Webring
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A WebRing is a collection of websites from around the Internet joined together by a NavBar in a basic ring fashion. The NavBar code (sometimes called SSNB) is a small piece of JavaScript (or HTML) that allows the surfer to click on a link to travel to the next, previous, or a random site. Through this the surfer eventually can browse through the whole ring ending up where they once started, hence its name.
WebRings usually are a group of similar sites. Most rings follow a similar theme (such as paganism, crafts, HTML, baseball, Simpsons, etc) to provide a large base of information on a single subject that may not be simple to find in a large search engine. The browser, in other words, can view multiple sites on one subject without having to search for them individually.
The Idea/History
The original WebRing was designed by Sage Weil using his own cgi-script in May, 1994. The idea was based off a similar structure called EUROPa (Expanding Unidirectional Ring Of Pages). Weil's script was so popular that in June, 1995, Weil created WebRing, which launched officially eight months later. In 1997, Weil sold WebRing to Starseed, Inc.
In 1998 Starseed was acquired by Geocities, who made no major changes to the system. But just a few months later, in early 1999, Yahoo! bought Geocities, and eighteen months after the acquisition, on September 5, 2000, Yahoo! unveiled a fully-overhauled WebRing, known as Yahoo!WebRing.
On April 15, unknown to many, Yahoo! pulled their support of WebRing, leaving it in the hands of one technician from the original Webring.org. He unveiled an improved WebRing free of Yahoo! influence on October 12, 2001.