downgraded from actual search engines but, do you even mind that? You are in your own anyways, so why not check out the directory.

As for those curious, you can see the directory here.

I like the smolweb. I like the people, the fun, the whimsy nature. Too much of this world is hyper-capatialized and marketd to the lowest bidder. That'll be a subscription service for $12/month. You can afford that right? On top of all your other subscriptions you don't actually use?

See, the corporate web is terrible. All of the platforms are only there to make money for their shareholders. They give you the illusion of choice, the illusion of self-worth. None of that is true. They take your data you didn't give them permission to take, sell it to advertisers who want to sell you other things, all for the convienance of allowing you the ability to post a picture of your vacation which will then be used (again without your permission) to feed the LLM's and generative models so they can extract more "value" from people like you.

But its not all doom and gloom! YOU CAN MAKE A DIFFERENCE! While I think you should smash your smartphone with a hammer, that is not this. You can make a website, its easy. You can own a piece of the internet. Some young people think "the internet" is only the large corporate websites or social media platforms associated with apps on a smartphone. Nay, the smolweb or indieweb is an archepeligo. It is a chain of small islands on the vast digital ocean.

So what to do about it? Become inspired by these people.

https://shellsharks.com/you-should-blog

https://taggart-tech.com/human-web/

https://fyr.io/

OK - But how do I get started?

Right, You can go to platforms and dip your toe in: https://neocities.org/, https://shellsharks.com/indieweb#hosting or you can do what most of us do and self host. https://indieweb.org/Getting_Started#Set_Up_Hosting - OR just search "How to host a blog."

The latter process takes some learning. I know its scary to learn something new a being scared of making mistakes. But that is part of the charm of making a webpage. You can literally make it whatever you want. Want Ducks? https://drawducks.com/. Want wild backgrounds and fonts that change every other word? You can do that. It doesn't matter. On my other website the background changes on every page just about. Because I wanted to. And no one told me no. And I didn't care.

Just like on this page, no spell check. Because a human wrote it. Not that there is anyhting wrong with spell check, I just CHOSE not to use it.

I want to invite you to create and talk about something you enjoy. It doesn't matter what it is. Don't create a video. Don't invent a podcast. Do go visit your local library and see what free resources they might have. WRITE SOMETHING YOU LIKE. Draw pictures, share. It literally doesn't matter what you do. And, DO IT FOR YOU. Not for the likes, not for the dopamine. Yes, it takes time, yes it take hours. Yes it will be more difficult than posting something to a social platform which almost no one will care about because those are not your real friends.