WEBRING CENTRAL MARCH 2004: I've greatly expanded this section of the website. Most of it's now in place, but I'm adding to it reguarly. Please let me know of any problems. YOUR SUGGESTIONS/COMMENTS/CRITIQUES ARE WARMLY WELCOMED! PRETTY PLEASE, VOTE FOR MY SITE AT: AND ALSO AT: LAURA'S TOP 50 WEBRINGS! (Thank you!) On these pages you'll find links to sites that offer help and resources for webring members and managers, a list of all of the rings I manage, a list of all of the webrings to which I belong, alphabetized and divided by category, links to the websites of other people who manage and/or belong to outrageous numbers of rings, some humble advice on a few things to look for when joining a ring, and anything else that might be of interest to the webring community. Happy joining! JOIN MY WEBRINGS Does your heart go pitter patter at the thought of joining another webring? Then this is the page for you! Come on...you KNOW you gotta join! *grin* I manage over 100 rings (I keep adopting more, so the figure keeps growing!) and I'd love to have your site as a member. If you feel the theme of your site fits in with the description of any of the rings, I hope you'll take a moment to join them. If you need any help with the process, please don't hesitate to contact me. Generally, I prefer personal, family oriented homepages, but some of the rings allow commercial sites. However, I really don't like sites that are filled with nothing but moneymaking schemes and rarely approve them for membership. If they look like sleazy fly-by-night sites, I have no desire to be linked to them. Legitimate businesses with well-designed sites have a much better chance of being accepted. I mention this specifically to assure any prospective members that I do keep an eye on the type of sites joining my rings. I can't guarantee *quality* because we all have different standards in that regard ("One man's trash is another man's treasure," after all...), but I will try to keep the riff-raff out. So what are you waiting for??? Go join!!! MY WEBRING MEMBERSHIPS: INDEX On this page, you will find links to the individual pages displaying all of navbars for the webrings to which I belong, separated by category. An excellent reference for those of you looking for rings to join. I am definitely addicted to webrings. I started out with just a few - back when you had to add the code for each individual ring to your page, link to the image on your on server, and often change the HTML code for the individual links on each ring. Because of the hassle involved in the whole process, I chose my memberships carefully and only belonged to a few with highly restricted topics of rather specific interest to me (i.e., mostly cooking rings, at the time). Then Yahoo! took over Webring.org and everything changed... not necessarily for the better. Even though I found the generic Navbar design that Yahoo! introduced for Webring.org aesthetically unappealing (and still do...yuck!), I decided... what the hell... just go with it. (I have an attitude that is *heavily* weighted toward the "glass half full" perspective in all things. Makes life a whole lot less stressful.) Well, I joined a few...then a few more... and then, a few more after that. Then, a couple of years ago, I was sick and stuck at home with nothing to do (or wanting to do much of anything productive or constructive) and just started joining every ring I could find for the hell of it. My webring pages began to expand exponentially and eventually took on a life of their own... LOL... et voilà ... "Webring Central." So, now I consider my webrings a "hobby" of a sort. It gives me something to do when I just want to leave behind the stresses of responsibility filled days and chill for a bit. Hits to my site have increased dramatically (by several hundred percent!), giving me incentive to keep my pages updated. Thus, my HTML skills have not fallen by the wayside from disuse (I hard code everything - don't look at my source code... I'm sure it's sloppy...LOL). But the best thing to come out of this experience has to be the wonderful people I've met with similar interests, both through memberships in various rings and through a comraderie that tends to flow among managers. Everyone is so helpful and friendly and I'm proud to be able to count them among my "net friends." I've lost count of how many rings I belong to under my different IDs and on the different ring services. The great majority of the rings to which I belong reside on the Webring service, but a few are on RingSurf, Bravenet, RingLink, etc. I'm a joiner. So sue me. RESOURCES & HELP PAGES Believe it or not, there actually are people who are much more into webrings than I. They've put together forums, mailing lists, FAQs, groups, and detailed help and resource sites and pages. They've done such a great job and have covered the subject far better than I ever could (nor, to tell the truth, do I have any interest in doing so) that there is little point in me putting the information on my site when they've already done all the work for me... *grin* So, instead of lots of "how-tos," I offer links to these resources that the beginning to advanced webring member or manager might find useful. If you've got a question or a problem, chances are somebody else has had it before and you'll find the answer on one of these sites. If you come across a good link for me to add here, please let me know. Let the search for enlightenment begin, my child. OTHER ADDICTS I'm not the only person who has devoted a chunk of her website to the wonderful world of webrings. Lots of people manage multiple rings or have joined large numbers of rings and organize them in a way that allows others to easily navigate through them. If you are on the hunt for webrings to join, this is a good place to start - someone else has already done all the work for you this way. (It's a lot easier than doing searches on the ring services!) "My name is Carla and I'm a Webring Addict." A FEW HINTS WHEN JOINING A little advice, if I might be so bold - check the rings for a few things before you join, rather than joining indiscriminately: Look at the navigation rating (on Webring.org). Generally, you're looking for anything above 90%. This indicates the percentage of active sites that have valid URLs (the code is properly displayed, or not missing altogether). This is a good indicator of whether or not the ring owner is actively managing the ring. Low navigation ratings mean lots of broken links and that means a ring that isn't much use to you at all. If the person surfing the ring can't get to your site through all the broken links, what good will it do for you to belong to it? Take a quick look at the titles of the sites that hold membership in the ring. If it is a ring for "Classical Music Lovers" and you see a bunch of sites for webcams and get-rich-quick schemes, chances are joining isn't going to bring you the kind of traffic you desire. Probably best to move on. Sometimes you'll see info on how many pending sites are in the queue and how long it's been since the manager checked in on the ring. If there are other sites in the queue and the manager hasn't done anything with the ring for several months, it's a good bet that you'll be wasting your time by joining. If you're not sure, you can always join and delete your application later if you want to. When was the ring created and how many members does it have? If it was created several years ago and only has three members, then you can bet that the manager doesn't actively promote the ring. Joining probably won't do you much good. However, a site created last month with three members run by an active manager is worth a shot. Again, you can always remove your site from membership in any ring whenever you so choose. Check the images associated with the ring. Are they broken or do they appear properly? Generally, there are two places for an image (although some managers have created HTML code for their rings that include more than one image, but the same rule applies): the logo created for the ring and the image created for the navigation panel. On Webring.org, you'll see the "ring logo" on the hub page - the page that serves as the entrance to the ring and lists all the members. The "navigation panel image" or images are found in the code displayed on the member sites. On the generic Webring.org navbars, the picture can be no larger than 50x50 pixels and is displayed on the left side. (If a manager has edited the code to change its appearance, the image might appear anywhere.) If any of the images are broken, it's a possible sign of a manager who isn't paying attention. Chances are he's not paying attention to other aspects of ring management, as well. Besides, broken images cause longer load times on your pages while the browser searches for the image file. Not to mention the fact that having broken images on your pages makes *your* site look bad. One exception is when the manager makes the mistake of linking to an image on a service like Angelfire or GeoCities, for example, that doesn't allow remote linking. The manager might think everything's fine and dandy, but the image appears broken to everyone else. A quick note to the manager to ask him to upload the image to the ring server instead of linking to it remotely might be all it takes to solve the problem and make the ring worth joining. Questions? Comments? Typos? *EEEK!!!* Email: Carla Moore Perfectionist Extraordinaire® THE RAIL We're Building a Railroad Across the Internet