By Gabe Goldberg,
APCUG Advisor, Region 2;
Columnist, AARP Computer & Technology Website
From the December, 2005 issue of the I/O Port Newsletter
If the Internet is the largest library created in human history, where are its
card catalog and friendly librarians to explain how the Internet's "shelves" are
arranged? Where's a rhyme and reason for how things are arranged, and the Dewey
Decimal System
http://www.oclc.org/dewey/ when we need it most?
Search engines and directories
like Google www.google.com and Yahoo! www.yahoo.com are helpful but can be
overwhelming. And search results often appear jumbled, lacking the comfort of
neighborhood libraries which shelve related books together -- so that if you
find an interesting mystery, cookbook, or science tome, its nearby shelf
neighbors may be an unanticipated bonus.
But the Internet does offer the equivalent of library shelves, called WebRings
("rings" for short). Not stashed where you can physically touch them, rings are
linked sets of Web sites concerned with specific topics.
So rings exist for diverse topics -- physical fitness, photography, falconry,
biking, etc. In fact, those topics were all featured on WebRing.com
http://dir.webring.com/rw, a directory of rings, on the day I browsed it.
The WebRing concept is simple: Webmasters of sites with a common theme agree to
link to each other, and to a hub Web site; each ring site includes links named
Ring Hub, Random, Previous, Next, and Join Now. A ring's hub is like the center
of a circle, with all the ring's sites connected to it. The hub describes the
ring, gives statistics (how many
Web sites belong, how many times the hub has been visited, etc.), and lists
member sites with brief descriptions.
WebRing.com combines aspects of a portal site (linking to WebRing-related
information and resources), a directory site (providing categories of rings such
as Business & Finance, Family & Home, Health & Wellness, and Hobbies & Crafts),
and a search tool. Searching is helpful when you're not sure which category
includes your topic of interest or when the topic may span categories. For
example, searching on "gardening" located 128 WebRings. That doesn't sound like
many, but remember that each ring includes a few, dozens, hundreds, or thousands
of individual sites. Among the first 20 rings, Friends of the Garden
http://e.webring.com/hub?ring=friendsgarden has the most members, 243 Web sites.
Its cheery greeting reads "Welcome to Friends of the Garden
Web Ring. We are the largest gardening Web ring in the WebRing Community! Please
visit our members and if you have a gardening web page, consider joining! We
welcome both the backyard gardener with his own home page or the commercial
grower. All have something interesting to add to our virtual garden tour".
Navigating WebRing.com by topics provides a hierarchical view of its thousands
of WebRings -- for example, clicking the Science category yields about two dozen
disciplines including Astronomy, Biology, Ecology, Energy, etc. Biology includes
an amazing 3200 rings, while the new science of Nanotechnology has only one
ring.
Ring hubs offer a unique search tool with two pulldown menu choices. You can
enter a keyword and search only the ring whose hub you're viewing (the Ring
choice), or search the entire WebRing.com list of rings (the WebRing search
choice). Searching within the ring can help narrow search results. For example,
the Amateur and Pro Photography ring has 87 sites. If I'm interested in English
photography, rather than touring the entire ring -- entertaining though that
might be -- I can use the ring search for "England" and find the four relevant
sites.
Clicking the Random link is like closing your eyes and hopping to an unknown
site -- it can be entertaining or not, depending on luck. Previous/Next links
navigate around a ring's sites so you'll eventually return to your starting
point. And Join Now is for Webmasters to enroll sites within a ring; this
requires first creating a free account on
WebRing.com.
WebRings don't replace search engines, directories, portals, one's own
bookmarks, and referrals from friends for finding worthwhile material. And they
only link sites that have chosen to enroll. But they're a useful and powerful
tool for locating and navigating congenial and related Web sites, and they give
topics such as gardening and
photography much more a sense of community than do bare links from a search
engine.
This article originated on AARP's Computers and Technology Web site,
www.aarp.org/computers, and is copyrighted by AARP. All rights are reserved; it
may be reproduced, downloaded, disseminated, or transferred, for single use, or
by nonprofit organizations for educational purposes, with attribution to AARP.
It should be unchanged and this paragraph included. Please e-mail Gabe Goldberg
at gabe@gabegold.com when you use it,
or for permission to excerpt or condense.
There is no restriction against any non-profit group using this article as long
as it is kept in context with proper credit given the author. The Editorial
Committee of the Association of Personal Computer User Groups (APCUG), an
international organization of which this group is a member, brings this article
to you.
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