48:; it contains links to the previous and next sites. By selecting next (or previous) repeatedly, the user will eventually reach the site they started at; this is the origin of the term webring. However, the select-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. A webring is managed from one website which is able to omit the websites that have dropped out or are no longer reachable. The advantage of a webring is that if the user is interested in the topic on one website, they can quickly connect to another website on the same topic. Webrings usually have a moderator who decides which pages to include in the webring. After approval, webmasters add their pages to the ring by 'linking in' to the ring; this requires adding the necessary
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On April 15, 2001, Yahoo! ended its support of WebRing, leaving the site in the hands of one technician from the original WebRing, Timothy
Killeen. On October 12, 2001, he unveiled a WebRing no longer affiliated with Yahoo!. In the years since that change, many of the features which had been stripped
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Webrings are mainly viewed as a relic of the early web of the 1990s. When the primary site that managed web rings, webring.org was acquired by Yahoo, "ring masters" lost access to their webrings and the web ring hubs were replaced by a Yahoo page. By the time Yahoo stopped controlling webring.org in
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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
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On
September 26, 2006, WebRing Inc. announced a new WebRing Premium Membership Program. Memberships were separated into two types, WebRing 1.0 and WebRing 2.0. Sites that were part of WebRing 1.0 would be limited to 50 webrings per URL. Existing 1.0 members could maintain more than 50, but can not
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An alternative website is
Webringo.com, run as a hobby by the RingMaster. The first "webringo" first appeared in the Internet Archive in September 2006, but failed in September 2011. The present RingMaster took it over as a hobby in August 2012, and then went down somewhere in March 2024.
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In early
October 2007, the US Trademark office granted WebRing a trademark on its name. Also in that month, Yahoo!'s long partnership ended, when WebRing ownership repurchased WebRing stock held by Yahoo!, marking the first time since the late 1990s that WebRing was privately held.
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RingSurf.com uses the term 'Net Rings'. The site first appeared in the
Internet Archive in June 1998. The site's main page and directory of rings are still operating as of January 2024, but the rings' sites are inaccessible.
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Alt-webring.com used the
Ringlink (Free CGI Perl program for running webrings). The first "Alt-webring" first appeared in the Internet Archive in April 2003. Alt-webring.com has since closed and has been taken over by a
165:, 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.
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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.
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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
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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
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2001, search engines had become good enough that web rings were no longer as useful. The webring.org site was still active in the mid-2010s.
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By August 15, 2020, webring.com became inaccessible, and as of
December 18, 2021, the domain name has been taken over by a
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of these changes were unpopular with ringmasters accustomed to the older system which gave them more flexibility.
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286:"The 1st annual Web Innovator Awards - Sage Weil, Webring"
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ICT Roger
Crawford - Heinemann IGCSE - Chapter 7 page 192
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To be a part of the webring, each site has a common
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213:ICT Roger Crawford - Heinemann IGCSE - glossary
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16:Group of websites linked in a ring structure
520:Free CGI Perl program for running webrings
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82:in 1994. The idea developed further when
260:"Expanding Unidirectional Ring Of Pages"
615:Internet properties established in 1995
316:"The strange saga of Yahoo and WebRing"
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314:Mieszkowski, Katharine (2001-12-05).
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100:In 1998, Starseed was acquired by
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242:"What Ever Happened To Webrings?"
401:"the alternative webring system"
284:Newton, Matthew (1998-04-15).
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244:. 14 May 2021. Archived from
620:Discontinued Yahoo! services
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334:"Member Program Transition"
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185:Methods of website linking
61:search engine optimization
86:conceptualized a central
136:Other webring websites
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34:) is a collection of
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163:proprietary software
423:"Ringlink Homepage"
610:1994 introductions
524:2009-07-06 at the
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403:. alt-webring.com
175:Article directory
119:affiliate program
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538:"SimpleRing"
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290:Builder.com
71:WebRing.com
63:technique.
599:Categories
573:2009-04-11
563:"PHP-Ring"
548:2009-04-20
504:2013-05-26
494:"RingSurf"
479:2009-06-12
454:2022-08-05
429:2013-05-26
421:Ringlink.
407:2013-05-26
386:2013-05-26
376:"WebRingo"
361:2013-05-26
357:. WebRingo
340:2007-01-01
300:2016-07-17
270:2005-04-19
201:References
76:Denis Howe
54:JavaScript
587:Ringmaker
336:. WebRing
320:Salon.com
102:GeoCities
92:Sage Weil
522:Archived
518:Ringlink
169:See also
36:websites
32:web ring
605:Web 1.0
180:Hashtag
28:webring
106:Yahoo!
39:linked
50:HTML
30:(or
88:CGI
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