The Webring: Home

The Webring is a totally free service offered to the Internet community. We are a quickly growing community of homepages from all over the World who are committed to creating a new kind of Web community.
The Webring provides the Internet community with a different way to organize content on the World Wide Web. (After all, endless pages of links and search engine results are only so interesting.) The Webring is a way to group together sites with similar content (or any pages at all, if one so desires) by linking them together in a circular fashion: a ring.

The idea is that once you are at one site in the "ring," you can click on a "Next" or "Previous" link to go to the next site in the ring and--if you do it long enough--end up where you started.
Obviously, this is something that anyone simply by getting together with a few other people and having each person add a link to their page pointing to the next person in the loop. However, when somebody wants to join the ring, someone has to edit their page to point to the new page and--when the ring gets big enough--it becomes more and more difficult to keep the ring "intact" when pages go down.
The Webring provides a solution to all of these problems, as well as numerous enhancements. When you join a Webring, the HTML code on your homepage never changes. Links point to a special CGI script at webring.org that will send people to the next (or previous) site in the ring. Because the central ring database is located in one location, sites can be added and removed quickly and easily, and because the Webring CGI allows you go continue past sites that are unreachable, you will always be able to continue around the loop.
The Webring will do quite a few tricks, actually. People can travel a ring in either direction, either jumping to (or skipping) the next site or previous site, list the next five sites in the ring, jump to a random site in the ring, or simply get a list of all pages in the loop. Furthermore, the Webring system supports the operation an virtually unlimited number of separate and distinct rings, allowing the creation of hundreds--even thousands--of different "communities" on the web. And, best of all, the Webring is entirely free!

The Webring operates literally hundreds of different rings. Chances are, you'll find one that will interest you--either to surf or to join--ring topics range from Star Wars to Egyptology to body piercing. Virtually all of the rings (all but two, actually) are maintained by independent citizens of the net. If you can't find one you like, you can always create a new one!

The Ring Index contains an index of most of the rings operating, along with a brief description of their content.

Joining the Webring
Information on how you can make your homepage(s) a part of this growing community. Literally hundreds of rings can be found at this site--just take a look at the Ring Index to see for yourself.

Creating a new ring
All of the rings you'll find here are run by other Internet users like yourself. Do you have an idea for a new ring of pages? Click here for more information.

Help support the Webring!
The Webring is a totally free service to the Internet and its inhabitants. It does, however, cost money to run and maintain (and the starving college students who run it are not ideally suited to do so--financially, at least). Click here to find out how you can help!

Members Only
If you are already a member of a Webring, or are a ring maintainer, you'll find everything you need to edit your site information, add new people to the rings, change ring characteristics and other information.

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	Welcome to the Webring The Shape of Things to Come
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