A tiny, decentralised tool to explore the small web

Source: Hacker News

Wander the Small Web

Wander is a small, decentralised, self‑hosted web console that lets your visitors explore random pages from a community of personal websites.

Each Wander console loads personal websites and pages recommended by the Wander community. Additionally, each console can link to other Wander consoles, forming a lightweight, decentralised network for browsing the small web of personal sites.

Visit to see an example of a Wander console.

How It Works

A Wander console does two things:

Wander pages – loads a random page from a list of websites and pages recommended by the community.
Wander consoles – can send the visitor to another Wander console on a different website, where they can continue wandering.

A Wander console is just a directory on your web server with two files:

• index.html – the HTML tool that implements the console.
• wander.js – where you define the list of recommended sites and the other consoles you want to link to.

All processing happens client‑side in the visitor’s browser; no server‑side components are required. Simply place the two files on your web server, preferably in a /wander/ directory.

Wandering the Web

A visitor starts at any Wander console—yours or someone else’s (e.g., ). By clicking the Wander button at the top left, they receive a recommendation from the current console. Subsequent clicks follow links to other consoles, each chosen at random from those linked by the previous one, and then a random page from that console. This creates a chain of hops that takes the visitor deeper into the Wander network.

Setup

1. Download the bundle:

2. Extract the following files:

   wander/
   ├── index.html
   └── wander.js

3. Edit wander.js to define your recommendations:

   // wander.js
   window.wander = {
     consoles: [
       // list of other Wander console URLs
     ],
     pages: [
       // list of recommended website URLs
     ],
   };

   • pages – an array of websites/pages you recommend to the community.
   • consoles – an array of other Wander consoles your console should link to.

   See an example at .

4. Upload the wander/ directory to your website and make it publicly accessible.

5. Share your console in the community thread: . Others may link to it, allowing their visitors to receive recommendations from your wander.js.

Licence

This is free and open‑source software. You may use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies under the terms of the MIT Licence. See the LICENCE.md for details.

The software is provided “AS IS”, without warranty of any kind, express or implied. See the licence file for the full disclaimer.