Black Tuesday

Much has changed since I wrote my original article on webrings. On September 5, 2000 (Black Tuesday) Yahoo! killed the Webring system. Oh, they didn't intend to kill it, but a bullet in the head is deadly however it arrives. And the webring system which worked so beautifully and was such a wonderful creation died.

What happened? Well, Yahoo! decided that they wanted to create something called a Server Side Navigation Bar. This was intended to solve one of the most vexing problems facing ringmasters - ring fragments.

You see, each ringmaster had to create a fragment (or several sometimes) which was added to a page on each site in a ring. This fragment allowed for navigation through the ring. Unfortunately, it was often difficult for ringmasters to create the fragment, and when that was done it proved a large task to get people to add them correctly to their sites and keep them on the correct pages. This problem was made even worse by the actions of hosts like Angelfire, who, without notice, made it impossible to link to graphics remotely. This forced hundreds of webrings to hurriedly change their webring code and find new places to load their graphics.

It was actually a horrible implementation of a great idea. James Huggins, a regular contributor to the webringnews Yahoo! club, had the following comments about the new navigation bar:

It is what I'd expect if the designer was getting all his information by talking on one of those in-flight phones to his mother, while she was on her cellular phone in her yard, yelling over the fence at her neighbor, who was trying to remember what her son told her about how he managed a web ring.

Or, it looks like someone who said, we don't care how it was. We are designing how it will be. We bought the brand "WebRing". It has value. The rest we are going to junk. These will be Why! Clubs for websites. History is irrelevant.

James Huggins also had the following to say about the most significant side effect of Yahoo!'s changes to Webring.

But for some sites (Web Guard, Random Acts of Kindness, the POW sites, and some of the Holiday sites all come immediately to mind) use the Ring as a kind of "gateway" to the main site.

In addition, the "additional exposure" of the main site serves as some small "benefit" for managing the ring, as opposed to just being in the ring.

It appears that this change is explicitly designed to reduce the visibility, responsibility and "ownership" of the RingMaster and to eliminate the association of the RingMaster site as the "home" of the ring.

For some it will not matter. For others this may be one of the most major, most significant changes discovered so far.

I think that pretty much sums up the main problem with the new webring system.

What Yahoo! was apparently attempting to do is impose the Yahoo! viewpoint of the web on Webring. This viewpoint is simple: everything starts and ends with Yahoo!. This is actually convenient for surfers at times, as is demonstrated by their directory and very well designed browser start page.

A very bad side effect of the changes to Webring is that all ringmasters and ring members MUST get a Yahoo! id. There is a grace period, but at some undetermined time in the future the old fragments will cease to work (word is this is 18 months down the road, around the end of 2002.) This doesn't, on the surface, seem too bad, until you understand that the Yahoo! ID must be associated with all rings that the member belongs to. What does this imply? For me, I have to manually log into Webring and associate each of over 200 webrings to the id. This is a major task which will require weeks if not months of work.

When you consider that RAOK had over 1,500 sites in their webring and Divine Diva's had over 800 sites, you can begin to understand the amount of effort required to get everyone in the ring to get Yahoo! id's, change their fragments, associate it, and so on. Many webrings are simply deciding that if they are going to have to go to this much trouble they may as well move from Webring entirely.

Some other changes included:

• The link to email the ringmaster or site owner has been removed.
• The link to the ringmaster site is not on the navigation bar.
• The fragment seems to be intended to get people to the Yahoo! webring page. Before the change, the intent was to get people to the ringmaster's page, which allowed for a community to be built around unique and interesting web sites.
• The navigation bar requires JavaScript, which many people cannot or do not want to use. This will actually drive surfers away from the ring.
• The ring fragment is ugly. In the past, some ringmasters would spend hours and hours creating a beautiful fragment. Some of them are simply works of art with no peers. Now everyone gets the same horribly ugly piece of junk on their site.
• WebTV members and surfers cannot use webring anymore.

So what would I recommend? My wife and I will be moving our rings away from Webring to other systems. Here is a list of other ring systems with reviews for you to check out. 

• RingLink
• RingSurf 
• SiteRing (Bravenet)
• The Rail
• WebRing.Org

One important note. I would not bother deleting the old webring. At least wait until you have all of your members moved over to your new webring before deleting the old one. In fact, why not just leave it going? It will generate some traffic, even in "auto-pilot".

However, the Yahoo! webring system will certainly be useful as a traffic creator in the future. It will never again (unless changed drastically) be useful for creating the dynamic online communities that existed in the past, but it will be useful to simply aid in getting people to your site. And the new system will be ridiculously easy to manage as it is virtually all done automatically. So by all means set up as many NEW rings as you can.

But one thing to remember, a small not of caution here, webrings have never been and probably never will be major sources of traffic for sites. If you want to create webrings in Yahoo! be sure and consider the overhead involved in adding and subtracting sites verses the traffic gained. Keep a close watch on your statistics and determine if it is worth being a ringmaster.

Now, joining Yahoo! webrings? By all means, join as many as you want. There is no overhead and the ring system makes your job automatic and trivial.

But if you want to maintain a sense of community, or if you think of your ring as yours, then my advice is to move from Yahoo! now.

Each ring system has it's advantages and disadvantages. I believe that you should evaluate each one based upon your needs and make the decision rationally. In actuality, there is no reason not to join or create rings in all of the ring systems! They all work, and for their purposes they all work well.

Updates

Useful Resources

The Day The Webring Died

A long long time ago
I can still remember how that webring used to make me smile
And Yahoo! came along one day
And good things were coming so they say
And that made ringmasters happy for a while.
But September made me quiver
With every email they delivered
Bad news in the inbox
I thought this is going to suck
I can't remember if I cried
When I read about the navigation bar
Some of us had worked so hard
The day the webring died
{Refrain}
So bye-bye, the old webring has died
Sage is in his grave
But he hasn’t yet died
And them good old boys were writing scripts in CGI
Singin' this'll be the day that I die
This'll be the day that I die
Did you copy and paste the code above
And where’s that HTML I love
If the HTML Bible tells you so
Do you believe in HTML and Perl
Can programming save your mortal soul
And can you teach me how to do rollovers?
Well, I know that Yahoo! means well
But they’re driving us to hell
They added the navigation bar
And a link that’s slower than my car
The webring was a dream of Sage’s
Who linked the net with rings of pages
But I knew I was out of luck
The day the webring died
I started singin'
{Refrain}
Now for many months we've been on our own
Trying to find a place to home
But that's not how it used to be
When Sage starting this whole thing
He envisioned greatness of Webring
And a voice that came from you and me
Oh, and while Sage was looking down
Yahoo! stole his prized crown
The courtroom was adjourned
No verdict was returned
And while Yahoo! promised things to come
Many ringmasters started to run
And some just started having fun
The day the webring died
We were singing
{Refrain}
Helter Skelter in a summer swelter
The ringmasters defected to a shelter
Eighty megs down and falling fast
The webring started to crash
The masters called for a refresh fast
With the Sage on the sidelines in a cast
Now the upload-time was slowing down
While the Yahoo! took its servers down
We logged on to delete our rings
But we never had a chance
'Cause the Yahoo! denied us access
The Yahoo! servers refused to yield
And the money making ploy was finally revealed
The day the webring died
By Todd
(used with permission)

"Don't you understand? The old HTML code will have to be replaced eventually with the NavBar. All new sites joining rings from here on out will have to use the NavBar. They cannot use the HTML code old rings members used. All ring master have lost most of the control we had over our rings. All NavBars look ugly and almost exactly the same. The entire system is still in a shambles. I have pulled stakes on my rings, and will continue to do so, because the Y just trampled over all of us. Things are NOT WORKING JUST FINE! I put a lot of hard work and time into designing my HTML code and graphics, and a lot of time designing the webring homepages and promoting them. All of that is lost now! Gone. THAT IS NOT JUST FINE! IT SUCKS. And I am not letting anyone take over the rings I still need to kill of because I want to use what I can on the new ring. Can't you see this?" 
dreamspinner3
in a posting to Webringnews.

"But, to your question, why delete instead of allowing adoption?

Because RingMasters view the ring as THEIRS. They created it, loved it, nursed it and spent hundreds of thousands of dollars in imputed costs (time) making them work. They are a child. They are theirs. The Ring is going with them."
as_jamesshuggins_20000824 in a posting to Webringnews.

"Or, let me state it differently. The WHY! is now the primary site for every ring. The RingMaster's membership is "just another membership".
as_jamesshuggins_20000824 in a posting to Webringnews.

After talking with Jeff Kudos and SevenEagle, we decided that we liked the way we have been functioning and don't want to accept the changes that are being made by the merger with Yahoo. In this merger, everyone would have to sign up for a Yahoo ID and replace their HTML codes with a new navigation system. I do not feel that we, 181+ members, care to ALL sign up for Yahoo ID's.
Ringmaster of Computer Friends in an email to all ring members

Wow! Now that we've had a chance to catch our breath, let me start by thanking all of our new users for joining us here at RingSurf! We are very pleased to have you aboard! There have been over 1400 new rings created here at RingSurf in just the past 12 days, and an incredible 9000+ websites joining those rings. As a idea of the scale of this to us, it took 2 years (we acquired RingSurf in Aug 1998) to grow to 2,412 rings as of September 5th 2000. We expect to double that by the 19th of September...
RingSurf, 12 days after "Black Tuesday"

For the record, I believe that both services have merit. The new webring will be a place that will attract many new and beginning webmasters, especially from Geocities, as it is simple and straightforward. Yes, there are bugs but they will be worked out and new features will be added. I have a feeling that the traffic numbers for sites in webrings will be higher than in the old system simply due to less broken rings and missing ring fragments. This will make webring an excellent place to join lots of webrings to pull in traffic.

For those people who liked the old system, RingSurf is a fine alternative. I think for large organizations like RAOK it will work better, as their focus is not the webring at all but the community. But the price is what it always was - it's harder for people to add their fragments and keep them up-to-date.

Personally, as a webmaster, I don't see any reason not to join rings everywhere. I join RingSurf rings, Bravenet rings, Bomis rings, Yahoo! rings and Ringlink rings. It's a way for me to blend my site into the web community, and there is room in the web for all of these different kinds of communities.
Internet_Tips in a posting to RingSurf club

In my opinion, that is one of the differences between the Original WebRing and the Yahoo! WebRing.

The Original WebRing was designed to permit a RingMaster to be concerned with a particular member, a particular registration, a particular problem. It permitted a RingMaster to have a focused, tight ring of 20 and be proud of it.

The Yahoo! WebRing seems designed to maximize membership without particular attention to any one. The impression I receive is that if a few drop out, it does not matter, as long as more join. That is, it seems willing to lose a few to gain the many.

Thus the "metric" for Original RingMasters was individual response. The "metric" for Yahoo! WebRing RingMasters is Ring Size.

Just my impression so far.
ha_jamesshuggins_20001001 in a posting to webringnews