I feel I’ve been singing praises for Kagi for a week now, but I keep rediscovering new things. This time, Kagi Small Web (I’ll call it KSW here).

I have its RSS feed added to my FreshRSS server, but it’s too much information, so I usually turn it off when I read my feeds. This has been a kind of mistake. The RSS feed from KSW is overwhelming (there are days I get over 30 new articles, and I get them every day), but at the same time, it’s very much worthwhile - if you consume it correctly.

Using the website directly is the right answer.

First, you only see one post at a time. It’s up to you to decide if to keep looking or not. Second, many websites don’t show correctly in the RSS feed, and you have to open them individually. Third, seeing the website at least once “in the flesh” is a good idea: is it a blog? a homepage for a group somewhere? Are there weird ads in the middle? When was the last post before the one you’re seeing now? These are good questions to have in mind when touring the small web in general. Besides, the themes/colors/fonts are part of the point.

What surprised me today is the features they’ve built into KSW’s website. Take a look at this header (click the image to see it full size and follow the explanations):

A website navigation bar displays buttons and a search function accompanied by an upload icon and a thumbnail image.

From left to right:

  • Next Post: this takes you to another post on a new website. I think it should just say “next.”
  • 👍: this “appriciates” the post you’re reading, kind of like upvoting.
  • Smiley face thingi: allows you to choose an emoji for your upvoting.
  • Comments: to comment about the page you’re reading, goes to KSW community of readers, I guess
  • The site’s URL: takes you to the page, so you don’t have this nav bar on top
  • Share, Flag, Appreciate, Videos, Comics: The first two are actions; to share the post using different methods, and to Flag it for KSW admins, I’m assuming. The other words are filters: you can view other Appreciated (“thumbed up” or “liked”) pages, or you can view independent videos (from YouTube). And then we have a nice Comics category as well.
  • Moon darkmode, or at least it’s trying to darkmode the page. It will switch to a sun icon when selected to go back to light mode.
  • Search: this searches a topic in KSW. I had success with searching for “Emacs” for example, but less with “vegan.” It doesn’t always work.
  • Use Kagi: Opens the Kagi search page
  • Contribute Takes you to the KSW GitHub page (yes, it’s open source)
  • About: I should have started reading this first. But it’s your usual about page.

As it turns out, this is a more human project than I realized, and it’s curated by people. They’ve added 16,662 sites(!) at the time of this writing and counting.