random site portals

i have fond memories of finding new websites through stumbleupon, a now-defunct site with a "stumble" button that would redirect you to a random website. there's something compelling about the promise of being whisked away to somewhere new and interesting! stumbleupon shut down in 2018, but the random site portal format lives on through the many sites inspired by this idea. here's a non-comprehensive list of the site portals i've visited, with my general impressions:

cloudhiker

this one's the most similar to stumbleupon, with user accounts and categories. i rarely visit because the percentage of uninteresting sites is uncomfortably high (and the ads in the frame escape my ad-blocker and annoy me).

bored button and the useless web

these both focus on novelty or toy sites, offering a few moments of amusement. there's nothing wrong with a quick laugh, but i usually want a bit more to chew on.

the forest

there's one interesting site here for every dozen front-end developer portfolios where everything is written in the style of a linkedin post. i visit regularly to look for new sites, but i tend to leave feeling pessimistic.

wiby's "surpsise me" button

wiby is a search engine for non-commercial sites made with simple HTML, made to emulate browsing the early internet. the surprise sites are usually interesting, but their nostalgic presention is often more interesting than the actual contents of the page. this one probably has the widest range of subject matter.

moonjump

instead of building a list of sites through a submission form, this one scrapes are.na and hacker news for new links. this is my favorite of the random portal sites listed here, but it suffers from an abundance of dead links. another downside is that it sometimes sends you to a pdf (not a webpage), youtube video (worse), or tweet (unacceptable).

i do find value in these sites, but ultimately, i'm dissatisfied. so, instead of submitting all my favorite pages to each site in a futile attempt to mold them into something more suited to my personal taste... i decided to make my own portal,

spore dispersal!

i've been adding links to the list for the past month, and it just reached 200 pages. i'm celebrating the milestone by finally giving the site a simple favicon and 88x31 button,¹ and writing this blog entry to explain why i made it. my biggest motivator was frustration with the above sites for sending me to boring page after boring page, but enough complaints! there are interesting websites to visit!

whenever i'm surfing the web, i keep the spore dispersal redirect script open so i can easily add new sites to the list. not every site i love feels appropriate to add, so i wrote out the following guidelines to clarify my intent for this project:

prioritize:

databases and archives

community hubs

net art

resources, tutorials, and syllabi

sites that spark my curiousity or inspiration

avoid:

tech giants

commerce and paywalls

productivity tools

websites about making websites

blogs, portfolios, and personal sites²

maybe that last point comes as a surprise, given my involvement with communities that champion personal website buiding. personal sites are wonderful! but i don't think a random site portal is the right discovery mechanism for them, especially when so many better options exist. it's easy to find new personal sites and blogs through a thriving ecosystem of webrings and directories. most personal sites will link to other personal sites they like. blogs often have a blogroll, listing the blogs they like to read. this context matters. it feels natural to go from one person's site to their friend's site, but it feels wrong to randomly redirect someone to what often functions as someone's diary. so, instead of personal sites, i'm trying to highlight project-based sites.³

there is no "submit site" button and i don't think i'll ever add one.⁴ that means i'll never get to use my own page as a way to discover new sites, but that's okay. for me, it's a tool for navigating my bookmarks list⁵ when i'm craving inspiration but don't have a specific source in mind. for you, hopefully it's a place where you can find something new and interesting. if you're a repeat visitor to my site, there's a decent chance we're interested in some of the same things. expect to visit a lot of sites related to biology.

if you find my selection of sites as boring or frustrating as i find the ones mentioned above, here's the random redirect php script i use, and here's a javascript option if that's more your style. make your own! my site doesn't replace the ones i mentioned, and yours won't replace mine. there's room for all of us to make our own niche portal into the world wide web.