You need a webring

From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Webring :

> To be a part of the webring, each site has a common navigation bar; 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."

But, it was a fundamentally silly structure for the web, so many sites implemented something beyond the ring structure, which is what you're describing. Technically, those weren't webrings in the above sense.

> It's "ring" like a boxing ring

Nice retcon, but wrong.

I recently added Wander to a website of mine (https://www.heyhomepage.com/wander/). Before that, I became a proud member of the small Tech Makers webring (at the bottom of https://www.theredpanther.org/).

Even before that, I just implemented a blogroll (or list of shared links, as I prefer to call it) at https://www.heyhomepage.com/?module=timeline&link=1&view=sha... Maybe your blog is also in it!? I manually picked most of the bookmarks/feeds I follow from HN.

The basis of all these rolls, lists and rings are - of course - hyperlinks. RSS and OPML are silently working in the background. I think there's still unfulfilled potential for RSS as a replacement for social media, because the open web is already social media.

Agreed, I never saw the point of having a group of sites like that instead each site just linking the other related/recommended sites - i.e. a web.

Web-rings were really common in the later 90's... Mostly based on topic or focus of the site(s) in question. It was a common discovery mechanism... you'd usually have prev/next/random/list links, where you could navigate via prev or next, but also jump to a random site int he ring or to a list of sites in the ring.

It's nice to see some old ideas like this come back... also hoping to see more self-hosted conversational sites around topics of interest (bulletin boards) over the giant social media sites we have today.

I do think many people with websites an visiting websites would enjoy using webrings again.

Interesting to see some misconceptions in this comments here, and the graphic at wikipedia showing it as an actual ring of links, but I don't believe that was ever a solid explanation.

Sure there was the option to add your website to most webrings, and some had checker settings to see if a recip link existed then plublish and share.. but that was short lived because spammers, and google's change of 'bad neighborhoods hurt you' - then corporate rollup / walls up..

However on many websites it was great to find similar sites and other sites the author had an interest in and wanted to share with friends / visitros.. recip link or not.

It was a useful tool for discovery and sharing. Google got so important so fast that people (and even at the software level (starting at you wordpress)) removed blogrolls entirely.

Now that it's understood that you can share with the nofollow attribute added to links, I think we will see more people adding blogrolls / webrings and that will naturally lead to more links back, and people appreciating sharing of other places of interest.

I started developing a new webrings plugin to make it easier for people to share and get submissions / suggestions, with options for checking for recip links, having a default nofollow link and such.

This led me to thinking about other uses for the same data / DB / fields.. and decidedly that the same backend parts can also create 'directory pages' - which are essentially what webrings were just as a footer scrolling widget verses full page per category.. so I added that.

Then I realized the same bits are basically waht is needed for creating a directory or associates.. could be other people who meet at a conference, could be people you work with, other companies you've done business with, or other professionals you've bumped into at other job sites / projects.. so I added that and it also is becoming a contact sharing / directory / roledex kind of system.

I did one blog post showing part of the functionality that is in the works: https://betterwebgroup.com/from-business-cards-to-digital-di...

Right now I'm working through the backend being difficult to chose what shows up on the front end and under what conditions.. hope to have sorted by end of month - when will hope people will help with testing and suggestions.

Trying to make it as standalone react system that can work into any website and a wordpress plugin at the same time has led to so challenges.. but it's getting close.