The following FAQ includes some history of the web ring and other developments.
what is a web ring?
A web ring is a neat navigational tool -- usually -- run by a CGI (common gateway interface) program. It allows visitors to "follow" the sites in the ring by using links that typically take you back, next or to the list of sites. If working properly, (i.e. there are no dead links or "breaks in the ring") a traveler will be able to start at site 1 and travel to each site until he ends up back at 1!
This makes web rings a great way to travel sites with common interests or themes because rings are generally created with a purpose. For example, the "Widget Ring" would consist of sites with information about widgets, therefore, when traveling the Widget Ring you will only be visiting sites about widgets. This makes web rings almost better than a search engine in that you don't have to weed through sites that aren't on topic!
how did web rings begin?
The "original" webring is a project called EUROPa, or Expanding Unidirectional Ring of Pages. This idea was taken a few steps further by Sage Weil after he had stumbled across the project.
EUROPa was started on December 22, 1994 by Denis Howe, who thought it would be fun to see how many people would join. Basically, you add the EUROPa page to your site and e-mail the person whose page you took asking them to update their "Next Page" link with your url. Then, when someone takes your page, you change the "next page" to their url. . .
At any rate, when Weil found this, he thought he could improve upon the idea with a cgi program that would allow users to create new rings. Later, Jerry Hierro suggested a centralized cgi program, and WebRing.org was born. In 1997, Weil sold the WebRing to Starseed, Inc., a communications innovator out of Ashland, Oregon.
In late 1998, WebRing was acquired by GeoCities, an already prominent provider of free home page services on the internet. This was an exciting time for web ring because of GeoCities' capitol and knowledge.
Finally, in early 1999, GeoCities was bought by Yahoo! Fast forward to 2001 where the old Webring is a thing of the past. . .Yahoo! changed Webring into Yahoo!WebRing where they control the look and control of the webring and you control who joins and who doesn't. Many ringmasters were very upset over the changes and went to the forums to express their opinions. Things got out rather of hand and now ringmasters are spread throughout the many ring systems out there now.
For more info, check out these links:
what are the other options for creating a ring?
My recommendation is to download and install the Ringlink program. This is an awesome tool written by Gunner Hjalmarsson. You can either install the program on your own server, or you create your ring somewhere that offers ring hosting (I offer ring hosting here: Canonical Designs Ringlink). It is an open source and free program written by a ringmaster for ringmasters! It is what I use to host my rings.
If you want something similar to what the old web ring was, then I'd suggest Ringsurf. Ringsurf works just like the old web ring system. You create the ring on their system by choosing a subject and name, creating a ring homepage and customizing your ring fragment.
Yahoo!Webring makes it very easy. You simply pick a name for the ring and choose some colors and they do the rest. You can upload a small graphic if you want, but ring homepages and custom ring fragments are a thing of the past. Your members simply copy and paste the "navbar" javascript code onto their page and that's it. To see an example of navbar stacks, check out James S. Huggins’ Refrigerator Door: The Wazillion Navbars Project (actual stack is here). You can see (ahem) how a ringmaster might "customize" his or her navbar.
For more ring hosting options and user reviews, check out the Ring Resource Pages.
Hosting options are also discussed under "options."
what is some of the common terminology?
There are a number of key phrases to the web ring system.
who are the people involved with web rings?
A web ring typically involves four parties: the ring system; the ring owner; the ring members; and the ring surfers.