
Show HN: I am trying to start a webring for geeks - dusted
https://geekring.net/
======
michaelbrooks
This is really cool to see and I love how webrings are making a comeback.
Here's one from Jack McDade filled with weird people/things.
[https://weirdwidewebring.net/](https://weirdwidewebring.net/)

~~~
yboris
My favorite weird website:
[https://www.lingscars.com/](https://www.lingscars.com/)

~~~
kmstout
The best part is her face in the home page's source code.

~~~
gab007
Yeah, that or this: "I take pride in having the most accurate prices on the
web".

------
seven4
I've not come across the concept of a webring before - but this is cool.

I feel like adding a link back to the ring (or at least next page) should be
mandatory - else it feels a bit broken (I know the frameset version is there
but feels less elegant). The third page
("[https://finalkey.net/"](https://finalkey.net/")) in the ring when i was
navigating had no explicit mention of the ring on the landing page...and that
feels unfair?

~~~
nickthemagicman
Yep I had the same issue and thought when I got to finalkey. I hit a random
site after that and landed on another site where I couldn't find the link.

Got me thinking a browser extension could be useful for this type of thing.

Edit: there's iframes to solve this!

~~~
dusted
I _used_ to be a huge fan of stumble-upon, but at some point they added too
much algorithm to it, and something else behind the curtain went south and it
just started sucking.

Edit: StumBleUpon was a browser plugin (optionally, you could also use their
frameset version at least earlier on), that would try to learn your interests
based on previous sites you liked/disliked.

------
progre
Nice, I often find myself missing the weird web of my youth. I hope this takes
off. I think the ring needs a bit of curation though, of the few sites that
are on it now the finalkey one seem to be... not relevant? Or at least
unexpected. While cool and all this seems like a plain old sales site exept
the thing sold is not made anymore. The site itself also lacks the ring
widget.

~~~
Finnucane
The "weird old web" was that way in part because there wasn't much in the way
of curation. Occasionally encountering something unexpected was supposedly a
_good_ thing.

~~~
progre
I remember webrings fondly because they introduced a _minimal_ level of
curation. If I'm on the Basic STAMP webring I don't want Tintin fancomics.
That belongs on the Hergé webring.

~~~
redis_mlc
> Basic STAMP

lol.

~~~
redis_mlc
[https://www.parallax.com/catalog/microcontrollers/basic-
stam...](https://www.parallax.com/catalog/microcontrollers/basic-stamp)

------
ddevault
I did something similar here that you may be interested in:

[https://git.sr.ht/~sircmpwn/openring](https://git.sr.ht/~sircmpwn/openring)

------
dusted
Blown away by the positive reception and the many submissions! I thought it'd
be really fun not to give people the usual form where everything is laid out
for them to fill out. Lot's of kind words and interesting sites to surf! I
can't wait to have a closer look at them tomorrow! :)

I've added all outstanding submissions for now, and will come back tomorrow to
add more :)

Someone asked me if "todays date" was local or universal. It's a good
question, and it's actually "whatever the server runs" +/\- 24 hours :) so
yesterdays date and tomorrows date may also work depending on your location :)

~~~
osamagirl69
This is great! I just put in a submission and added your links to my homepage.

I will say, so far most of the sites I have tried with the random button are
missing the webring links. I seem to remember most of the rings I was involved
in in the past required that the ring links were present on the homepage in
order to be a member of the ring, maybe its worth adding that to this ring? Or
maybe rank sites lower in the random priority that don't link back?

For now I am using the iframe browser version

~~~
dusted
Yes, I did make it optional in order to lower the bar of entry, same with not
having to register a user account to submit a page. I will definitely do
something about it in the future, maybe if the ring approaches A THOUSAND
sites, I will probably make the random selector favour sites with the links, I
will also consider some way for ring visitors to browse only the pages that
link back.

------
tannhaeuser
I approve off your plan ;) Just this morning I tried to find a paper but
couldn't so I looked at my HN history. Wading through past years I noticed
there aren't many information resources on the web left that don't suck, and I
noticed that for some time now, whenever I wanted to look up something
CompSci-related, I don't even bother using general-purpose search engines
anymore (except maybe CiteSeer) but go straight to HN's Algolia search to
locate the story where a particular product or other topic is "treated".

------
schwartzworld
I love this. webrings were one of the best features of the pre-monetized
internet

------
Hitton
What happened to linking to blogs you like/read (also called blogroll) and
letting develop such ring (or rather network) organically? It's quite common
among law blogs i.e. Popehat, SCOTUSblog, ..., also among various science
blogs: Language Log, Observational Epidemiology, Critical Inference, ...

But for some reason it's rare among techies. It almost looks that because they
know about SEO, they are afraid of outside links so not to lower their own
search positions.

~~~
type0
Some blogs link to websites in citations with rel nofollow, but there's no
organic seo in it

<a href="[https://news.ycombinator.com/"](https://news.ycombinator.com/")
rel="nofollow">HN</a>

someone ought to reinvent el goog again

------
jolmg
I hit "Random" and got taken to
[https://finalkey.net/](https://finalkey.net/), but that site doesn't seem to
have the ring buttons.

~~~
gooseus
I found that one from the previous and the first thing I noticed was that it's
selling a product.

> Who can join?

> Everyone who has a website where making money is not the primary goal.

I think it's a pretty sweet geeky project that I might consider buying - but
selling the product definitely seems to be the primary goal.

~~~
dusted
I'm glad about the feedback, I don't intend to make or sell any more finalkeys
so I'll definitely redo the frontpage to reflect that, and remove the buy
option entirely :)

------
sixhobbits
It took me a while to find the actual "ring" functionality, so here's[0] a
direct link (there seem to be about 6 sites at the moment.)

[0] [http://geekring.net/site/0/frameset](http://geekring.net/site/0/frameset)

------
hahamrfunnyguy
Back in the 90's web rings seemed like infinite collections of crappy home
pages. Some people seem to feel differently, is it nostalgia or were there
some really good ones out there?

~~~
jedimastert
> infinite collections of crappy home pages.

I think that's the point. People miss home pages in general.

------
maps7
I'll join! What is the simplest place to host a simple webpage?

~~~
renewiltord
In general? Probably a static page on GitHub pages. Or S3 static site hosting.

~~~
maps7
Thanks - I went with Netlify though. I just set up
[http://www.programminglanguagenews.com](http://www.programminglanguagenews.com)
(no content yet though!)

~~~
renewiltord
Netlify is great. Good choice.

------
tdeck
I discovered the Homebrew CPU webring less than 10 years ago and was amazed to
find it's still full of great projects. Still going strong today, and many of
the links are on GitHub now.

[https://www.homebrewcpuring.org/](https://www.homebrewcpuring.org/)

------
haolez
Just occurred to me that a .ring TLD would be awesome for this :)

------
laingc
I _love, love, love_ this.

I was just talking to some younger colleagues, and they'd never even heard of
important pieces of computer / internet lore, such as blinkenlights or even
something as recent as bash.org.

I miss this part of the web, and am happy to see others putting effort into
keeping its spirit alive.

------
atlgator
The web was such a better place back then despite the dial-up.

------
kissgyorgy
This is really cool, and I have another idea; there could be a widget or
snippet of code or something, which would make recommendations for other blogs
at the end of blog posts.

This would solve the discoverability problem for indie blogs, which Medium has
an advantage.

------
ohples
web ring...thats a word I have not heard in a long time.

~~~
randomdata
I, for one, am looking forward to the triumphant return of the web counter.

~~~
steve_taylor
Let’s not forget the guest book.

~~~
spzb
And the "under construction" gif with yellow and black barriers and a guy
digging.

------
digitalsin
I love this!

Can we do this with gopher somehow? Gopher needs curation like this.

~~~
zzo38computer
Well, there are no redirects in gopher, although a similar thing can be done,
by having a link to the ring menu, and then doing the rest there. The ring
menu could be programmed to put two asterisks next to the active item, so that
you can easily see where is next one and previous one. Some item could denote
it as a ring menu, so that client software that supports it can display it in
an alternative way if the user has enabled that function.

------
nozepas
I miss seeing '.cgi' or '.pl' at the end of the http endpoints to give it that
authentic 90's look and feel :)

~~~
arasx
also the user directories. domain.com/~user/

------
bencollier49
This breaks on the 3rd site in the ring because people don't look as though
they're including the webring code on their page.

~~~
speps
> Not all sites link back to the ring, so if you don't want to hunt for the
> banner, use The good old-fashioned frameset version or The new-fangled
> iframe version

Already covered

~~~
bencollier49
Ah goodo.

------
hellcow
FYI - there's mixed HTTP/HTTPS content on this page. You can fix the security
warnings by loading images with https.

~~~
dusted
Good point, I should use relative links for the images, I definitely want to
keep the ring open for HTTP, I'm only of those crazies that still takes his
Windows 95 for a surf once in a while :D

------
caymanjim
Isn't the entire Internet a "webring for geeks"? Seriously; what sets this
apart from the rest of the net?

~~~
thih9
Discoverability, I suppose.

~~~
hinkley
At least one human has voted that this page is worth spending the time to do
the data entry task to get it to show up.

------
Chris2048
Hmm, I always wondered, why are webrings rings (w/ next) as opposed to
hub/index/portals of similar sites.

A curated index (vs the dynamic/generated search indexes of google) could be
better broken into (related) topics.

------
tmearnest
If I don’t see a dripping blood horizontal rule as I click through the ring
I’m going to be real disappointed.

~~~
dusted
Nobody got drippingbloodhorizontalrule.net yet?

------
afkqs
I have never heard of geekrings before, I love it! I can see that included in
my morning web routine. Bookmarked!

------
mjochim
Is it for English sites only? Do you think it make sense for a ring to be
multilingual?

------
jakearmitage
I wish directory websites made a come back. Like old Yahoo.

~~~
mgreg
Have you looked at [https://curlie.org/](https://curlie.org/) (successor to
DMOZ)?

What problem do you think directory websites solve that search doesn't?

------
geocrasher
My website is miscdotgeek.com. This is extremely relevant!

~~~
dusted
I'd love to include your site, but, because I want to give people a way to
remove their site from the ring again, please use the form or contact me on
IRC, so I can add your site and give you your secret that lets you view stats
and remove the site.

------
brodouevencode
Remember when `geek` was a derogatory term? I'm triggered by this word.

</troll>

~~~
Perenti
My first thought was "Why a webring for freakshow performers on HN?"

I guess I'm getting old.

------
fergie
I like it.

------
benbristow
You could start with some CSS

~~~
zzo38computer
It doesn't need CSS. CSS is something we can do without. I like it without the
CSS. Lets the settings by the user to take precedence instead, please.

