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Bring Back Webrings

arne.me

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Re: Bring Back Webrings

#21

Post by JohnFen »

dragontamer wrote: post #19

I'm fairly certain that link-aggregation sites, like Hacker News, Reddit, Digg, Slashdot, and Lemmy have taken the place of Webrings. The sad truth about webpages is that people don't want to maintain them. People will put in their weekend project, and then the webpage sits there for the rest of eternity whether or not its relevant, and then what? When do you update the webring so that they add and/or remove pages? H…

> I'm fairly certain that link-aggregation sites, like Hacker News, Reddit, Digg, Slashdot, and Lemmy have taken the place of Webrings.

Link aggregation sites serve a completely different purpose from webrings, and don't substitute for them. That's why for many years, link aggregation sites and webrings coexisted.

Re: Bring Back Webrings

#22

Post by doublerabbit »

Sure.. with todays net, you'll end up with 100's of frameworks to implement the ring, probably based on the block-chain tech. Then don't forget the WRaaS, webrings as a service, paid subscription, NFTs, sponsored webrings followed by AI Web Rings. And maybe a bag of onion rings to go with it.

Re: Bring Back Webrings

#23

Post by JohnFen »

scottyah wrote: post #15
appplication wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This could be pretty basic browser extension. A little banner at the top or bottom: “websites like this one”

Or website curators all agree on a /webring.txt file (similar to a robots.txt) where they list websites they think are similar?

An important part of what made webrings good, though, was that they were curated (some more than others, but still...)

Having sites just list others the site owners think are similar is just the site providing a list of links to "friend sites" -- which also used to be a common thing. That's also fun and useful, but not what webrings are about.

Re: Bring Back Webrings

#25

Post by AndrewKemendo »

I was thinking about this less an hour ago

Specifically I want my personal site to be a part of a “web 1.0” ring, where everyone uses technology that predates web 2.0 frameworks (Wordpress, AWS, CF etc…) and you generally roll your own everything.

Re: Bring Back Webrings

#26

Post by bluSCALE4 »

dragontamer wrote: post #19

I'm fairly certain that link-aggregation sites, like Hacker News, Reddit, Digg, Slashdot, and Lemmy have taken the place of Webrings. The sad truth about webpages is that people don't want to maintain them. People will put in their weekend project, and then the webpage sits there for the rest of eternity whether or not its relevant, and then what? When do you update the webring so that they add and/or remove pages? H…

Yeah, not sure if you lived through webrings because I don't think anyone that used them would agree.

Re: Bring Back Webrings

#29

Post by LAC-Tech »

Tangential, but one thing I noticed recently is how algorithms on sites like twitter and linkedin - especially linkedin - will penalize posts that contain external links. So it's very hard to even tell people about content on your own site. HN might be one of the few places left that don't seem to do that.

Thinking more - what used to be common is a section called "other cool sites" or something similar, which would just be a list of sites to check out the author put there. Maybe that's a bit more robust than a ring.

Re: Bring Back Webrings

#30

Post by walterbell »

AndrewKemendo wrote: post #25

I was thinking about this less an hour ago Specifically I want my personal site to be a part of a “web 1.0” ring, where everyone uses technology that predates web 2.0 frameworks (Wordpress, AWS, CF etc…) and you generally roll your own everything.

Publish a post listing such sites, with a page title of "Web 1.0 Webring", accepting pull requests for additions?

If/when it grows too big, someone can add software for collaborative maintenance.

Starting point: https://old.reddit.com/r/webdev/comments/caezeo/web_10_era_w...

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