sbnation.com/a/17776-football
It’s not all about sports, i promise. It is, however, one of the best uses of hypertext for storytelling i’ve seen in a long, long time. I don’t want to spoil it, so go read it for yourself!
→ Also by Jon Bois: The Bob Emergency
Created 2017-07-05, added to list 2020-02-13
adamcadre.ac
The website of one Adam Cadre, interactive fiction pioneer and creator of the Lyttle Lytton contest, honouring the worst possible opening lines to a novel one could ever come up with.
Also featured are film critiques, restaurant reviews, and an annotated list of favourite songs.
Created c. 1999, added to list 2021-11-20
afterthetone.com
Archived answerphone messages, found somewhere between the dumpster and the donations box.
Created 2009, added to list 2021-11-20
alltooflat.com/pranks/cube
One of the first documented pranks on the oft-tomfooled Astor Place Cube in Manhattan.
This site hasn’t been updated in almost a decade now — things like that always make me think, who’s paying to keep the lights on? Feels like it might not be long for this world.
Created c. 2003-07-06, added to list 2021-01-23
anthology.rhizome.org
A history of art made for the internet, from the ’80s up to the modern day.
Created 2016-10-27, added to list 2021-11-21
arkmsworld.neocities.org
A sprawling personal directory packed into the vague shape of a house — but, like, one of those Hogwarts houses where the rooms keep changing behind you and you’re not quite sure how it all manages to fit inside the exterior.
Created 2014-07-26, added to list 2021-01-23
artybollocks.com
“My work explores the relationship between Bauhausian sensibilities and counter-terrorism. With influences as diverse as Rousseau and Roy Lichtenstein, new insights are manufactured from both constructed and discovered textures.”
Created 2011-06-10, added to list 2021-11-21
astronaut.io
You are an astronaut floating over the Earth; observing Her people’s everyday lives. These clips have been uploaded to Youtube fresh off of the camera with file names like img 1923, and were never meant to be seen… but now, they are.
→ See also: defaultfile.name, incognitube.com
atlasobscura.com
A menagerie of curious places all around the world. I’m quite partial to the Seattle mystery soda machine and, having been there, the poison garden of Alnwick.
Created 2009, added to list 2020-08-02
belowthesurface.amsterdam
The stories told by a variety of interesting things found in a canal in Amsterdam during excavation of a metro line.
Created 2018-06-13, added to list 2020-03-05
beneathvt.com
“Do not enter the steam tunnels.” These are the adventures of a rag-tag group of explorers at one Virginian university.
Created c. 2009, added to list 2021-11-21
billwurtz.com
Bill Wurtz’s home page is wonderfully bare-bones, and filled with sorts of hidden nooks and crannies; the anagrams page is a personal favourite.
→ Also by Bill Wurtz: La de da de da de da de day oh
bridgesonthetyne.co.uk
The surprisingly interesting history of the bridges that span the Tyne gorge — and a bunch of other rivers throughout the North East, just for good measure.
Created c. 2006, added to list 2021-11-20
brienne.org
An online exhibition about a 17th-century trunk of letters sent to a museum in Den Haag.
(“The Hague” refers exclusively to the international courts of justice. The city is “Den Haag”, or “’s-Gravenhage” if you want to get fancy. I will die on this hill.)
Created 2015-11-04, added to list 2020-03-06
colornames.org
A collaborative effort to name every colour. 2½ million and counting!
Created c. 2017-11, added to list 2021-05-16
theconditionalorchestra .org
Procedurally generated music based on your location.
Created c. 2017-10-20, added to list 2020-02-13
benjaminlcorey.com/could-american-evangelicals-spot-the-antichrist-heres-the-biblical-predictions
Fellas, is Donald Trump literally the Antichrist? Probably not (i’m no Christian), but the argument is mighty convincing…
Created 2020-06-02, added to list 2020-12-06
cuberule.com
A delightful and 100% objective categorisation of carbohydrate-based foods. We can finally be sure that a hot dog is, in fact, a sandwich, although this also requires accepting that pork pies are a calzone.
Created 2018-10-17, added to list 2020-02-13
curlie.org
Formerly known as Dmoz, Curlie is the original diectory for surfing the ’web. It’s getting on a bit now — many of the listed sites are absolutely ancient — but i don’t think that’s a bad thing. It’s internet history at your fingertips, this!
Created 1998-06-05, added to list 2021-11-21
davidrumsey.com
A collection of mainly old and antique maps. I could spend hours here; beautiful cartography is my greatest weakness.
Created c. 1996, added to list 2020-12-06
dedalvs.com
David J. Peterson is probably the closest thing the field of conlanging has to a celebrity, having done things as high-profile as Game of Thrones’ Dothraki. This makes it all the more surprising that he has a wonderful little hand-coded website for his other conlanging projects. Those aren’t even my favourite part, though: that honour goes to the Smiley Awards, an annual award given to a language that makes [him] smile
.
Inspiration: Mr. Peterson’s site was the thing that inspired me to have an HTML presence to begin with; the earliest design of this very site was copied from his. (I’ll link an image when i get around to finding one…)
Created c. 2004-05-21, added to list 2020-08-05
diamondgeezer.blogspot.com
Life as viewed from London E3, by someone with an ever-more-accurate nom de plume. There’s 20 years’ worth of material to dig through; a real treasure trove if you’re interested in attractions or transit in the area.
Created 2002-09-08, added to list 2020-09-23
www.hermeticfellowship.org/Dionysion
A directory of links in honour of Dionysos. Be advised, though, that it hasn’t been updated in eighteen years, and thus many of the links sadly no longer point to their intended destinations.
Created c. 1998-09, added to list 2020-12-29
dreamwiki.sixey.es
The “DREAMWIKI” is a surreal wiki of twisty little interlinked nocturnal ramblings. Don’t miss the main site, which includes a subterranean tunnel system buried deep beneath the surface.
etymonline.com
“A map of the wheel-ruts of modern English” — the definitive online compendium of the origins of English words, as compiled by one Douglas Harper of Pennsylvania.
→ See also: Jeff from Florida’s resource of word-nerdery
Created 2001, added to list 2021-11-20
everynoise.com
You may be disappointed that it doesn’t literally play every noise at once. But it’s a fascinating data-driven look at how music is categorised, and incidentally a pretty good tool for discovering new artists!
Maybe you could argue this doesn’t belong in the “Directories” category. I think it counts, though — not a directory of websites, but definitely an equivalent format for music.
Created 2013-03-22, added to list 2020-02-13
mango.pdf.zone/finding-former-australian-prime-minister-tony-abbotts-passport-number-on-instagram
“For security reasons, we try to change our Prime Minister every six months, and to never use the same Prime Minister on multiple websites.”
Created 2020-09-15, added to list 2020-09-23
florilegium.org
A collection of resources on mediæval life, collected for the benefit of the live-action role-play community.
Created c. 1999-03, added to list 2021-11-21
fraidyc.at
Alright, maybe this is just a glorified RSS reader with a few extra bits tacked on. But i love the way it organises content: just because someone posts more frequently doesn’t mean i want to see more of them!
Created c. 2019-11-04, added to list 2020-04-24
gwern.net
Hypertext writings on all sorts of topics i’m not clever enough to understand. Definitely one of the Rational™ crowd.
Inspiration: There are all sorts of formatting quirks here that i’ve taken inspiration from. Those sidenotes!
Created 2010-10-01, added to list 2020-11-08
hryanjones.com/guess-my-word
Warm. Warm. Cold. Colder. Wa—freezing cold. Words change daily.
Created 2019-04-22, added to list 2020-12-06
href.cool
oh shit things just got meta
A directory of links that were my main inspiration in creating this page. There’s so much cool stuff here, and i still haven’t reached the bottom.
I think it’s interesting that we have different methods of approaching the intertwingularity of things: href
lightyear.fm
The further from Earth you scroll, the older the radio transmissions get.
→ See also: The opening scene of Contact
lindisfarne.org.uk
Though the official(?) website of the Holy Island of Lindisfarne looks like it hasn’t been changed in a decade, it’s still regularly updated to this day — they put a fabric texture on their GDPR nag, for foxache! I love it so much
Created c. 1998-01, added to list 2020-09-23
macpaint.org
A gallery of art created in the namesake antique computer programme.
Created 2011-05-16, added to list 2021-08-03
millionshort.com
This is genius: A search engine, but with the top million sites (or any order of magnitude you choose) filtered out. Great for rediscovering the smaller web!
Created c. 2012-04, added to list 2020-05-28
c82.net/mineralogy
A beautiful visualisation of old drawings of minerals and precious stones.
Created 2020-07-24, added to list 2020-08-13
neilcic.com/mouthmoods
The annoying thing about the Mouth tetralogy is that you’ll never be able to hear the normal versions of these songs the same way again.
→ Also by Neil Cicierega: The entirety of 21st century internet culture
mschf.xyz
Various experiments in mischief, released every fortnight. Highlights include Times Newer Roman, the toaster bath bomb, and of course, Jesus Shoes
Created c. 2016, added to list 2020-03-18
narrowdesign.com
Spiral scrolling is ridiculous and i love it.
Created c. 2017-05-11, added to list 2020-04-03
whitney.org/artport-commissions/new-york-apartment/
Your new apartment is waiting for you. Scenic views of all of New York City.
Created 2020-03-06, added to list 2020-03-18
noclip.website
Noclip.website lets you fly through the abandoned worlds of old video games, set free from their cartridges, devoid of any players or characters. It’s like wandering around after the Rapture.
Created c. 2018, added to list 2021-08-03
nomorecorners .wordpress.com
The official website of the All About Roundabouts Society, and what quality roundabouts they are! This is what the internet was made for, really. Exudes very British energies, but seems to be based in the suburban town of Carmel, Indiana.
Created c. 2015, added to list 2021-01-23
novov.me
A kindred spirit making a website of interesting individual pages. The skeuomorphism going on in the gallery is insane; i wish i was that committed to any of my gimmicks!
Inspiration: The general level of polish on display here has inspired me to go and touch up some of my pages; the influence is especially (maybe too?) apparent in the shrines page.
eev.ee/blog/2020/02/01/old-css-new-css
This is a whirlwind tour of the chaotic history of CSS, one of the three founding pillars of the web, peppered with just the right amount of jokes and fuck
s to be engaging but not irritating. As a bonus, the last part doubles as a pretty solid recap of all the neat things modern CSS can do!
omfgdogs.com
The song playing in the background is a chiptune version of “Fångad av en stormvind”. You’re welcome.
Created c. 2012-02-28, added to list 2020-04-24
orbis.stanford.edu
Like Google Maps for the Roman world. You can plot out a course from Britannia to Carthage and see how long it would take and how many bags of grain you’d have to fork over.
Created 2012-05-06, added to list 2021-08-03
orkneyjar.com
A repository for the history and culture of the Orkney islands, up in the far north of Scotland.
Created c. 1997, added to list 2021-11-21
parallel.co.uk
There are ten million buildings in the Netherlands, and this fuck-off great map shows how old they all are.
→ See also: Topotijdreis and the National Library of Scotland’s viewer for exploring old maps of the Netherlands and UK
Created 2019-08-28, added to list 2021-11-21
peelopaalu.neocities.org
Another big directory of links. This one has a more image-board-y, vintage tilt to it — musty old websites full of anarchic nerd stuffs.
Created 2019-07-29, added to list 2021-11-21
theodoregray.com/periodictable
A literal periodic table of elements, with tons of samples and stories of how it was made.
Created 2002-04-15, added to list 2020-12-29
phrontistery.info
I wish i’d known about this horde of words and word-related paraphernalia before starting the Compendium. It can be a bit impenetrable to browse, though…
Created c. 1996-10, added to list 2020-12-06
1pixelmoon.com
A simultaneously tedious and engaging explanation of just how big outer space is.
Created c. 2014-03-04, added to list 2020-02-26
pluto.zone†
Pluto was beautiful. Pluto was there when you needed it. And then one day, it wasn’t anymore. I’m linking to an archived version here, but the original will never be forgotten.
Created 2015-09-06, disappeared c. 12019-04, added to list 2020-02-13
practicaltypography.com
Typographer Matthew Butterick’s practical advice for making your type look good and more readable. Please go read it, i have had enough of your 8-px misused Japanese fonts with letters spaced 5 kilometres apart
Created c. 2010, added to list 2020-11-08
qntm.org
Sci-fi stories, analyses of time travel, and assorted others by author Sam Hughes.
Created c. 2006-01, added to list 2020-12-06
retronator.com
A beautifully composed online magazine about beautiful pixel art. How they got Tumblr to coöperate with that design, i have no idea.
Created c. 2010, added to list 2020-03-19
rivendell.neocities.org
A site belonging to an Elvish-inclined engineer and conlanger who has, in his own words, “been a musician, a linguist, a gamer, a mystic, an actor, a DJ, a runner, a raver, a philosopher, an artist, a writer, and probably a few other things that are escaping my mind at the moment.”
Created 2018-10-21, added to list 2021-11-20
sacred-texts.com
An archive of religious and spiritual writings in the public domain from every corner of the globe.
Created 1999-09-03, added to list 2021-08-03
saintjohnsbible .org
The first illuminated Bible manuscript commissioned since the invention of the printing press.
Created c. 1998-12, added to list 2020-12-29
scheherazades-niche.neocities.org
Twin encyclopædiæ of overlooked aspects within Islam. The catalogue of female saints is especially interesting.
Created 2019-01-31, added to list 2020-09-23
scp-wiki.net
You’ve probably already heard of this if you’ve spent any length of time on the Internet, but it’s still great. A giant compendium of horror, sci-fi, and just plain weird tales and documents that’d take you years to read in its entirety.
Created 2007-06-22, added to list 2020-02-13
andymatuschak.org/scrying-pen/
This pen predicts what you’re drawing. Let it guide your hand.
Created 2018-03-04, added to list 2020-11-08
skyscraperpage.com
"Marijn, I fail to see why"— *click* —"a site just about skyscrapers"— *click* —"merits inclusion on thi... oh no i’ve got twenty tabs of this open help"
Created 2017-01-23, added to list 2020-03-19
slowways.org
Collaboratively-sourced quiet walking paths between every town in Britain. I can vouch for their accuracy, so give your local routes a try, why don’t you?
Created c. 2020-07, added to list 2021-05-16
steen.free.fr
The personal website of conlanger Jan van Steenbergen. He’s a major contributor to the sprawling online alternate history setting Ill Bethisad, the international Slavic language Interslavic, and devised a neat system to classify conlangs (NL) in the absence of any natural language families in which they can be grouped. His website was one of the things that inspired me to make this little site in the first place!
Created c. 2004-12, added to list 2020-12-29
superbad.com
Don’t click on me. It upsets the bees. Now you’ve done it. The bees have left.
Created c. 1997-06-30, added to list 2020-05-28
superpixelquest.com
You expect me to sit here and explain “Super Pixel Quest” to you? Dang thing doesn’t even have any words except the ones telling you how to click through it. Go take a look yourself. It’s cute.
Created c. 2014-07-07, added to list 2021-01-23
surf.city
22 channels about various topics... lean back and relax.
Created 2020-04-17, added to list 2020-04-24
99percentinvisible.org/episode/ten-thousand-years
The ways we’ve come up with to communicate the danger posed by radioactive waste to future generations fascinate me to no end. Land art and green cats are just some of the interesting ones!
Created 2014-05-12, added to list 2020-02-13
galactanet.com/oneoff/theegg_mod.html
You were on your way home when you died. And that’s when you met me.
→ See also: Kurzgesagt’s animated version
theoi.com
Bountiful information on the Gods of ancient Hellas: mythoi, Their domains, epithets, and ancient worship.
Created c. 2000, added to list 2020-05-28
timecube.com†
No matter how weird you think the Time Cube story is, it always seems to get weirder.
Created c. 1997, disappeared c. 2015-08, added to list 2020-02-13
tixy.land
A “creative coding environment” of 16 by 16 bicoloured circles.
The programme showing on the screenshot is sin(t-sqrt((x-7.5)**4+(y-7)**4)), if you’d like to try it for yourself.
umhi.xyz
…but also valepaia.xyz and ugly
I could go on about this/these website/s forever. Feels like the web in a parallel timeline where it took more after television and radio than books: there are video pages, pages with audio narration, and “non-commercial breaks”, where you have to wait a bit and relax before it lets you in to the next page. Wonderful stuff.
Oh— to get in, you want the bit that reads >ø\‣.
unmusem.org
The charmingly retro “Museum of UnNatural Mystery” explores the fringes of scientific (and a little bit of pseudoscientific) knowledge. Try not to touch the iframes and musty 3D renderings; they’re very fragile…
Created c. 1999, added to list 2021-08-03
vole.wtf
Various fun games and jokes. My personal favourite is Can You Draw a Perfect Circle?— best i can do is 97.7%.
Created 2020-04-17, added to list 2020-04-24
en.wikipedia.org
Wikipedia can be considered living proof that humans are, fundamentally, nice. The fact that we’ve managed to keep an online encyclopædia running (ad-free, even!) for twenty years without it completely burning to the ground is really one of our greatest achievements, right up there alongside fire, electricity, and that time people raised 350 000 USD for charity purely to spite Graham Linehan.
Created 2001-01-15, added to list 2020-02-13
windows93.net
A fantastical operating system with various widgets galore.
Created c. 2014-10, added to list 2020-03-19
wolfmanmuseum.org
A treasure trove of art, live streams, and other such multimedia. Very noticeably inspired by the Geocities era of web design, with weird branching paths stretching throughout; it’s like exploring an actual museum.
Created c. 2017-01, added to list 2020-03-10