Starting Your Own Webring on Webringo.com
You need a ring host. I have used Webringo.com recently and everything there is in working order, with no spam from Webringo and no ads being inserted into rings. Honest and clean.
- Register an account at Webringo.
- Read through Webringo’s Help and FAQ section. This helped me a lot.
- You are registered and logged in. Now you want to find the link to “Create a Ring” from the left menu.
- Fill in all the spaces on the Create a Ring page. After you hit create you should get to a section where you can customize the colors, style, type, logo design of the default ring code that will be given to anyone that registers to join your ring. Save your edits.
- My memory is a little rusty here so bare with me. At this point you may need to add the ring code to your own webpage. You may have to sign your own site up as the first member to do that. You will get your choice of the default ring codes and you add that code to the page you have designated.
This is about where my memory ends. It was pretty straight forward. It’s free so you can play around with it and learn. Feel free to create a demo ring first to learn on, you can always delete it.
Tips:
- Be specific about who can join the ring.
- If you already have a community of people interested in your topic that qualify for ring membership, contact them individually before to step #3 above and see if they are interested in joining the webring. It’s hard to get people to join a webring that only has one or two sites.
- Joining an existing ring is easier than creating one.
- Make the ring code easy to find. Preferably it should be on the same page people entered on.
- As Ring Master, you must preserve the integrity of the ring. This means 1. sites should be qualified to be a member, 2. Ring codes must be working, 3. ring codes must be easily findable. Suspend members that don’t display the ring code. Visitors will not use a ring that is broken or too hard to navigate.
- The ring code is there not only for navigation but is also there to recruit new ring members and/or new readers.
- Webringo has it’s own Private Messenger system called “Ring Mail”. As Ring Master you should check this regularly to see notifications of new applicants or messages from members.
