28 Aug 2025
A modern internet directory with all the classic styling.
I was just introduced to url.town tonight, and it’s an implementation of something that I had been mulling over for a bit now: making a modern internet directory. One that’s got categories, subcategories, and is more carefully curated than a search engine’s scattershot crawlers. url.town is the same thing I pictured, a simple website with a text layout and the links curated by members of the omg.lol community.
The site’s directory structure is super simple. There are primary categories that only contain subcategories, and those subcategories are what contain the links to other sites. A few of the categories are sparse with only one subcategory, while others will have plenty of information like the Internet and Language categories.
I’ve been spending a good hour or so finding a random subcategory in a category I haven’t been into yet, clicking, in, and seeing the bit of variety and if there’s anything I’d expect. A good chunk of the time I don’t recognize most the links! Arts & Design > Pixel Art only had one link, a little 16x16 pixel art editor called yip.pe. Over in Computers > CSS is SmolCSS, a collection of CSS snippets for various page elements you can make, complete with examples!
If you’re hungry, Food > Farm to Table’s got Sam Cobb Farms, a date farm in California that takes online orders that I am now extremely interested in. And thanks to The Photographic Periodic Table of Elements in Math and Science > Science I now know that my bathroom shower curtain is severely outdated as its table only goes up to 111.
It’s a lost bit of the internet where there were multiple site directories like Yahoo or DMOZ, but with search engines those small curated lists fell to the wayside. Well, time is a Horseshoe and it’s swung back aorund to internet directories being fun and interesting again. No two are going to be alike, and there’s going to be way more varieties of small sites and businesses.
I’m still thinking of starting one up myself, but that’ll have to go on the pile of stuff I’m getting to later. I’d love to share the smaller sites I’m using now as I try to get more out of the grasp of larger store pages. Until then, I’m going to marvel at new ones popping up.
