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Webrings fill in this gap extraordinarily well. You see, webrings are created and maintained by individuals called Ringmasters. These people usually have no monetary interests at all. What they want to do is create pathways through
internet which give surfers an experience.
Ideally, webrings are a way for individual webmasters to create and control their own destiny on
web by forming little golden paths allowing surfers to navigate from site to site. The ringmaster is in control of
ring's style, format and promotion, while member sites are expected to adhere to
ring's criteria. This provides a unique surfing experience for surfers.
A well run webring is a incredibly joy to surf. You can proceed from site to site, enjoying
differences between individuals while admiring
theme which ties them all together. These rings are much like some pixie had walked before you, exploring
internet and carefully marking those sites which might interest you.
Thus, a webring has nothing to do with PR or search engines or any other of that nonsense. What a webring does is enhance communication between sites in a coordinated way which gives value to surfers. This, in turn, makes them want to explore
whole ring, and to come back occasionally to see what changes have occurred.
In
best rings, you can sign up for a newsletter which keeps you informed of new sites and changes to
ring. These rings often have extremely active message boards and use egroups (and other methods) to communicate regularly. These rings are not about crass moneymaking - they are about friendship, caring, discussion, and sharing.
Rings are about targeted traffic. Surfers arriving on a well managed, tightly themed ring are interested in
subject and want to visit a member site.
As rings get larger,
amount of traffic to each individual site increases. This is directly related to
attractiveness of
rig fragment and how well
ring is maintained. Quality rings are indeed extremely good traffic builders; low quality rings are a waste of time and effort.
Webrings were created in 1995, and were almost destroyed by Yahoo in 2000 during their euphoric yet bumbling expansion in those heady times. That traumatic event led to
creation of a new type of ring - that of Ringlink. This is a self-hosted system, extremely powerful, open-source and run by a group of highly dedicated, selfless and ethical people. Ringlink has saved
concept of webrings from destruction and is
single hope of
future of this navigation system.
Other systems include Webring, since divorced from Yahoo; Ringsurf, a decent and full-featured ring host; Siterings by Bravenet, very well managed ring hosting company and some other home-grown alternatives.

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