What Is WebRing?

WebRing is one of the best ways to find great sites. Similar sites are grouped together in rings and each site is linked to another by a simple navigation bar. Rings form a concentration of sites, allowing visitors to quickly find what they are looking for. Each Ring is created and maintained by an individual web site owner called the RingMaster. RingMasters determine the look and feel of the Ring, approve and manage member sites, and encourage other sites to join. RingMasters help to develop virtual communities based on the Ring topic. WebRing is free and easy. To find, join, or create a Ring, just follow the links on WebRing Home.

As you use WebRing, please keep in mind that most of the pages you see are not hosted by WebRing. As a result, WebRing has no control over or access to most of the pages that are linked together through WebRing. WebRing is the best way to find great web sites, share ideas with peers and participate in topical communities for FREE.

Use WebRing to participate in highly focused and rich online communities.

Do you have a web site of your own you'd like to share with others?

Try joining our popular Ring and increase traffic to your site!

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Joining a Ring consists of filling out a form that submits your Site information (title, URL, and description) to the Ring's RingMaster for approval. You are required to have a User ID so that you can manage your Site over time as your Site changes or if the RingMaster requests changes.

If you do not have your own site, you cannot join a WebRing. WebRings are for websites instead of people. You do not need a website to participate in a WebRing Forum (unless the moderator has specific requirements) and need not join a WebRing in order to visit member sites, simply view the list and select a site or use the "next" and "previous" commands to maneuver around the WebRing.

Submitting your Site to a Ring does not ensure that your site will be approved and made active in the Ring. The RingMaster will take some time to review the content of your Site to determine if it meets his/her criteria for being in the Ring. This is subjective and is the discretion of the RingMaster. WebRing Support has nothing to do with the activation of your website, so please do not ask Support to perform this operation. If you have questions about your site's activation, please contact the RingMaster.
In order for you Site to be, and remain, active in the Ring two things are necessary:

The RingMaster must approve your Site. Sometimes this will also make your Site active temporarily. But the second criteria must be met soon in order to stay active. You must have working navigation code on your registered URL, or in some cases you may have the code on another page if you install a link labelled with the word "WebRing" (or any variation like "webring", "webrings", "web ring", etc.) so that a user can see at a glance where to find the navigation code when they arrive at your site. The Importance of Navigation Code

A "Ring" is based on the concept of being able to easily "navigate" from one site in the Ring to another. WebRing provides a very simple to install bit of HTML that will cause a "navigation bar" to appear on your page allowing people to navigate all the Rings your web site participates (and is active) in. You install the code once on each page you register with WebRing, regardless of the number of Rings that site is a member of, and WebRing will handle displaying the correct navigation code on your page. We do not use this to show ads, nor do we track the traffic in any other way. All we ever do is display the correct navigation code for your Site. It is very important for the Ring to operate properly that you place this code where people navigating the Ring can see it easily. In fact, you may want to place it on each page of your site if you have more than one. The size of the navbar is relatively small (usually 250 pixels by 80) and loads quickly, so you should place it in a prominent location on your page(s). The traffic you and other sites return to WebRing is traffic that is more likely to return to your web site. The better each Ring works the more traffic you will see to your site.

Once you have completed the application to join a Ring you can go to your View Web Sites page to get this navigation code. It is commonly called "SSNB code", or Server Side NavBar code. You can place it on your page whether your Site has been approved for a Ring or not. The WebRing system knows whether it is OK to display a navbar for a Ring or not. Also, WebRing will show, unless you turn the feature off, is smart enough to show the one navbar a person is navigating, even if your web site belongs to many Rings! This way the correct navbar shows and never takes more space than necessary on your page!
Is it OK to use a "links" page to show my navbar(s)? Sure it is. Is that the best experience for users of the Ring? In some cases perhaps it is. For most sites, however, it is best to have a single, prominent, navbar available on the page they want to visit - YOUR page. A links page generally means a person navigating the Ring will either arrive at the links page and have to click a link to get to your content or, they will have to find, and click, a link to get from your content page to the links page. That's more work than many surfers would prefer to go through. If your navigation code is placed where your content is then they can arrive, view your page(s) at their leisure, and then easily continue to the next Site in the Ring. Similarly, they will be arriving from the previous Site (and others) if other members of the Ring do the same.

Site Status

Your Site will be in one of three states as long as you are a WebRing Member:

Pending - Until approved by the RingMaster your Site is pending and will not appear on the Ring's hub page. You can manage your Site, and can even obtain, install, and TEST your navigation code. The SSNB, if you use it, will not work, but you can test to see that it PASSes. Do all of this from Site Management.

Active - If your Site is approved and the RingMaster finds your navigation code to be working properly then your Site will be made active and will appear on the Ring's Hub page. The SSNB code will also work (will show the Ring's navigation bar).

Suspended - If your Site is approved by the RingMaster but they do not feel your navigation code is working properly (this can be subjective, you must work this out with your RingMaster), then your site may be suspended until the code is working to their satisfaction. Most often this means it PASSes the Site checker, which you can check for yourself. If you are suspended, you should check through Site Maintenance that your code is working properly and fix it if it is not. Once you have resolved any problems you can contact the RingMaster for activation. Note that this can only be done by the RingMaster.