ooh.directory by Phil Gyford



Skip the Fluff; Warp Speed 11 to ohh.directory

The internet is seemingly trying to become clinically efficient: website speed, website SEO, website surveys, website scams, along with more and more magazine style websites loaded to the hilt with ads, pop-up’s and bloat ware.

All trying to vie for our page view, for our outbound advert link click.

In amongst all these wanna be big players, and amongst the legitimate big players, there are the personal and individual style blogs; those belonging to individuals, rather than the magazines.

These personal/individual blogs are not necessarily smaller in terms of content, as many have been around for nearly 2 decades, Kottke and Daring Fireball to name 2, and are literal internet libraries of information and narrative of recent history.

I myself started blogging on Typepad back in the day, and my first website is still live and accessible; not one I’d really go about overtly telling people about, as it WAS personal, and about the challenges I was going through at the time (indeed I am still going though similar challenges now.)

This all meant I was around when the internet was genuinely fun, interesting, amazing…

Websites like Technorati were revered; providing a means for your website to be indexed, rated to a degree, but all within a form of indexable boundary.

Google was full of black-hate SEO, but it was still easier for individual blogs and websites to be searched and found using sites like Technorati and Google, even StumbleUpon.

Even when I first started up imjustcreative.com, for my logo & brand Identity freelance business, the majority of my clients found me via Google, and I would often be seen on the much valued first page–no longer.

Recent years has seen a lot of global inter web controversy, a lot of change, and a lot of seemingly sterilisation of websites.

But for me, after having a nearly 7 month break from all social media, and blogging; in my slow and steady refamiliarisation of the internet of 2022 around me, I find something simply wholesome…

ooh.directory

The personal and individual websites are still going strong, but for many just a little harder to find; a little harder to stumble across in amongst the stench of raw internet filth.

Here comes the USP, and thank you for indulging me a little bit of nostalgia above.

When I first saw ooh.directory, I was convinced I was seeing something from the 2000-2010 period, not in a derogatory way; this was exactly the sort of website that would have been around back in the day.

A website that I would have excitedly spent ages checking out all the indexed websites, and clicking from one RSS feed to another.

ooh directory main front page

But no, my radar started buzzing the clearer it became this was a newly created website directory! Almost unbelievable in this kind of internet landscape, but one that is ohh soo welcome.

As it leads with…

ooh!directory is a place to find blogs that interest you.

Explore the categories, search blog details, flip through random blogs, or keep visiting the most recently-updated blogs to see who’s talking about what right now.

The site is run by Phil Gyford. If you have any questions, suggestions, or bug reports, feel free to email him.

It really has become almost impossible for me to now be excited about anything I see on the internet.

Sure, you get the funny meme, the topical cartoon, or popular Tweet.

But for me; to be genuinely happy to have found a new website thats purpose IS to index blogs, and websites, in a handcrafted way: website by website method; not some automatic algorithm, is pretty rare.

The 12 Categories

There are presently 12 Categories, some have sub categories, from which you can search, shuffle, pick and choose from:

  1. Arts and media(357)
  2. Computers, internet, tech(152)
  3. Countries, states, towns, etc.(70)
  4. Economics and business(46)
  5. Education (5)
  6. Government, politics and law(25)
  7. Humanities(69)
  8. Personal blogs (147)
  9. Recreation(68)
  10. Science(55)
  11. Society(20)
  12. Uncategorizable blogs (16)

Sure, there are some criteria, and that’s a good thing, because without some criteria, it would be like the Wild West, which is pretty much what the internet has become in many ways.

The key criteria is all about RSS, which had/has/having had bit of a rocky moment in time. I genuinely feel RSS is going to be sticking around for as long as it possible can.

There are numerous other RSS aggregators and readers out there: Feedly, Blogroll, Feedland, News Scripting, Feedle, LinkLonk, Newsblur.

The criteria for ohh.directory are as follows:

• Every blog must have an RSS or Atom feed.
• Newsletters aren’t included. Some sites are a blog and a newsletter, with identical content, but only those which mainly seem like a blog are included.
• Only blogs updated within the past year or so are added.
• Tumblrs are only included if they’re either focused on a specific topic or feature original content.
• Link blogs are only included if they include original commentary about each link.
• No blogs promoting hate speech, denial of climate change, anti-vax ideas, etc.
* Rules will probably be changed over time as more blogs are added.

Suggest a Blog

You can Suggest a Blog, and I can see that in recent days Phil, has a huge task on his hand with somewhat of a backlog.

I urge you to take some time out of doom scrolling on social media, and take some time to discover new and interesting blogs to actually read with a purpose.

See Random Blogs

I also appreciate the ‘See Random Blogs‘ feature, which is a bit of a nod to Stumbleupon, and it is genuinely quite fun to see what might pop up next.

Give it a go…

Random Directories ohh.directory

ohh!directory Updates and Social

You can follow blog site updates on Twitter or Mastodon (I’m on Mastodon as well… Obvs), as well as its own RSS feed, and Email Newsletter.

So all-in-all for ohh!directory

I’ve already spent quite a fair time going through the various Categories, and have already been able to bookmark a number of new-to-me blogs and websites.

So yeah, ohh!directory really has me jollied up quite a bit.

I honestly wish Phil Gyford all the very best with his project.

Phil, if you need any help Phil with ohh!directory, then please please just ping me! :)