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BrightsOnline Webring Q&A
TEMPORARY NOTE: If anyone can succinctly and simply explain how LiveJournal users can add the navigation panel code snippet to their website (I think they can only do it with the HTML version of the snippet, and it might involve "overrides"?) please make contact@brightsonline.net and you will win a special prize. (That is a lie. There is no prize. But you will be given an honourable mention!)
1. What is a Webring?
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A webring is a virtual "circle" of websites centred around a "hub" site, which in this case is www.brightsOnline.net.
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Each member of a webring has a similar navigation panel on it, encouraging information to flow between member sites, and providing a way for surfers to circumnavigate the ring.
2. Who can join the BrightsOnline.net Webring?
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The Webring has a very liberal inclusion policy, but it generally brings together sites that meet one or both of the following criteria:
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Personal sites belonging to Brights (blogs, homepages etc) You could be exhibited creative work, sharing your views, ranting about politics, whatever (you don't have to be talking about Brights-related things all the time)
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Sites run by (or in large part by) Brights on topics of likely interest to Brights: for example sites about the Brights movement, or about naturalistic worldviews, or about secularism, sites associated with organizations of likely interest to Brights, or sites about topics of generic interest
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This webring may exclude:
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Sites which are primarily commercial and unrelated to the Brights Movement
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Sites which are primarily pornographic (there's plenty of other places to get that from!)
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Sites containing hateful propaganda. (The "hateful propaganda" clause will not be used to censor harsh criticism, politically incorrect views, or even personal attacks, etc. It may be used to exclude, for example, sites with overt and irrational racist content, or political propaganda that is both extreme and false, etc.)
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3. How do I
navigate a webring? You
can use the navigation panel on any member site. A copy of
BrightsOnline.net's panel is
below:
Simply click the relevant links to move through
the ring sites.
4. How do I join the BrightsOnline Webring?
It's really quite simple. Most of the text below is just clarification of the main numbered points in bold, so don't be put off! See if you can do it just using the main numbered points!
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Click "join" from any Webring navigation panel (like the one above). This will take you to RingsWorld.com
who host the ring software
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Enter the couple of requested details about your site
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Ensure that the page address you submit for inclusion is the page that you want the navigation panel to appear on. It will also be the page that ring-surfers visit first
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Once you've entered your details your site will be Pending.
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IMPORTANT: You will then be provided with two snippets of code. One is JavaScript, the other is HTML
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You don't normally need to know what this means, but the JavaScript snippet is shorter and will fetch the navigation panel directly from RingsWorld every time your site loads so you will always be up to date, whereas the HTML snippet is longer, but you can modify yourself if needs be. (The HTML snippet contains a bit of JavaScript on the end anyway which allows RingsWorld to count the number of impressions of the panel, but you can cut that off if you want to, or if you need to in order to get it into sites like LiveJournal.)
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Whether you use the JavaScript or HTML snippet, it is unique to your site. So if you lose the snippet before you paste it into your website you will need to get it back. Simply go to www.RingsWorld.com
, log in using
your email and password, and on the summary of your site information
click the "Navigation bar" button to access the snippet again.
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Paste the snippet into the code for your webpage and upload
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If you normally use a WYSIWYG editor like FrontPage to edit your website, you cannot just paste the code snippet onto the page because it will appear as text!
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Instead, simply open the file in a text editor like Notepad (right-click the icon and choose "Open with..."). Then paste the snippet into the chosen location, somewhere between the <body> and </body> tags (which identify the start and end of the page's real content). It may not appear in your WYSIWYG editor, but you can view the page in a browser to check it looks as intended.
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That's it! Once RingsWorld detects that the panel has been successfully included on your site then the ring membership will become Active.
