Webring

A webring is a collection of websites from around the Internet joined together in a basic ring fashion. The term WebRing (capitalized as shown) refers to the WebRing.com service, which is the direct descendant of the original webring designed by Sage Weil. The term webring, uncapitalized or with only the first letter capitalized, may refer to any of the various ring services. In this article, "WebRing" referrs to the specific service, whereas "webring" refers to any service of this type, or of a particular ring implemented with one of these services.

In a webring, navigation between the sites is facilitated by a common component on all participating websites, the navigator bar, which presents links to the previous and next site in the ring. Through this navigation bar, the visitor can eventually browse through the entire ring, ending up where he once started, hence its name. An individual webring declares a specific theme for its participants, usually informational (sites presenting information on a subject) or social (social groups and hobbies), and it is usually up to the webring manager's discretion whether a site is fit to join the webring.

History of WebRing

WebRing, the original webring, was designed by Sage Weil using his own CGI script in May 1994. The idea was based on Denis Howe's system, started at Imperial College in 1994, called EUROPa (Expanding Unidirectional Ring Of Pages), but took off after Giraldo Hierro conceptualized a central CGI script to enhance functionality, which Weil coded himself. Weil's script gained popularity, pushing Weil in June 1995 to create an organization, named WebRing, which provided WebRing tools to webmasters. In 1997, Weil sold WebRing to Starseed, Inc.

In 1998 Starseed was acquired by GeoCities, who made no major changes to the system. Just a few months later, in early 1999, Yahoo! bought GeoCities, and eighteen months after the acquisition, on September 5, 2000, Yahoo! unveiled a fully-overhauled WebRing, known as Yahoo! WebRing. Although Yahoo!'s implementation was meant to streamline the way the rings were managed and provide a more consistent interface for all rings, many of these changes were unpopular with ringmasters accustomed to the older system which gave them more flexibility.

On April 15 2001, Yahoo! pulled their support of WebRing, leaving it in the hands of one technician from the original WebRing. He unveiled an improved WebRing free of Yahoo! influence on October 12, 2001. In the years since this change, many of the features which had been stripped by Yahoo!, particularly customization options, were reimplemented into the WebRing system.

WebRing Resources

• Official WebRing Site
• World of Webrings - Help and Information about Webrings]
• WebRing Users Guide
• EUROPa
• Independent WebRing Help

Other Webring Services

• alt-webring
• Bravenet Site Ring Index
• Ringlink.org Webring Directory (rings hosted by Ringlink)
• Ringlink.org Systems Directory (systems using the Ringlink software)
• RingSurf
• RingsWorld
• The Rail