Hello.  I was going to write a post about how to surf the web only I remembered it had already been written, in a far more comprehensive format, by another person.  So I’m just going to link to it and consider this my recommendation:

Surf the Web by Sadgrl

Follow Sadgrl’s guide which is chock full of different fun ways to web surf and you cannot go wrong.  Look for link lists and blogrolls on the sites you visit they may lead you to interesting corners of the web.  Surfing the Web was how we found new websites back in the 1990’s because search engines pretty much sucked for finding anything.

And I want to take a moment to appreciate the contributions of Sadgrl, who’s work to revive Web 1.0 style website creation I can only admire.  She’s been tireless in building guides, resources, tools and communities all devoted to reviving the fun part of the web like it was before 2007.  She’s like a knight in armor, with a shield made of GIF’s and an HTML sword, fighting tirelessly against the fell legions of commercialism.  I’ve never met her or even talked with her, but I’m glad that she and her crew are out there building websites and communities.

What kind of Web am I going to surf?

In my mind I always divide the independent, non-commercial web into two very broad categories:

1. The Retro Web – these are like the sites you found on Geocities, Tripod, Angelfire and other free hosts back in the 1990’s and early 2000’s.  The modern versions are a lot like Sadgrl’s website (above).  The webmasters put a lot of time and effort into their websites.  This is the really fun part of the web that I fell in love with when I first got online.  I call it “the street fair of the web” where people post about things that excite their interests.
2. The Indieweb – which is mostly independent blogs.  Not as colorful but loaded with text posts about everything under the sun.

But the reality is that the “Web Revival” is more nuanced and complex than my broad categories.  Here is an excellent guide that tries to define it: Intro to the Web Revival #1: What is the Web Revival? by Melon.  It’s well written and worth the read.

Enjoy.

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