Article published in an in-world newspaper in 1996 when the webring started.  Please note the "WorldsAway Members Webring" is now known as the "WA/VZones Members Webring."  Eventually the WA part of the name will be dropped, it is there for now to try and prevent confusion over which webring is which.

The Start Can Be Anywhere..........The End Is Where You Began.

Webrings, some people love them, some hate them, and many have never heard of them. Personally I love them. If organised well, a webring can provide an excellent means of navigating through web sites following a similar theme. If organised badly a webring can be a mixed batch of sites with no common theme to hold it together.

The webring concept was created by Sage Weil of Webring in May 1995 and has now grown to include over 16,000 rings. Some of those rings contain over 400 individual web sites, some contain only 2. Wherever you go on the web you are greeted by Webring logos and control strips, mostly they are situated on personal homepages.

Simply, a Webring is a group of sites linked in an organized way to create something like a guided tour. The concept is quite literal. The sites share a common navigation system so that when you've clicked through them all you're back where you started. You can enter the Ring at any point, travel it in any direction, list its next five sites, jump to a random one, or get a list of all the member sites in the loop.

So couldn't we create a webring without the Webring system by simply having each page owner link their site to the next? Yes we could, however, when a new member wanted to join the ring, someone would need to edit their page to point to the new site, and when the ring of sites grew, it would become more difficult to keep the ring intact.

The Webring provides a solution to all of these problems. When you submit a site to join a Webring, you are given the required HTML code to place on your homepage. The HTML code never changes. Links on your page point to a special CGI script at webring.org that will send people to the next site in the ring. The central ring database is located in one location, therefore sites can be added and removed quickly and easily by the co-ordinator of the ring, and because the CGI allows you continue past sites that are unreachable, you will always be able to continue around the loop. The Webring system supports the operation of a virtually unlimited number of rings with thousands of different themes, allowing the creation of thousands of different "communities" on the web.

So, what use is this to us, the WorldsAway avatars? The WorldsAway Members Webring has been created for sites with WorldsAway related content. Anyone is free to submit their site for inclusion in the ring the main requirement being that the page contains some WorldsAway content. This ring will be a useful way for people to learn more about WorldsAway, the avatars, and sometimes the people behind the avatars. It is hoped that the main helper groups within our community will submit their homepages for addition to the webring. As we all know, there will soon be an influx of newbies into The Dreamscape. Imagine how useful it would be if they could navigate easily through sites that would show them a bit more about WorldsAway without having to do endless searches to find pages of interest to them.

With WorldsAway now on the web, it is the ideal time to form a group of linked pages. Personal homepages that people have created about their WorldsAway avatars, their turfs, and their friends are often a source of inspiration for people who want to create a page of their own and are not sure where to start. The online newspapers and the homepages of the helper groups are a valuable source of information for all of us, not just newcomers. You might like to consider submitting personal homepages that only include a small section about WorldsAway and the rest is about your other interests. The possibilities are endless. There are currently 17 sites in The WorldsAway Members Webring. Why not submit yours? Have a look for yourself, from here you can visit a random site in the ring. You might even find yourself back at the main index page of Au Fait Today which was one of the first member sites. If you have time, and you want to look through the whole ring, just look for the webring control strip on each page and remember - The start can be anywhere, the end is where you began!

For more information please visit the WorldsAway Members Webring Homepage or send e-mail to the ring co-ordinator.