About the Seamount Navigator

Okay, so what's all this about?

This section of my site was built on my frustration about the difficulty of finding interesting, useful, human-built sites on the modern Web. Things are explicitly engineered so finding all those little sites out there without huge Twitter presences is as difficult and unappealing as possible. They still exist! Many of the sites on these lists are still regularly being updated—but good luck finding them on what most people consider to be the "visible" internet.

In the early days of the Web, before spiders, robots, and AI lorded over information, people used to use web indices, and they still exist, but they get largely ignored now. People have attempted to build Web randomizers like StumblingOn, but with all due respect, there's virtually nothing interesting to see through these.

As such, I'm building my own index—spinning a web, if you will, and linking to some sites I feel are worth your attention. The Web is so big, no one, not even me, can round it all up. Nevertheless, with the help of my ferreting friends in the collective, here's my attempt at giving you something interesting to browse.

Why the colors and the funny sea stuff?

I consider smaller sites to be a bit like seamounts, huge underwater mountains that yet still don't reach the surface. They're a huge hazard for ships to run into. Ergo, I'm showing you where they are while you surf. I'm not sure why I built this site in basic HTML 3.2 with no stylesheet, but it felt right and many of the sites linked inside are styled similarly.

And what's the "ghost ships" refer to?

If I have confirmation a site is no longer being updated, but it's still online, I mark it as such and give the year it was last updated. My ability to do this depends on the site, of course. Ghost ships aren't necessarily derelict in my case, and sometimes, the maintainer remains very active through social media and other places, so don't count out your ability to contact them if need be.

What's the criteria to list a site? (or, "What kinda sites should I send you, Cammy?")

If it's personal, not exactly a smash hit, and I had fun clicking around it, it goes here. Sites, not profiles (with a minor exception made for blogs), with a single or a few maintainers are what I'm looking for. Old-school, hand-written HTML is a plus, but not required (but also no Bootstrap garbage please). The Seamount Navigator is a celebration of the "small web", by and large.

Will you list my site?

If that's what you got out of this section's existence, you're a sad person and you bother me.

Maintained with pride by a badger boy named Cammy. Contact him here.