rings

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	web rings
Yeah, I'm a confirmed blogger. How would I not love the chance to write anything I want for anyone who wants to read it? My blog, hosted by the fabulous TypePad and named for a favorite folk song as sung by Nanci Griffith, shows the rings to which I belong. This page is for the rings I started.	Pittsburgh Dogophiles Pittsburgh Knitophiles Dr. Phil's Weight Solution Pittsburgh Catophiles (planned) Pittsburgh Writers (planned)
What's a web ring?	A web ring is a way that related web sites (including web logs, or blogs, but really any kind of web site can connect people with similar interests. For instance, I love knitting. So let's say I go to my knitting friend's web log to see what she's up to one day. I know about her web site because she's a friend of a good friend of mine who introduced us, so I check it when I think of it. She does cool stuff. One day I notice, as I scroll down, that there are these little rectangular buttons down the right-hand side of her blog, under a heading called "webrings." Dixie sticks"? For other Virginia knitters like herself. Knitting Blogs, for other knitters in general. Virginia is for bloggers, for other Virginians whether they knit or not. And Grammar Avengers is for people who, well, care about grammar a whole lot. These are all interests of Maggi's, so they might be interests of people who stop to read her web log. (This particular example applies to web logs, but you might also think, for the Pittsburgh Dogophiles web ring, of the various shelter and rescue web sites in the region, of dog walker and sitter web sites, of Dirty Hairy's, of groomers, or of individual web logs like mine. So someone who reads my web log one day notices the Pittsburgh Dogophiles web ring link there might check it out and stumble upon Dirty Hairy's (if he joins). They didn't know such a service even existed, and wouldn't have thought to go looking for it on Google. Now they know about it and they explore his web site. Maybe they keep clicking the next or random ring links on other sites in the ring, and they learn about dog walkers through their sites--what great visibility for dog walkers, who have had to do nothing to promote their business, pay no money for advertising, just put a little link on their web pages. It doesn't cost any money, it doesn't promote me, it's not affiliated with my business--I promise there's no catch here. Anyway...back to our story. So I click the Knitting Blogs button to go to the web ring home page, or I could click the previous or next link to go to the previous or next site link in the ring. (Many rings, like Pittsburgh Dogophiles, also let the reader view random sites in the ring.) If I go to a random site, I find a site about knitting across which I might never have stumbled through Google or a banner ad or any other method. And that site didn't have to pay for membership to that ring. These are web rings in a nutshell. They are ways that people who are looking at one site and want to look for other sites about related topics can do so. So a web ring isn't paid advertising and it doesn't generate spam or e-mail. It's just a way of adding your site to a little web community—a subdivision, if you will. The more sites join, the more interesting (and therefore sticky) the ring becomes to the people who'd actually explore and use it.

Last updated 30 July 2004