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Posted by ramkarthikk 9 hours ago

Show HN: I built a frontpage for personal blogs(text.blogosphere.app)
With social media and now AI, its important to keep the indie web alive. There are many people who write frequently. Blogosphere tries to highlight them by fetching the recent posts from personal blogs across many categories.

There are two versions: Minimal (HN-inspired, fast, static): https://text.blogosphere.app/ Non-minimal: https://blogosphere.app/

If you don't find your blog (or your favorite ones), please add them. I will review and approve it.

555 points | 157 commentspage 2
jasoneckert 8 hours ago|
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!

glenstein 7 hours ago||
>It sort of feels like browsing for gems in a used bookstore and stumbling onto authentic, personal writing

I don't know that I've heard a better description of the thing the so-called small web is about than that. It's the clearest answer to the "why" of having a small web of discoverable personal blogs and sites.

ramkarthikk 7 hours ago||
That is such a lovely way to put it. Do you mind if I add it to the about page and link to this comment?
boxedemp 1 hour ago||
Very cool!! It's actually full of blogs! I've seen lots of claims for this kind of thing, glad to see you followed through!
dchuk 7 hours ago||
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

Yokohiii 6 hours ago|
Not sure if you want feedback on this, but mine is free.

The lists are impenetrable for my eye, I think an key mistake is that you don't use an accent color for titles in lists (i.e. look at a google serp).

That you don't directly link the content, felt like an offense, followed by a slap in the face looking at an AI generated summary.

The layout feels too reddit and too industrialized and the way you plan to progress the project, rings my "pet project to slam ad's on" bells.

I think the pure intent of OPs site naturally makes it more approachable and likeable.

reedlaw 6 hours ago||
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.
landdate 2 hours ago||
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.

rednafi 7 hours ago||
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/

millionclicks 1 hour ago||
Awesome idea. You should launch this on Buildfeed.co.
glerk 1 hour ago||
Sweet! Glad to see so many active personal blogs. We should push to bring back RSS feeds somehow. I really miss that era.
zahlman 5 hours ago||
> 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...?)

freetonik 5 hours ago|
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/

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