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by antonvs 23 days ago
No, the original webrings from 1995 were literally rings - each site linked to one other site in the ring, and eventually one of them would link back to the “first” site, making an actual ring.
1 comments

Nope. There was no "first" site as you say - it was literally just a list of links.

The most innovative ones were iframes of a single source of links (iframes were all the rage, unless of course you clicked "no frames" as a user, because your internet was so slow).

But even the less formal ones simply listed links to other sites, there was no visit order, and definitely was not directional/circular.

It's "ring" like a boxing ring - as in "those within the ring" not a directional loop like you mention.

From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Webring :

> To be a part of the webring, each site has a common navigation bar; it contains links to the previous and next sites. By selecting next (or previous) repeatedly, the user will eventually reach the site they started at; this is the origin of the term "webring."

But, it was a fundamentally silly structure for the web, so many sites implemented something beyond the ring structure, which is what you're describing. Technically, those weren't webrings in the above sense.

> It's "ring" like a boxing ring

Nice retcon, but wrong.