With over 5 billion Internet users in the world, which is more than half of the world’s population, it’s no surprise that something good is going on in the digital world.
Other than all the entertainment and sad things we do on the Internet, the good part of the Internet is filled with useful things to help you ease your everyday processes and get the best out of your investments and time.
Many websites that have been around for a long time have been helping people in various ways, and that’s how these websites have solidified their position as the cornerstone of the useful part of the Internet.
We’ve compiled this list of the 10 most useful websites. The list isn’t exhaustive, and depending on your needs and interests, there’s a plethora of websites you might prefer. We’ve based this list on the purpose of these websites and the user base they drive.
1. Wikipedia: For Learning
Wikipedia is a saviour that has gotten so many of us through the hardest of semesters. It’s no wonder that it tops our list of the most useful websites.
Whether you’re looking to grasp a concept in its entirety or just get a scoop on your favourite actor’s life, Wikipedia has something for everyone.
What makes Wikipedia so good for learning is that it provides readers with sources to further delve into the topic and learn more. By linking so many authoritative pages together, it leads readers through a mesh of connected topics, so it barely leaves room for questions.
With Wikipedia, readers have the option to discover new topics and gain surface-level knowledge, but if they choose to do so, they can get a very deep insight into an entire niche.
Wikipedia is open source, which means it is run entirely by volunteers. So, there’s never enough said on a topic.
Most importantly, Wikipedia is completely neutral. It covers a topic in a matter-of-fact way. If a fact isn’t proven and only hypotheses exist regarding it, Wikipedia will state them all but never take a side.
This unbiased take on information is the optimal way to do it. And that’s what makes Wikipedia a go-to informational source for a diverse and enormous reader base.
With over 6 million articles, Wikipedia receives over 200 million visits every day and over 25 billion views every month, making it one of the most visited websites on the Internet.
2. Project Gutenberg: For Reading Books
Project Gutenberg is another resourceful website with a plethora of free books available for everyone to read. These books include both classics and modern ones. With a library of over 70,000 books, Project Gutenberg holds enough to satisfy many readers.
What makes Project Gutenberg so useful is that you don’t have to create an account to access the books. But that’s not all. Project Gutenberg also has over 5,000 audiobooks. So, at least where reading is concerned, Project Gutenberg has got you covered.
Project Gutenberg started way back in 1971, and it is the oldest digital library in the world. Most of the books available are in English, but you can also find some other languages and translated versions.
3. YouTube: For Tutorials
While most of us use YouTube for entertainment and cat videos, it has a lot of great material that can serve to help a lot of people. With over 800 million videos on the platform, you can easily find plenty of useful tutorials.
Tutorial videos on YouTube cover everything from dad stuff like tying a tie to how to build a rocket at home.
Although there are plenty of places where you can find very thorough guides, sometimes you need a demonstration to get things right. From cooking tutorials to game walkthroughs, YouTube has it all.
YouTube is one of the most watched platforms in the world, and not just on the entertainment front; it is also a leading educational platform.
YouTube tutorials are free, and subtitles are available in a lot of languages, making it one of the most accessible sources of learning on the Internet.
In many cases, you might find a helpful comment base that could answer your questions. You should be able to find something to learn from the huge reserve of DIY, how-to, and other expert videos on the platform.
4. Coursera: For Certified Courses
If you’re more into a traditional method of education, you might want to take up a proper course. And there’s no better place than Coursera to do it.
With experts from renowned universities such as Yale, Stanford, MIT, and many more, Coursera offers courses in pretty much all the fields, whether it be computer science, AI, and astronomy or economics, human sciences, and more.
Coursera has free courses as well as paid courses. And you can get certified for every course you take. With every course, there’s an assessment of your understanding with various quizzes and assignments.
These quizzes are graded and determine the final grade that gets on your report card and certificate at the end of the course.
Coursera also links to further readings and recommends free ebooks to students so they can get the most out of the course. With many interactive elements in the course, professors from many reputable universities provide lectures to diverse students.
Financial aid is also available for students. Courses are available everywhere and can be enrolled in anytime. To keep better track of your progress, Coursera provides you with a timetable and schedule you can follow. You can push the final date at any time if it doesn’t suit your schedule.
5. Canva: For Photo and Video Editing
If you don’t feel like downloading heavy photo editing software and only want to tinker a little bit with your photos, Canva is one of the best choices you have.
Canva lets you create posters and ads as well. It gives you templates to choose from. There are a lot of templates available for use. Based on the keywords, Canva gives you a lot of options that you can easily tinker with.
Canva also has a premium plan that gives access to premium elements and templates. Although some of these elements and templates can be used in the free version, they have a watermark that cannot be removed.
Canva has a huge array of tools to edit photos and generate new material. If you aren’t a professional graphic designer, the free plan might suffice for you. But if you want to step up a bit, you might want to get the pro plan, which gives you access to the Magic tool, resizing options, and many more.
6. The New York Times: For News
The New York Times is one of the most reliable news sources online. And not just in the US. The New York Times covers news internationally, making it one of the best sources of coverage for happenings all over the world.
While it can be hard to navigate your way through so many news sources online without knowing which one to believe, the New York Times is read by more than 400 million people, and there’s a reason it is considered the best news source in all of the United States.
Notable for having won 132 Pulitzer Prizes, more than any other organisation, the New York Times is known for its thorough, fact-based reporting and coverage.
It has been called the most respected newspaper in the world.
While there are a number of resources that you can refer to if you’re looking for a piece of news online, being as reputable as it is, you may consider the news reported by the New York Times credible.
Of course, there’s always a need to take a pinch of salt with every piece of news, but it is important to head to the right sources for any information.
7. Facebook: For Marketing and Advertising
Facebook might be the king of social media, but aside from sharing memes, it is also an excellent platform for businesses that want to promote themselves digitally.
Facebook has a special Meta Business Platform just for this purpose. You can also run ads and boost your posts by paying Facebook.
With almost 3 billion people using Facebook, marketing yourself on this platform is sure to bear fruit.
Facebook provides marketers with all the necessary tools for promoting themselves. You can see the insights of the content you publish, effectively interact with your followers, and use A/B testing to find out what your customers like best.
Facebook also lets you know when your followers are most active and what the best time for posting your content is. Signals like these are very helpful in optimising your marketing strategy.
Compared to other advertising platforms, such as Google Ads, Facebook ads cost much less. It’s the best place to start for marketers if they’re just stepping into the game.
8. Allrecipes: For Cooking Recipes
Allrecipes is the way to go if you want to be a hit at the party. With over 100 thousand original recipes, there’s no way anyone will go hungry.
The website has recipes, blogs, tips, how-tos, and tutorial videos for food enthusiasts all over the world.
Allrecipes covers a lot of cuisines from all over the world, whether it’s the big ones like Italian, Chinese, and French or lesser-known ones such as Amish and Mennonite.
Allrecipes has ratings for all their recipes, so you can find out which ones are a hit with most people.
If you’re a beginner just stepping into the kitchen, Allrecipes has got your back. It has guides on kitchen equipment such as air fryers, BBQ and grilling, ingredient substitution, and more.
If you’ve got a recipe of your own that you’re particularly confident about, you can submit it to the platform as well.
For kitchen tips and ideas, Allrecipes has blogs and stories covering a lot of aspects. You can easily find recipes for your favourite sweets as well as holiday dishes on Allrecipes.
9. WebMD: For Medical Help
WebMD is an online medical help source that provides information about health and well-being. It is one of those places where you’d want to head over instead of googling your symptoms and realising you died five years ago.
WebMD has all the information you would need about medical conditions, fitness, and well-being. Most importantly, it is run by experts, so it’s as reliable as it gets.
WebMD has a symptom checker where you can feed your symptoms and learn about the possible conditions you could be suffering from. The results are better the more symptoms you feed the tool. Similarly, it also depends on how clearly you describe your symptoms.
WebMD also has an archive about drugs and medicines, and you can use their pill identifier tool to look up a drug. You’ll need to enter the pill imprint, its colour, and its shape to identify the pill.
WebMD serves as a guide for various medical conditions and other health care, such as diet and weight maintenance, children’s health, allergies, and more.
With WebMD, you can find a doctor, enrol in a webinar, listen to podcasts, subscribe to a newsletter, get their magazine, look up the best hospitals near you, and get access to many more services.
10. Internet Archive: Looking for Lost Webpages
Our favourite on the list is the Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine. You can use this superb tool to save webpages and get access to websites that have gone down or webpages that have changed.
The mission of the Internet Archive is to preserve the history of the Internet.
If you want to check what used to exist on a URL, you can feed that into the Internet Archive. You’ll get a history of screenshots of the URL.
The way the Internet Archive works is that it crawls web pages all over the Internet and stores them in an archive. Volunteers can submit web pages using the Wayback Machine if there’s a page they want to save.
The Internet Archive also has book and media collections. As stated by Wikipedia, it has the largest software reserve, spanning 50 years of history. This stored software includes computer magazines, shareware discs, FTP sites, video games, and more.
With over 71 million pieces of content, including print materials, audiovisual content, software, images, and concerts, and over 800 billion web pages in the Wayback Machine, the Internet Archive is the biggest free digital library on the Internet.
Takeaway
With so many useful websites on the Internet, it all boils down to how they’re used. In the right hands, the Internet is a great resource that can be used to help many people.
While usefulness shouldn’t be defined solely by the quantity of value something adds in the long run, some of the tools online help with carrying out day-to day activities very effectively.
Notice that we haven’t listed any search engines, even though they are websites as well. While it’s true that search engines are a great help, we’ve ignored them to keep the list a little less obvious.
