Webring
Encyclopedia
A webring is a collection of website
Website
A website, also written as Web site, web site, or simply site, is a collection of related web pages containing images, videos or other digital assets. A website is hosted on at least one web server, accessible via a network such as the Internet or a private local area network through an Internet...

s linked
Hyperlink
In computing, a hyperlink is a reference to data that the reader can directly follow, or that is followed automatically. A hyperlink points to a whole document or to a specific element within a document. Hypertext is text with hyperlinks...

 together in a circular structure, and usually organized around a specific theme, often educational or social. They were popular in the 1990s and early 2000s, particularly among amateur websites, but have since fallen out of general use and become rare.

To be a part of the webring, each site has a common navigation bar
Navigation bar
A navigation bar is a sub region of a web page that contains hypertext links in order to navigate between the pages of a website....

; it contains links to the previous and next site. By clicking next (or previous) repeatedly, the surfer will eventually reach the site they started at; this is the origin of the term webring. However, the click-through route around the ring is usually supplemented by a central site with links to all member-sites; this prevents the ring from breaking completely if a member site goes offline.

Webrings usually have a moderator who decides which pages to include in the web ring. After approval, webmasters add their pages to the ring by 'linking in' to the ring; this requires adding the necessary HTML
HTML
HyperText Markup Language is the predominant markup language for web pages. HTML elements are the basic building-blocks of webpages....

 or JavaScript
JavaScript
JavaScript is a prototype-based scripting language that is dynamic, weakly typed and has first-class functions. It is a multi-paradigm language, supporting object-oriented, imperative, and functional programming styles....

 to their site.

Sites usually join a webring in order to receive traffic from related sites. When used to improve search engine rankings, webrings can be considered a search engine optimization
Search engine optimization
Search engine optimization is the process of improving the visibility of a website or a web page in search engines via the "natural" or un-paid search results...

 technique.

WebRing.com

Denis Howe started EUROPa (Expanding Unidirectional Ring Of Pages) at Imperial College in 1994. The idea developed further when Giraldo Hierro conceptualized a central CGI
Common Gateway Interface
The Common Gateway Interface is a standard method for web servers software to delegate the generation of web pages to executable files...

 (Common Gateway Interface) script to enhance functionality. Sage Weil developed such a script in May 1994. Weil's script gained popularity, pushing Weil in June 1995 to form a company called WebRing. In 1997, Weil sold WebRing to Starseed
Starseed
Starseeds, also called sailseeds, are a fictional life form in the Known Space science fiction series by Larry Niven. These large "seeds" travel through interstellar space...

, Inc.

In 1998 Starseed was acquired by GeoCities
GeoCities
Yahoo! GeoCities is a web hosting service, currently available only in Japan.GeoCities was originally founded by David Bohnett and John Rezner in late 1994 as Beverly Hills Internet . In its original form, site users selected a "city" in which to place their web pages...

, who made no major changes to the system. Just a few months later, in early 1999, Yahoo!
Yahoo!
Yahoo! Inc. is an American multinational internet corporation headquartered in Sunnyvale, California, United States. The company is perhaps best known for its web portal, search engine , Yahoo! Directory, Yahoo! Mail, Yahoo! News, Yahoo! Groups, Yahoo! Answers, advertising, online mapping ,...

 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, Timothy Killeen. He unveiled a 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.

On September 26, 2006, Webring Inc. announced a new WebRing Premium Membership Program. They have separated memberships into two types, WebRing 1.0 and WebRing 2.0. Sites that are part of WebRing 1.0 will be limited to 50 webrings per URL. Existing 1.0 members can maintain more than 50, but can not add more. In conjunction with the premium membership program, WebRing introduced an affiliate program, in which webmasters earn money when others join webrings from their site; they earn an additional payment if the new member purchases a premium membership.

In early October 2007, Webring was granted a trademark on "Webring" from the USA Trademark office. Also in that month, Yahoo's long partnership ended as Webring ownership repurchased Webring stock held by Yahoo, marking the first time since the late 1990s that Webring was again privately held.

RingSurf

A similar website is RingSurf.com, which uses the term 'Net Rings'. The site first appeared in the Internet Archive in June 1998.

Other services

There are quite a few minor providers of webring services around the world. Some of the external links below point to such services.

Webring software

While the largest webring services use their own proprietary software
Proprietary software
Proprietary software is computer software licensed under exclusive legal right of the copyright holder. The licensee is given the right to use the software under certain conditions, while restricted from other uses, such as modification, further distribution, or reverse engineering.Complementary...

, a few programs have been written that make it possible for webmasters to run webrings without being dependent on an off-site service. Ringlink, SimpleRing, PHP-Ring and Ringmaker are some examples.

See also

  • Wiktionary definition
  • Methods of website linking
    Methods of website linking
    This article pertains to methods of hyperlinking to/of different websites, often used in regard to search engine optimization . Many techniques and special terminology about linking are described below.-Reciprocal link:...

  • Web directory
    Web directory
    A web directory or link directory is a directory on the World Wide Web. It specializes in linking to other web sites and categorizing those links....

  • Article directory
    Article directory
    Article directories are websites where users submit unique articles to be categorized and included to a specific niche. Well-written content articles released for free distribution have the potential of increasing the authoring business' credibility within its market as well as attracting new...


Webring providers

The source of this article is wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.  The text of this article is licensed under the GFDL.
 
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