Not sure I get it. Why a "ring"? Why not just have a list of web-site URLs on a page and share that page with your friends and ask them to put that page somewhere on their site?
"Ring" means you are navigating linearly and circularly. Isn't it better to provide a list of links so users can choose where they want to go "next"?
And why should I have to go around the whole "ring" to get back to where I started from? The Web is based on hyperlinks, not "hyper-rings".
> "Ring" means you are navigating linearly and circularly. Isn't it better to provide a list of links so users can choose where they want to go "next"?
That depends! If your goal is some optimal way of navigating, sure. But the shape of a webring means your site has two "neighbours", which is fun and uses spatial notions we don't see often anymore. It also means someone can remember Site Y as "the one next from Site X", which is also fun and creates more ways sites relate to each other. This relating to one another is usually the point of a webring.
THere is something to it I assume. Less is someties more/ COnstraints make it interesting, and challenging.
There is a modern-day similar thing. In MSN news-site the main news-article automatically steps though a loop. You can manually interfere, but the constraint is that you basically can see the news article only for a short time before it is replaced by another. I guess you could call it gamification as well. Thinks about Dunegeons and Dragons where you find news-articles in the dungeon and dragons are trying to burn them with their fiery blaze.
And you need to stop telling everyone what we need! "You might be interested in this <thing> if you have this and that" sounds so much more reasonable.
This is what will keep the web more human as we go forward into AI slop commercial web crap. Hand build your sites, talk about things your passionate about, share stories, art, things you make. And the web-ring connects you too others in the community with things you share similar interests in. This is what the web was for. Not everything needs to be about making money
In case you want a webring, but don't feel like setting up your own server to run it, I run a webring hosting service that you might find useful: https://webri.ng/
I followed the web ring on the home page and the first person didn't continue the ring (they had no link to next) and the second webring only contained one other site. Pretty disappointing introduction to something I "need".
Am I missing something? The person advocates for something that they don't use? I likely don't understand the idea behind it because I was expecting to see links to other pages on that page.
> "By the time Yahoo stopped controlling webring.org in 2001, search engines had become good enough that web rings were no longer as useful."
Given how those good (enough) search engines work these days ... I wouldn't be surprised if we see more of the old social/discovery things things (DMOZ and such) start coming back.
In a webring, do you usually always have the same fixed webring neighbours?
Back in the days, how did it usually work about this :
If your neighbour has only 7 visitor/day but you do have 100/day, can you ask to change and have this other 10000 visitor/day-site as neighbour?
As a webring admin, how do you manage these member requests?
Even before that, I just implemented a blogroll (or list of shared links, as I prefer to call it) at https://www.heyhomepage.com/?module=timeline&link=1&view=sha... Maybe your blog is also in it!? I manually picked most of the bookmarks/feeds I follow from HN.
The basis of all these rolls, lists and rings are - of course - hyperlinks. RSS and OPML are silently working in the background. I think there's still unfulfilled potential for RSS as a replacement for social media, because the open web is already social media.
I do think many people with websites an visiting websites would enjoy using webrings again.
Interesting to see some misconceptions in this comments here, and the graphic at wikipedia showing it as an actual ring of links, but I don't believe that was ever a solid explanation.
Sure there was the option to add your website to most webrings, and some had checker settings to see if a recip link existed then plublish and share.. but that was short lived because spammers, and google's change of 'bad neighborhoods hurt you' - then corporate rollup / walls up..
However on many websites it was great to find similar sites and other sites the author had an interest in and wanted to share with friends / visitros.. recip link or not.
It was a useful tool for discovery and sharing. Google got so important so fast that people (and even at the software level (starting at you wordpress)) removed blogrolls entirely.
Now that it's understood that you can share with the nofollow attribute added to links, I think we will see more people adding blogrolls / webrings and that will naturally lead to more links back, and people appreciating sharing of other places of interest.
I started developing a new webrings plugin to make it easier for people to share and get submissions / suggestions, with options for checking for recip links, having a default nofollow link and such.
This led me to thinking about other uses for the same data / DB / fields.. and decidedly that the same backend parts can also create 'directory pages' - which are essentially what webrings were just as a footer scrolling widget verses full page per category.. so I added that.
Then I realized the same bits are basically waht is needed for creating a directory or associates.. could be other people who meet at a conference, could be people you work with, other companies you've done business with, or other professionals you've bumped into at other job sites / projects.. so I added that and it also is becoming a contact sharing / directory / roledex kind of system.
Right now I'm working through the backend being difficult to chose what shows up on the front end and under what conditions.. hope to have sorted by end of month - when will hope people will help with testing and suggestions.
Trying to make it as standalone react system that can work into any website and a wordpress plugin at the same time has led to so challenges.. but it's getting close.
27 comments
[ 2.9 ms ] story [ 59.7 ms ] threadThe main idea being that you don't actually need to coordinate a real ring of links to easily link to posts on other blogs that you like.
"Ring" means you are navigating linearly and circularly. Isn't it better to provide a list of links so users can choose where they want to go "next"?
And why should I have to go around the whole "ring" to get back to where I started from? The Web is based on hyperlinks, not "hyper-rings".
However I usually spent times in the links section of every website I visited.
That depends! If your goal is some optimal way of navigating, sure. But the shape of a webring means your site has two "neighbours", which is fun and uses spatial notions we don't see often anymore. It also means someone can remember Site Y as "the one next from Site X", which is also fun and creates more ways sites relate to each other. This relating to one another is usually the point of a webring.
There is a modern-day similar thing. In MSN news-site the main news-article automatically steps though a loop. You can manually interfere, but the constraint is that you basically can see the news article only for a short time before it is replaced by another. I guess you could call it gamification as well. Thinks about Dunegeons and Dragons where you find news-articles in the dungeon and dragons are trying to burn them with their fiery blaze.
If the content is summarized and personalized for the user the search engine is already rendering similar pages.
Does this still hold if n=0?
Anyone else have a nerdy blog they want to ring me in? I'll point to the next one.
(engineersneedart.com)
Given how those good (enough) search engines work these days ... I wouldn't be surprised if we see more of the old social/discovery things things (DMOZ and such) start coming back.
Back in the days, how did it usually work about this : If your neighbour has only 7 visitor/day but you do have 100/day, can you ask to change and have this other 10000 visitor/day-site as neighbour?
As a webring admin, how do you manage these member requests?
A ring was thematic, friends, interest.
Even before that, I just implemented a blogroll (or list of shared links, as I prefer to call it) at https://www.heyhomepage.com/?module=timeline&link=1&view=sha... Maybe your blog is also in it!? I manually picked most of the bookmarks/feeds I follow from HN.
The basis of all these rolls, lists and rings are - of course - hyperlinks. RSS and OPML are silently working in the background. I think there's still unfulfilled potential for RSS as a replacement for social media, because the open web is already social media.
Interesting to see some misconceptions in this comments here, and the graphic at wikipedia showing it as an actual ring of links, but I don't believe that was ever a solid explanation.
Sure there was the option to add your website to most webrings, and some had checker settings to see if a recip link existed then plublish and share.. but that was short lived because spammers, and google's change of 'bad neighborhoods hurt you' - then corporate rollup / walls up..
However on many websites it was great to find similar sites and other sites the author had an interest in and wanted to share with friends / visitros.. recip link or not.
It was a useful tool for discovery and sharing. Google got so important so fast that people (and even at the software level (starting at you wordpress)) removed blogrolls entirely.
Now that it's understood that you can share with the nofollow attribute added to links, I think we will see more people adding blogrolls / webrings and that will naturally lead to more links back, and people appreciating sharing of other places of interest.
I started developing a new webrings plugin to make it easier for people to share and get submissions / suggestions, with options for checking for recip links, having a default nofollow link and such.
This led me to thinking about other uses for the same data / DB / fields.. and decidedly that the same backend parts can also create 'directory pages' - which are essentially what webrings were just as a footer scrolling widget verses full page per category.. so I added that.
Then I realized the same bits are basically waht is needed for creating a directory or associates.. could be other people who meet at a conference, could be people you work with, other companies you've done business with, or other professionals you've bumped into at other job sites / projects.. so I added that and it also is becoming a contact sharing / directory / roledex kind of system.
I did one blog post showing part of the functionality that is in the works: https://betterwebgroup.com/from-business-cards-to-digital-di...
Right now I'm working through the backend being difficult to chose what shows up on the front end and under what conditions.. hope to have sorted by end of month - when will hope people will help with testing and suggestions.
Trying to make it as standalone react system that can work into any website and a wordpress plugin at the same time has led to so challenges.. but it's getting close.