Web rings are important to me, I can't really say why?! However, I have done my best to explain it here. . .
how did you first get into web rings?
My web ring obsession began in early 1997 when I created my first home page. The entire site consisted of a main page, a photo album, and a web rings page. After a while, my web rings page took so long to load, you could go make a pot of coffee before it was done!
It wasn't long before I broke the rings into "sections" giving my site about five pages of web rings for different types of interests.
After a while, just joining rings wasn't enough, I wanted "my own" ring. This was how the "Rachelle Ring" was born. I busily set out to create the ring and find other Rachelles to join.
what web rings do you manage?
The Rachelle Ring has evolved somewhat and has moved homes four times. The ring looks different today than it did when I first made it, and the pages have changed a little to include more options. This ring has very special meaning to me, and with the acquisition of my new domain, it has moved to its final home. . .
My second ring, To the Left, was originally intended as an award type ring. But, there are so few lefties, that it became unreasonable. Besides, all lefties are talented! When I created it, it was because the other two lefty rings didn't really fit my purpose, one of them didn't even have a home page anymore. . . This ring is pretty simple, but it does have several ring fragment choices, include a text only sample.
Next came The Only Child Ring. This is one of my favorite rings because I used some snazzy web coding on its pages, like the java buttons and the poll and the never-ending story. I like the way the ring fragment turned out too. . . So far there's only one other member besides myself!
The Teen Parenting Community Ring followed. This ring is an exclusive ring and only members of the community can join. The requirements for the community are that the person is, was, or will be a teen parent, or have some connection with teen parents. This is also the only ring not housed on this site.
Next came the Egg Donor Ring. This ring is for the women who have donated or for the intended parents. Even if I never donate, I have become extremely interested in the process and legal implications. . .so I made a ring. It's somewhat of a tribute to the people I've met on the mailing list I joined.
Finally, I created the Women Lawyers Ring (currently unavailable). This ring is for women lawyers with homepages. Not much more to it.
in conclusion . . .
Well, okay, not finally, because I am creating a ring to go with this FAQ. This ring is for fun and to give people a ring to join. No certain requirements are specified other than visiting this site.
There you have it, my rings. I love web rings because of the technology involved and the concept behind them. They work out better than a search engine because technically, the members of the ring will have content relating to the ring's purpose. In this way, you don't have to search through many misses to find a hit! And, rings are fun.