The Blue Pages: Yellow Pages for the Old Web

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Overview

Hello there again! As you know, this site directory is now turned into it's own very site. Why? Because that's more cooler and somehow intuitive.

As I explain on the title, The Blue Pages serves as an old web counterpart to Yellow Pages, an item from the bygone era of traditional telephone where you open the book to find local businesses and services in your are to call in.

The Blue Pages serves as a much niche complement to both the White and Yellow Pages, instead of either providing a residential directory or a directory for local businesses, it's a directory of old web (and sometimes modern web) sites or platforms that you could visit or use nowadays.

But wait, isn't this Google?

Yes... and no. Yes, we are listing websites to search for just like Google, and no because I will do things differently.

See, even during it's 25 year old lifespan as a big tech company, Google slowly is becoming an advertising powerhouse and not only just only search engines. Google, Bing and other modern search engines rely too much on the algorithms, which is horribly being abused by mostly spammy websites, AI generated bullcrap and more than more often than not, Reddit is added to suffixes of most tech related search queries.

The Blue Pages differs by mimicking real life yellow pages. While yellow pages sites exists, it mimics the directories for something like hotels, so I decided to go with the same style as the physical yellow pages.

In this layout, while it is only alphabetical and categorized, it doesn't rely on algorithms, as it is already relevant to a particular audience. Much of the listings on the page are included by me or from submissions I saw on Mastodon, Discord or SpaceHey.

But how do I use it?

Easy! Go to the Blue Pages site, choose a category, and find which website do you want to visit!

How about putting my own site or my friend's?

Submit them to me! I'll review it myself and would put it there within days! You can send submissions on Mastodon, Discord, SpaceHey or Email, but I can't guarantee that I could read it immediately.

What if I put ads on it?

You can! But it's purely limited. I don't allow heavy use of JavaScript, server-side scripting or malicious code injected in the ad. Please send your code to me on a pastebin or in Codepen, as well as where to put it.

Available types

1. Inline - Put your ad as a listing only! Only uses text.
2. Single column - Occupy a single column.
3. Multi-column - More columns, more fun!
4. All columns - More^2 columns, more fun!

Why do this?

1. Because search engines are designed with a broader audience and this only aims an obviously smaller one.
2. It's cool and much more elaborate than a list only with descriptions.
3. Because I can.
4. To have something from the physical world to the digital, literally.
5. And, I could procrastinate for longer periods.

So what now?

The Blue Pages is open source, in fact I made it a specification so everyone could use it.

I wanted everyone to embrace it, and adapt it for their communities. The Blue Pages will connect sites together as the directory is relevant to your niche interests, but without the invasive stuff in it.

If you are wondering about the old site directory, then it would be archived but unlinked except for the sitemap.

By this, I hope that you could reflect onto what the internet was in ye olden days, and also to have fun browsing.

With the Blue Pages, you can Let Your Fingers Walk on Water. Quite literally. Yes, we literally downgraded from actual search engines but, do you even mind that? You are in your own anyways, so why not check out the directory.

As for those curious, you can see the directory here.

And as always, see you next time!