Small and independent blogs are always full of surprises. The more blogs I stumble upon, the more genuinely surprised I am by the things people do with their blogs. It seemed like a good idea to summarize highlights here. I hope it might inspire non-bloggers to blog and bloggers to tinker more with their site—because obviously the tinkering never ends!
I randomly selected blogs for each thing. There are ample other sites that use that particular feature, but I had to start somewhere. Some blogs appear multiple times, probably making them even funkier! This list is incomplete, I’ll try to periodically update it as I encounter more cool stuff. Enjoy!
Content related
- Publish reviews of books/music/… in a cool sortable grid: Chris Burnell’s Music
- Hack together your own
last.fm
to scrobble music to your own site: Jan Boddez' Owning My Scrobbles - Sync your laptop battery, local weather, and current location with your site: Aaron Parecki’s homepage
- Publicly display global website statistics: Luke Harris' stats page
- More stats: game playtime, AWStats server data: Roy Tang’s stats
- Create and regularly update a "uses" page: Ru Singh' uses page
- Create and regularly update a "now" page: Derek Sivers' the /now page movement
- Auto-import game metadata from How Long To Beat and others: Jefklak’s Codex games page
- Use your own site to publish checkins instead of Foursquare: Henrique Dias' checkins
- Regularly publish week reviews or link bundles: Stefan Imhoff’s Link Bundle #15
- Have an "on this day" page that displays posts from previous years: Frank Meeuwsen’s on this day archive
- Group multiple posts into series: Amos' long-form series
- Group multiple posts into research questions: Emmanuel Quartey’s questions section
- Syndicate the HTTP blog to a Gemini capsule: Brain Baking Gemini (defunct)
Design related
- Create an official coat of arms as the logo of your site: Marijn Florence’s heraldry adventure
- Design your site around ever-evolving note-taking systems: Andy Matuschak’s Evergreen Notes
- An audible frequency graph that determines posting activity: Chris Burnells' All posts archive
- Write a custom dynamic blog engine from scratch, because we can: Jan-Lukas Else’s blog
- Implement a simple client-site search using lunr.js: Brain Baking archives
- Show articles from others blogs you read below your own articles: an article from Drew DeVault
- Use a public inbox as a commenting system: an article from Drew DeVault
- Implement reaction buttons for each post: Jan-Lukas Else’s thoughts on reactions
- Emulate the multi-pane layout of an e-mail client: Brian Lovin’s writings
- Each post has a unique HTML design/layout: Aegir’s Words
IndieWeb related
- Have a guestbook page where people can send Webmentions to to sign it: Ana Rodrigues' guestbook
- Collaborative pixel-art that gets saved every five minutes: Aaron Parecki’s IndieWebCamp Pixel Art
- Publish replies to others' sites using Webmentions: James' Coffee Blog, Replies
- Post Tweets on your own site first, then syndicate to Twitter: Sebastiaan Andeweg’s tweets
- Summarize all IndieWeb-based RSVP events in a calendar: Jamie Tanna’s RSVPs
- Work together on MicroPub/Sub as a new social reading protocol: Neal Mather’s blog
- Join the IndieWeb ring to promote own and others' sites: Horst Gutmann’s blog
- Build a custom Webmention receiver/sender: IndieWeb examples
RSS related
- Provide multiple RSS feeds for notes, articles, etc: Ton Zijlstra’s feeds
- Add query capabilities to RSS feeds: Eli’s RSS navigational tips
- Automatic publishing of favorites from an RSS reader: Peter Rukavina’s favorites
- Styled OPML Blogrolls that can be imported into your reader: Ruben Schade’s Omake OPML
- Styled RSS feeds to better explain what a web feed is: Matt Webb’s RSS feed
- A "Reply via email" link in each RSS post to encourage interaction: Mike Harley’s RSS feed
- Secret RSS-only posts that do not appear on the website: Ton Zijlstra’s RSS feed
- Send out newsletters based on your RSS feed: Kev Quirk is newslettering again (defunct)
- Add the location from where you write to your RSS feed: Ruben Schade’s RSS feed
Addendum 29th April: I never thought to receive that many positive feedback! This article is suddenly one of the most popular I recently wrote, made it to Lobste.rs and Hacker News, and was boosted over eight times on Mastodon. Funny, the more meta a blog article is, the more popular it is.
Bio and Support
I'm Wouter Groeneveld, a level 36 Brain Baker, and I love the smell of freshly baked thoughts (and bread) in the morning. I sometimes convince others to bake their brain (and bread) too.
If you found this article amusing and/or helpful, you can buy me a coffee - although I'm more of a tea fan myself. I also like to hear your feedback via Mastodon or e-mail. Thanks!
Mentions and Replies
Cool Things People Do With Their Blogs by Wouter GroeneveldWouter Groeneveld (brainbaking.com) Small and independent blogs are always full of surprises. The more blogs I stumble upon, the more genuinely surprised I am by the things people do with the...
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A whole new month just crept up on us huh. I don't have anything particularly witty to say at the moment. The World Putin's invasion of Ukraine is now in its 10th week. No end in sight. Not sure if it's worth it to continue tracking this here since ...
A few days ago, while reading my Mastodon timeline, I stumbled on an article by Wouter Groeneveld, titled Cool Things People Do With Their Blogs. Two things caught my eye: styled OPML blogrolls that can be imported into an RSS reader, by Ruben Sc...
Update about blog – Set Kyar
Barry Frost liked this post.
Uses - Ru rusingh.com/uses/ "This page is a succinct overview of the tools I use, manage, and self-host. I try to use open-source where possible." via brainbaking.com/post/2022/04/c… via news.ycombinator.com/item?id=311999… #Selfhosted #Tool ¹ m...
@omgmog @wouter Nice list!
Johan Bové liked this post.
Cool Things People Do With Their Blogsvia @wouter https://brainbaking.com/post/2022/04/cool-things-people-do-with-their-blogs/https://chat.brainbaking.com/@wouter/posts/AIsYJleDzVQgK7ua36
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Cool Things People Do With Their Blogs – OasisNews
I do from time to time forays through the Internet and like to visit cool blogs. Wouter has created a list with a few examples and even mentioned my blog in it. Small and independent blogs are always full of surprises. The more blogs I stumble up...
@roytang Great article, it's cool seeing what everyone's made
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Recommended read: Cool Things People Do With Their Blogs | Brain Baking https://brainbaking.com/post/2022/04/cool-things-people-do-with-their-blogs/
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