Introduction
You may be surfing a web site that is part of a webring, or visiting a list of webrings and decided you would like to join one. This page was written to give general advice about how to set about doing that.
How Webrings Work
A webring basically consists of two parts. The first part belongs to the webring owner and consists of a list of all the sites in the webring. The second part is a piece of code that goes on each site of the webring that accesses the list of sites and gets the previous, next or a random site from the list.
That really is all a webring does.
How to Join a Webring
The webring owner has a webring home page. This page or pages will explain what the webring is for, what sort of content is acceptible or not, the code you need to add to your page - or where to get it, how to contact the webring owner, and so on.
The actual rules of the webrings are different for each, but in general, you add the code to your pages, inform the webring owner you want to join, they'll then add your site to their central list of sites and your website is then part of the ring.
Some webring owners do things slightly differently. You contact them first, they'll look over your site's content and then they'll send you the code.
In 2025/6, Garlic Garden's Onionring powers about a third of all webrings, Webring.ng about 10%, and PetraPixel's Webringu, Webcatz' Webstring, and Max Böck's Webring Template power around 3% each.
Webrings Are Flexible
As a system, there are no set webring rules, only the ones the webring owner sets. Most are fairly flexible but as with any collaboration, the important thing is communication.
Where to place the webring code
An important part of webrings, is the "ring" part. Someone may visit your site, have a look around and then decide to visit the next site in the ring. This means the webring code should be easy to get back to.
What I do for the rings I belong to, is put them all on one page. The page is linked to on every page of the site, it is also in the sitemap. The page contains a list of sections and pages visitors may be more interested in than others.
Editing the webring code
Some webring owners provide different designs and icons for the code you place on your site. Some don't mind if your design the look of the webring code at all.
What I do is use the webring code as it is provided or at least keep it as close as I can to it while fitting it in with the rest of the page. The reason for this is that I want visitors to easily find the webring they came to the site with and want them to be able to recognise it and visit other sites in the ring.
Webrings Are Delicate
For all the work that goes into creating and maintaining a webring, they are delicate. To work properly every site in the ring must be available and have the code for it. A missing site or code will break it.
If your site goes down for any length of time, you decide you no longer want to be a member of it, remove the code during a site redesign or something please let the ring owner know. They can remove your site from the list of sites in it, at least temporarily.