Brad Enslen - Using Webrings for Defining Sub-Communities on Micro.blog

The subject came up via John Philpin and Gray Areas. And using a webring to denote sub-communities within Micro.blog. For example:

Analog things. A big catchall for stuff below.
Fountain pen collectors.
Paper journal keepers.
Typewriter collectors
Paper note keepers.
etc.

But you also have Micro.blog things like: historians, educators, blot users, cat owners, etc.

A webring plays to the strength of MB users actually having a blog.

Currently, Micro.blog hosted blog users can put a webring code in their footer area. The size is a bit cramped but it is usable. I expect this to get better in the near future when Micro.blog rolls out improved template/theme editing capabilities.

The easiest, off the shelf, webring hosting solution is Webringo.com.* It works and has some nice features.

People joining a Webringo ring have their choice of 3 stock ring codes: A. HTML (either vertical and horizontal), B. an I Frame, C. a JavaScript ring code (like Webring used to have).
Webringo automatically produces an Index page of sites within the ring. If you link to this it gives people an alternative way to explore the ring.
A webring is opt-in, that is membership is voluntary. A @JohnPhilpin noted it can denote a club or tribe.
I would strongly recommend that the ring owner provide some example, optional, “minimalist” HTML ring codes that members can customize to work with their membership if they want.
The advantage to using Webringo is it makes managing the ring much easier and joining the ring less labor intensive.

You can create something like a webring using Glitch or other means, using a host like Webringo makes it easy for anyone to start and maintain a webring without coding skills. Micro.blog has grown enough and will continue growing so finding sub-communities will become harder.

I’m just throwing the idea out there, for whoever is interested to think about.

I will make this offer: If people start forming webrings for sub-communities within Micro.blog I will create some sort of index of the webrings so people can find different rings.

Reference: Webrings.

* I’m not married to Webringo, it’s just that when I investigated the other two ring hosts, Webring and Ringsurf, I was getting error messages when I tried to sign up and they were still giving errors when I came back a couple of weeks later. Whereas, Webringo is still fully functional.

This was also posted to /en/linking.