directory
A directory on the web lists websites or pages typically grouped by topic or areas of interest, sometimes using categories or tags, often useful for finding niche communities and discovering new websites. (Also known as a web directory.)
Why
Silos often provide recommendation engines or ideas about who to follow to give their users content to read. As IndieWeb adherents begin to own their own data on their own websites, they'll want services similar to these whether they are centralized or decentralized.
Examples In The Wild
Main article: indieweb directory
- Bukmark Club is a collection of websites that have a curated list of bookmarks and/or links to other websites.
- MelonLand Surf Club is a directory of personal sites
- Blog of the .Day features a random indieweb blog each day. It features an RSS feed one can subscribe to. Instructions for including a blog appear on the site. Created by
capjamesg, now stewarded by Joe Crawford.
- Blog Surf was a directory both of sites and of blog posts. As of 2020-02-27, it indexed 752 blogs. These blogs were categorised by tags within the directory. The directory also kept a list of posts made by these blogs and was able to show either the latest posts of the whole collection, or on a per-tag basis. As of 2025-12-23, the domain has been bought by another party.
- Now Now Now is directory built by Derek Sivers. See also: now
- ooh directory is a directory of blogs personally curated by Phil Gyford. There is a list of criteria for inclusion. The main criteria is the inclusion of an Atom or RSS feed, be updated in the last few months, self-submit. It also includes a , be in English, among other criteria. It includes a directory by category, a [random blog page], a list of updated list of [recently updated blogs] with their most recent post. See ooh.directory
- OwnCast runs a directory of OwnCast instances. You can opt your instance in to publishing to the directory, and your instance will appear at the top when it's actively streaming.
- Personal sites are awesome is a website built by Andy Bell using a Github repo so we can all discover each others websites. All the links are by folks that want to share their site with the world.
- The Wild Wild Web is a directory of cool websites, organized and curated by humans. It's a modern take on Yahoo Directory, focusing on non-commercial sites that have something to say, not something to sell.
- A list of tilde.club servers with sites for a variety of people and users and based on the original tilde.club.
- Awwwards has a site of the day. People can nominate, vote, and browse a directory of sites.
- ¡Blog!¡Blog! is a blog directory that lists websites whose authors write in Spanish.
- unmung's Mastoview is very similar to a directory with a randomizer built in.
Articles
This article is a stub. You can help the IndieWeb wiki by expanding it with relevant information.
- Brad Enslen and Kicks Condor have a variety of articles they've written on this topic since 2017 and before.
- Foundations of a tiny directory Kicks Condor lays out the importance of the human element and reasons for a tiny directory.
Past Examples
- Indieweb.xyz was a syndication service / directory organized into various subs, similar to Reddit, created by Kicks Condor. All interaction with the site, such as linking and upvoting, was performed by Webmention. Discussion happens on blog posts themselves, as per Indieweb convention.
- Colin Walker had a personal directory (404 as of 2024-11-16) comprised of websites that have sent his site webmentions.
- the dailywebthing linkport is a hybrid directory/linkblog operating from 2004-2023, and its sister site, dailywebthing daily pointers, since 2000, Both created by Joe Jenett
- "IndieWeb Directory on Glitch" (indieweb-directory.glitch.me) was a list of people with personal websites on the IndieWeb who have signed-in with IndieAuth and was hosted on Glitch. The list of people that have saved their sites did not seem to have any particular order or categorization.
- Neocities Districts was "a site directory created on Neocities for Neocities". A place to discover other people who have been creating (mostly oldschool) web pages about their interests on Neocities. As of 2025-12-23, the directory has been discontinued.
- Berg Builds Community was a collection of Domain of One's Own projects at Muhlenberg College.
- Refined Blog was a list of personal software blogs collected and organized from various sources with Hacker News scores calculated/displayed as an indicator of value to the collection. Included links to feeds as well as the ability to generate an OPML of the list.
- Hyperlink Node Directory (currently generating PHP errors as of 2024-11-16) was a project by Brad Enslen comprised of a collection of web links. It could be considered a directory of directories, and it could be used for discovery of new websites and for surfing the web.
Brainstorming
This article is a stub. You can help the IndieWeb wiki by expanding it with relevant information.
- How to build
- Directory Building Just Got Easier, Cheaper and Indieweb lays out how to build a hybrid directory/linkblog using Wordpress complete with Indieweb features.
- Indieweb features
- Centralized vs. Decentralized
- Decentralized Search and the Indieweb Brainstorms about offering an alternative decentralized discovery means via blogrolls, linkblogs and particularly "many hundreds" of small directories. The theory being if people are constantly bumping into different directories everywhere they go, they will eventually start using them.