Webrings

[GeraldTodd]

Simply put, a Webring links many sites together via a "panel" that allows movement forward, back, and randomly through the member sites of the ring. The ring's "hub" also lists all the sites at once as well as tracking traffic and maintaining the ring membership.

It's a tool to promote your website and get visitors to it, albiet a lot of folks just breezing past, but a really great recruit could be in that crowd who wouldn't have seen your site otherwise.

I can't say for certain how much traffic we've gotten in the years we've been in the the rings, but we do get many inquiries from decendants of the original 1st Maine members that say they found us via one of the rings.

There are several web-rings that may be of interest to folks with websites, two in paticular that may be of interest here are:

Authentic Civil War Reenacting Units Web Ring

http://m.webring.com/hub?ring=authenticcivilwa

This ring currently only has 5 sites in it and as the name suggest, is for "authentic units"

Civil War Virtual Archive Web Ring

http://i.webring.com/hub?ring=cwarchring

is a ring of sites that offer information, images, history, sources, etc.

Both of the above rings allow Pass_L access, that is your ring links don't have to be on the front page of your site, so long as they are on a page linked to from the front page. Some other rings do not allow "indirect access."

Feel free to check out our webring page at http://mainecav.org to see the rings we're members of and how we set ourselves up to deal with them.

[paulcalloway]

Re: Webrings

The problem with webrings as I see it is that you have no control over who joins them. I'd prefer not to be linked with mainstream sutlers, mainstream units, etc as it might give folks a false notion that we support those entities in some manner.

[GeraldTodd]

Re: Webrings

The problem with webrings as I see it is that you have no control over who joins them. I'd prefer not to be linked with mainstream sutlers, mainstream units, etc as it might give folks a false notion that we support those entities in some manner.

That's so, but anyone interested should check out the other ring members and decide if they want to be included with that crowd. I listed two I thought were appropriate to folks here. The "Authentic Units" ring is very small with 5 members and it seemed some folks here could turn it into quite the resource, but may simply have been unaware of the subject.

Besides, if the ring goes to pot over time, leaving it's a simple matter - just delete the code. The rings check connection and remove sites that don't respond automatically.