Sunday, January 17, 2016

Referrer Report and Link Development

The migration to my new server is taking longer than expected. I keep hitting diversions and suffer long interruptions.

Yesterday, I had a short break; so I created a referrer report and opened a disqus forum titled Link Development.

Rather than just starting a new web site. I want to draw people into a discussion about the direction of the Internet itself.

The World Wide Web was written in a language called HTML (HyperText Markup Language). The defining trait of HTML is the Hyperlink.

Hyperlinks are an interactive feature. You can click on a link and go to a different internet resource.

The configuration of links is actually a very interesting topic, but I rarely come across people openly talking about the overall configuration of links.

Right now, the Internet is dominated by large repositories of links called "search engines." I question if this domination of link repositories is healthy because it effectively centralized power and concentrates wealth.

If centralized repositories are not the best structure, what alternatives can we develop?

I developed the Community Color web sites are simply human edited directories which list links for select towns in the mountain west. I developed the directories to investigate the natural links between local entities. I live in Salt Lake. It frustrates me to no end that there is so little local internet in the direction the Internet is headed.

But there might be people in the broader world who find a discussion of the linking structure of the Internet interesting.

The referrer report tallies up info from the REFERER variable submitted by web browsers that visit my new site. The Link Development is a stub for a section of articles on the topology of links and internet traffic and steps that individuals can take to help keep the Internet a level playing field.

I have to complete the site redesign before writing the articles. But I think it's fun to discuss web design while knee deep in the process.

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