brisray

I thought webrings had died when things like Webring, Ringsurf, Ringo, Rail and others went offline years ago. But there is a new interest in them. I've listed all the ones I know of at https://brisray.com/web/webring-list.htm

Here are my sites:

Ray's Miscellany - https://brisray.com/ - Everything I'm interested in

HMS Gambia - https://hmsgambia.org/ - A history of the cruiser HMS Gambia

Bristol Gunners - https://bristolgunners.org/ - A history of artillery units in Bristol

Icehouse Offroad - https://ihor4x4.com/ - Offroad adventures

Once the big providers disappeared webrings became harder to create. They are making a bit of a comeback and the largest management system is now onionring.js - https://garlic.garden/onionring/ , but there are loads of others - https://brisray.com/web/webring-tech.htm

Personal sites ARE getting more difficult to find, more than ever, but there's thousands of them around.

It's why I upkeep a list of current webrings - https://brisray.com/web/webring-list.htm , a list of personal web directories - https://brisray.com/web/indiedirs.htm - and "alternative" search engines that can find them - https://brisray.com/web/altsearch.htm

Webrings are making a little bit of a comeback. I've listed all the ones I know of on https://brisray.com/web/webring-list.htm

It was inevitable the web would be commercialized but there's plenty of people still creating their own personal websites - they're just a bit harder to find now.

There are people around trying to make these sites a bit more findable by creating specialized search engines. I have put the ones I know of at https://brisray.com/web/altsearch.htm

I don't think there are any of the new webring codes that are as comprehensive and functional as the older ones. Personally, I think there are better ways of implementing them than some of the ones on GitHub, but some of those such as Max Boeck's - https://github.com/maxboeck/webring - are popular.

Of the 279 webrings I know of, many use simpler systems such as Onionring.js - https://garlic.garden/onionring/ - or Webri.ng - https://webri.ng/

I don't think that many people who use the webrings now particularly care too much about Google rankings, most are small, personal sites using webrings to do what they were originally intended to.

I have written a lot about webrings, their history, the new webrings and the technology used. https://brisray.com/web/webring-tech.htm is about as good a place to start if you're interested.

The trouble with the bookmarking idea is link rot. It takes some effort to keep the lists up-to-date. The new webrings are not doing too well because of this either. I know of around 190 of the "new" webrings and can only get around 20% without encountering a 404 message.

The "small web" search engines might well be the way to go. Apart from Kagi, some I know of are:

https://search.marginalia.nu/ https://wiby.me/ https://searchmysite.net/

Everyone has made some good points about webrings and other methods of getting personal websites noticed.

Webrings should have a place - they were great for bringing similarly themed sites together and were a way of finding smaller, personal sites. The latter is probably more important nowadays than ever.

The webring revival isn't doing so well. I write the list at https://brisray.com/web/webring-list.htm and I recently visited evey link in every webring listed. For whatever reason, the ringmasters or the site owners, only 20% of them are fully navigable. For most, clicking the next link will eventually lead to a 404 page.

These new webrings have other problems, one of which is the member subject range is much wider than that of the orginal webrings so you never know what you'll be looking at next.

I list webrings that have at least a back and forward link, to help everyone they really should have both a member list page and a random link. That would go a little way to stop some of the dead ends.

Links here, Reddit, Facebook or whatever are not the answer. They are ephemeral while webrings were supposed to be more or less permanent, at least until they were removed from the ring.

Clique listings and directory pages aren't that great either. The rate of link rot is phenomenal. Even after just a couple of months the links on my own pages start breaking. Links on pages more than a couple of years old are barely worth clicking on.

Personally, I'd like to see webrings make a comeback, but unless they get a grip the new ones are going to wither away because they aren't navigable.