In the modern age of the internet, it’s entirely reasonable that you might not have any idea what a webring is.
In short, a webring is technology that groups a number of sites into a ring. From any member site, a
visitor can navigate forward or backward to another member. Keep clicking Next in a webring’s
navigation long enough and you’ll loop back around to the site you started on.
That’s what makes a webring a ring.
History #
Webrings are old internet technology. Dial-up internet old. Older than Yahoo! old.
They were fading in the early-mid 2000s and were mostly relegated to mere memory by 2020, pushed out of mind by functional search engines, the rise of social media, and the slow withdrawal of personal sites.
But the technology itself that makes them work is simple and never stopped working.
What’s a Webring Good For? #
Webrings are a simple and independent way to provide affinity between sites.
Affinity #
Webrings are, by their nature, curated. The webring is made up of members who joined that webring on purpose. While they don’t have to be related in content or purpose, they tend to share audiences and provide a way to get those visitors checking out other members.
If you find a webring of entomologists or journalists, it’s likely to have more stuff you’re interested in, all from different perspectives. You can just cycle through the ring to see what’s new from folks you follow and discover folks you might not even know about.
The navigation feature of webrings is the what makes them so powerful. Being able to go from one member to another and then another and loop all the way around means you don’t have to try to remember what’s where. You can hit the full list or just loop. Some support going to a random member!
Webrings are generally more tightly curated than your social media feed, but you’re not limited to only being on or checking out one of them. So, on one hand, there’s less of a firehose of interesting content. On the other, you’re more likely (generally) to be interested in the stuff you find.
Simplicity #
Webrings can be more or less complicated, but they require:
- A host to keep the list of members so everyone can visit any site on the list and folks can join or leave the list.
- Members to add a snippet of code to their site so visitors can navigate around the webring.
Strictly speaking, that’s it.
Member’s can add their navigation for the webring with fully static HTML, but generally they’ll use either an iframe or a snippet of HTML that pings the webring host to find out where the links should take a visitor. Most of the time, for members, they can just copy-paste a snippet and style it on their site if they feel like it.
That means you can functionally host a webring on any website and join a webring from any website. No insurmountable hoops to hop through, no platform requirements, no complex coding efforts.
Independence #
Webrings are, broadly, self-sufficient. They don’t need to worry about platforms (beyond what every website does in terms of staying up) and mitigate concerns for SEO or platforms suddenly catching fire.
You can run your webring democratically, find an elder IRC wizard who never gave up running their old webring but also only replies to emails with one word answers, or anything in between.
The tech’s simple, free, and available to anyone, so you make what you want of it.
Why Host or Join a Webring? #
The last decade on the internet has seen a withdrawal of personal sites, decentralized content, and weird digital spaces made by and for specific people and audiences.
If you do creative work, you owe it to yourself to have your own home on the internet. Platforms come and go. If you rely on those platforms, their foibles can have a massive impact on your work.
Social media platforms are a bit like a mall. They get big and bright and attract so many people and so much money… but eventually, they lose their lustre and if you’re stuck with a lease you’re going to worry about being abandoned along with the mall. We shouldn’t treat the mall like our home.
Making a webring is one way that you can link yourself and your work up with other folks in the same space, share your audiences, and help make finding rad work on the internet something that people do by finding the people doing the work, not the platforms taking a cut.
Then, when you move to another social media platform, you’ll have something that’ll endure and you can work on for you.
Creative work has a long history of communities of practice and social groups alike. Webrings are a way to put yourselves back in control of your spaces.