40 Websites to Learn New Skills, and Which Still Work Today

Facebook ↗WhatsApp ↗
0 0 Edit this post
An Archive Directory of Websites for Learning New Skills
vramak

The best websites for learning a new skill are the ones that make you do something, not just read about it. This collection of 40 sites was first put together by the Marc and Angel blog in 2010, when free online learning meant how-to videos, DIY blogs and a few university lecture archives. Some of those names are now giants: Khan Academy, wikiHow, Instructables and Lifehacker are still running and far larger than they were. Others have closed, merged or quietly stopped updating, among them StumbleUpon, Delicious and Apple's iTunes U.

Below, every one of the 40 original picks is kept and grouped by the kind of skill it teaches, with a short note on what it was, who was behind it and what we know about it today. Where we could not confirm a site's current state, we say so. At the end there is a short guide to choosing a learning resource now and making a new skill actually stick.

A quick tip before you start: pick one concrete thing you want to be able to do in the next month, such as fixing a dripping tap, cooking three weeknight dinners or building a simple spreadsheet. A clear target makes it much easier to decide which of these resources deserves your evening.

Making, fixing and DIY projects

1. Hack a Day – Started in 2004 by Phillip Torrone, Hackaday posts short write-ups of electronics, hardware and maker projects found around the web, several times a day. It is still active and is now owned by Supplyframe, which Siemens bought in 2021. Best for people who like soldering irons, microcontrollers and clever repairs.

4. MAKE Magazine – Make: was launched in 2005 by Dale Dougherty, a co-founder of O'Reilly Media, and it helped give the "maker movement" its name. Its publisher ran out of money in June 2019, but the magazine was revived later that year as a quarterly from Make Community. The website still carries project guides for electronics, woodworking and 3D printing.

9. Instructables – Instructables began in 2005 as a side project by Eric Wilhelm and Saul Griffith, and Autodesk bought it in 2011. Members post step-by-step projects with photos, from sewing and cooking to furniture and robots. Because anyone can publish, check the comments before you copy a build.

28. DIY Network – This was the website of a US cable channel about home improvement and renovation. On January 5, 2022, DIY Network relaunched as Magnolia Network, the lifestyle brand of Chip and Joanna Gaines, so the old address no longer leads to the same project library.

3. Wired How-To Wiki – Around 2009–2010, Wired magazine ran an open wiki where readers and editors wrote tech guides together. It appears to have been retired long ago, and the link is unlikely to work. Wired still publishes buying guides and explainers on its main site.

36. Delicious Popular DIY – Delicious was a social bookmarking site founded in 2003 by Joshua Schachter, and this page collected the DIY links its users saved most often. Pinboard bought the service in June 2017 and turned it read-only within weeks, so the list is now a historical snapshot rather than a live feed.

How-to libraries and video tutorials

6. wikiHow – Jack Herrick launched wikiHow on January 15, 2005, as a wiki-style manual of practical instructions. By late 2021 it held more than 235,000 articles, many with illustrations and expert review. It remains one of the easiest places to look up a basic household or personal task.

2. eHow – Founded in 1999, eHow was bought by Demand Media in 2006 and grew into a huge library of short articles chosen largely by search demand. Critics called it a content farm, and Google's 2010–2011 ranking changes cut traffic to Demand Media's sites by around 40%. It is still online under Leaf Group, but quality varies from page to page.

14. HowStuffWorks – Marshall Brain, then a teacher at North Carolina State University, started HowStuffWorks as a hobby in 1998. It explains how engines, the body, money and countless gadgets work. It is less of a hands-on guide than a background library, which is exactly what you want before attempting a repair.

17. Howcast – Howcast produced short, studio-shot instructional videos with hosts and experts, covering everything from first aid to dance steps. Much of its catalogue now lives on its YouTube channel. Short videos are good for seeing a technique once; practise it straight away while it is fresh.

13. 5min Life Videopedia – 5min hosted instructional clips of about five minutes each. It was bought by AOL around 2010 and later folded into AOL's video business, so the original site no longer exists in its old form.

18. VideoJug – A London-based video site with "how to" and expert-interview films on everyday topics. We could not confirm its current status; treat the link as historical and look for similar clips on YouTube.

20. WonderHowTo – WonderHowTo started out by gathering how-to videos from across the web into one index. Over time it shifted towards its own written guides, especially about smartphones, hacking tools and gadgets.

21. SuTree – SuTree was another index of instructional videos from different hosts. Its site no longer appears to operate, a common fate for aggregators once YouTube search became good enough on its own.

24. About.com Videos – About.com ran thousands of expert-written guides plus a video section. In May 2017 its owner IAC rebranded the company as Dotdash and split the content into niche sites such as The Spruce (home and food), Lifewire (technology), Verywell (health) and ThoughtCo (education), which is where most of that material went.

39. How To Do Things – A general library of written tutorials submitted by contributors. Its current status is unconfirmed, and for the same kind of everyday guides wikiHow is the safer starting point.

15. StumbleUpon – Launched in 2001, StumbleUpon showed you a random web page matched to the interests you picked, such as self-improvement or DIY, one click at a time. It shut down on June 30, 2018, and accounts were moved to Mix, a discovery service backed by co-founder Garrett Camp.

Computer, internet and tech skills

7. Lifehacker – Gawker Media launched Lifehacker on January 31, 2005, with Gina Trapani as its first and, for months, only writer. It covers software tricks, productivity, money and home life. Ziff Davis bought it from G/O Media in 2023, and it still publishes daily.

19. MakeUseOf – A long-running tech advice site, started in the mid-2000s, with tutorials on Windows, Mac, phones, apps and online tools. It is now part of the Montreal-based publisher Valnet. Good for "how do I do X on my computer" questions.

25. PCWorld How-To – PCWorld, a computer magazine since the early 1980s, moved fully online after its print edition ended. Its how-to section still covers PC upgrades, troubleshooting and Windows settings.

8. 100+ Google Tricks That Will Save You Time – This was a long blog list of Google search operators and services aimed at students. The page is probably gone, but the core skill is worth learning: Google's own Search Help pages explain operators such as quotation marks for exact phrases and "site:" for searching one website.

27. Woopid – Woopid offered free screen-recorded lessons on PCs, Macs and popular software. We could not confirm that it still runs; free software tutorials are now easy to find on YouTube and on vendors' own help sites.

40. ShowMeDo – A community site of screencasts about open-source software, best known for its Python tutorials. Its status is unconfirmed. For programming today, official documentation and free interactive courses are usually more current.

Courses, languages and academic subjects

37. Khan Academy – Sal Khan founded Khan Academy in 2008 after making maths videos for his cousins. It is a US nonprofit offering free lessons and exercises in maths, science, economics and more, and since March 2023 it has also tested an artificial-intelligence tutor called Khanmigo. Its practice exercises are the real strength: watch, then try problems until you get them right.

23. Academic Earth – Launched around 2009, Academic Earth gathered free video lectures from universities such as Yale, MIT and Stanford in one place. Its format has changed over the years; full free courses are now easier to find through MIT OpenCourseWare, Open Yale Courses and similar university sites.

33. iTunes U – Apple opened iTunes U in 2007 as a section of the iTunes Store where universities could share lectures and course materials. Apple announced in June 2020 that it would close it at the end of 2021, pointing teachers to its Schoolwork and Classroom apps, and some audio lectures moved to Apple Podcasts.

29. Scitable – Scitable is a free science library from Nature Education, the education arm of the publisher of the journal Nature. It is strongest on genetics, cell biology and evolution, with articles written by scientists for students.

34. American Sign Language Browser – A sign-by-sign video dictionary built by Michigan State University's Communication Technology Laboratory. A dictionary helps with vocabulary, but sign languages also have their own grammar and facial expression, so a class or a Deaf-led course is the best next step. Remember too that ASL is used in the US and Canada; the UK, for example, uses British Sign Language.

35. BBC Languages – The BBC once offered free beginner courses in dozens of languages, with audio and short videos. It stopped producing new language courses years ago, and what remains is reportedly kept as an archive. It can still be a gentle starting point for basic phrases.

10. Merriam-Webster Online – Merriam-Webster traces its history to 1831 and to Noah Webster's dictionary, and it has been owned by Encyclopaedia Britannica since 1964. Its free website gives definitions, pronunciations, word histories and usage notes, which makes it a practical tool for anyone working on their written English.

Productivity, habits and the mind

22. Zen Habits – Leo Babauta started Zen Habits in February 2007, and Time listed it among its top blogs in 2009 and 2010. It began with productivity tips, then moved towards simplicity and changing one habit at a time. Babauta also placed the blog's content in the public domain in 2008.

31. 43 Folders – Merlin Mann's blog was named after a paper filing system for reminders, and it was a key voice in the "Getting Things Done" productivity scene of the mid-2000s. It has had very few new posts for many years, so read it as an archive about focus and finishing work.

32. Dumb Little Man – A group blog of tips on productivity, money and self-improvement from many contributors. Its current editorial state is unclear; as with any general advice blog, weigh each tip on its merits.

38. The Happiness Project – This was the blog behind Gretchen Rubin's 2009 bestseller of the same name, in which she spent a year testing ideas about happiness on herself. Rubin's work now lives mainly on her own website and podcast. It is a personal experiment, not clinical advice.

16. Work – In 2010 this address hosted how-to guides for people starting small businesses. The domain later passed to Salesforce for its own business software, so the old guides are gone; government small-business agencies now offer free, reliable starter guides.

11. Lumosity – Lumosity launched in 2007 with online "brain training" games. In January 2016 its maker, Lumos Labs, agreed to pay $2 million to settle US Federal Trade Commission charges that it advertised benefits for school, work and age-related decline without scientific support. The games can be fun, but they mainly make you better at the games themselves.

26. Spreeder – Spreeder is a speed-reading tool that flashes text at a set pace. A 2016 review in Psychological Science in the Public Interest by Elizabeth Schotter, the late Keith Rayner and colleagues concluded that reading faster always trades off against understanding, and that word-flashing methods remove the rereading that helps comprehension. Wider reading and smart skimming help more.

Everyday life skills, cooking and checklists

30. All Recipes – Allrecipes began in Seattle in 1997 and was later bought by Reader's Digest (2006) and then Meredith (2012). Home cooks share recipes, ratings and photos, and the reviews often contain useful fixes such as "reduce the sugar" or "bake five minutes longer".

5. 50 Things Everyone Should Know How To Do – A 2008 checklist from the Marc and Angel blog, the same site that compiled this list of 40 resources. It mixes practical tasks with life skills; use it as a menu and choose the two or three that matter most to you.

12. 100 Skills Every Man Should Know – Popular Mechanics has published versions of this list over the years, covering car care, tools, home repair and outdoor skills. The title says "man", but nothing in it needs a particular gender; it is simply a solid list of practical basics.

For deeper reading on general knowledge and practical know-how, these three books cover similar ground:

Choosing a resource and making a skill stick

The internet of 2010 rewarded people who knew where to look. Today the harder problem is the opposite: there is far too much, and much of it is thin. A few habits help you get real value from any of the sites above, or from their modern equivalents.

  • Start with a finished result. "Bake a loaf of bread" or "change a bicycle tyre" is a better goal than "learn baking" or "learn bike repair". It tells you which tutorial to pick and when you are done.
  • Check that the resource is still alive. Look for recent dates, working links and an active comment section. Several sites on this list closed or changed owners, and old pages can give outdated advice, especially on software and safety.
  • Prefer sources with a name behind them. Universities, established publishers and organisations with editors tend to correct their mistakes. Anonymous content farms rarely do.
  • Do it, then test yourself. Learning research consistently finds that practising and recalling information from memory works better than rereading or rewatching. Try the task without the video, and go back only for the step you missed.
  • Be wary of shortcuts that sound too good. The Lumosity settlement and the research on speed reading are reminders that "train your brain in minutes a day" claims deserve a sceptical look.

Most of all, keep the project small enough to finish. One completed skill, used regularly, is worth more than forty bookmarks.

Sources: List originally compiled by Marc and Angel Hack Life (2010), shared via I Heart Intelligence; header photo by vramak on Flickr. Background: Hackaday, Make (magazine), Instructables, Magnolia Network, Delicious, wikiHow, eHow, HowStuffWorks, About.com, StumbleUpon, Lifehacker, Khan Academy, Merriam-Webster, Zen Habits, Lumosity, Allrecipes (all Wikipedia); TechCrunch on the end of iTunes U (2020); Association for Psychological Science on speed reading (2016); US Federal Trade Commission on Lumosity (2016).

For a creative activity using downloadable museum material, explore Free Museum Coloring Pages: Explore Color Our Collections.

More from the archive:

Labels:

Facebook ↗WhatsApp ↗

COMMENTS

BLOGGER