Editing Webring (section)

{{Short description|Group of websites linked in a ring structure}}
[[File:Webringwork.png|thumb]]
A '''webring''' (or '''web ring''') is a collection of [[website]]s [[Hyperlink|linked]] together in a circular structure, usually organized around a specific theme, and often educational or social.<ref>ICT Roger Crawford - Heinemann IGCSE - glossary</ref> They were popular in the 1990s and early 2000s, particularly among amateur websites.

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." However, the select-through route around the ring is usually supplemented by a central site with links to all member sites; this prevents the ring from breaking completely if a member site goes offline.
A webring is managed from one website which is able to omit the websites that have dropped out or are no longer reachable. The advantage of a webring is that if the user is interested in the topic on one website, they can quickly connect to another website on the same topic.<ref>ICT Roger Crawford - Heinemann IGCSE - Chapter 7 page 192</ref> 
Webrings usually have a moderator who decides which pages to include in the webring. After approval, webmasters add their pages to the ring by 'linking in' to the ring; this requires adding the necessary [[HTML]] or [[JavaScript]] to their site.

Sites usually join a webring in order to receive traffic from related sites. When used to improve search engine rankings, webrings can be considered a [[search engine optimization]] technique.

Webrings are mainly viewed as a relic of the early web of the 1990s.<ref name="Hover2015">{{cite web|url=https://www.hover.com/blog/what-ever-happened-to-webrings/|title=What Ever Happened To Webrings?|date=14 May 2021|archiveurl=https://web.archive.org/web/20170204184822/https://www.hover.com/blog/what-ever-happened-to-webrings/|archivedate=2017-02-04}}</ref> When the primary site that managed web rings, webring.org was acquired by Yahoo, "ring masters" lost access to their webrings<ref name="Hover2015" /> and the web ring hubs were replaced by a Yahoo page.<ref name="Hover2015" /> By the time Yahoo stopped controlling webring.org in 2001, search engines had become good enough that web rings were no longer as useful.<ref name="Hover2015" /> The webring.org site was still active in the mid-2010s.<ref name="Hover2015"/>