Show HN: I built a frontpage for personal blogs

Original Article ↗ Hacker News Discussion ↗

Overall reception & use

  • Many commenters are enthusiastic, calling it refreshing, nostalgic, and “small web”-aligned.
  • Several immediately submitted their blogs; some said it motivated them to add or fix RSS feeds or revive dormant blogs.
  • Some see it as a new homepage or a go-to discovery tool for authentic, personal writing.

Design, features & requests

  • The minimal HN-style version is widely praised; some prefer it over the “modern” version.
  • Feature requests: search on the minimal site, RSS feed of the frontpage, filtering by language and content type, dark mode, a “music” category, optional likes, and possibly a fixed header.
  • A few bugs are reported: pagination limits in the minimal blog list, infinite scroll hiding the footer, and JS-dependent category filters (breaking no-JS/Dillo use).

Chronological vs algorithmic feeds & “quality”

  • The frontpage is strictly chronological with no voting or ranking; the creator explicitly wants to avoid algorithmic feeds to stay true to RSS.
  • Some want personalization (filters, keyword exclusion, or popularity sort) and ways to hide “low-quality” posts.
  • Others strongly defend intentional uncuration and the inclusion of “low” or non-commercial writing, arguing that modern obsession with “quality” is tied to monetization and influencer culture.

Discovery models: webrings, blogrolls & small web

  • Large subthread on whether this is a return to webrings/blogrolls and hand-curated indexes.
  • Suggestions include:
    • Webrings and blogroll pages as decentralized discovery.
    • Building social graphs from “blogs I read” links (PageRank-like).
    • Topic “planets,” curated lists of lists, and tree-structured curation.
    • Alternative tools like Kagi Small Web, Minifeed, marginalia, Smolnet/Gemini, etc.
  • One explanation for the historical decline of webrings: search engines became good enough that people stopped browsing via link chains.

Comments, community & moderation

  • Mixed feelings about comments on blogs: nostalgia for conversations vs. spam/rudeness.
  • Alternatives mentioned: social-media-based discussions (e.g., POSSE), email contact, or lightweight hosted comment systems.
  • Some imagine adding comments/voting to this frontpage; others warn this invites spam, brigading, and the same dynamics as Reddit/HN.

Scalability, longevity & comparisons

  • All submissions are manually reviewed; some question long-term scalability, others like the human gatekeeping.
  • The creator notes low hosting costs and static-site architecture to keep it sustainable.
  • Comparisons are drawn to HN, subreddits, RSS readers, and other blog aggregators; some think this overlaps existing tools, others value its simplicity and explicit focus on the “small web” and non-AI, non-SEO-driven content.