For two years I was the ringmaster of the Tiny Rooms Ring, thirty-eight home pages about dollhouses and miniatures. We had a lady in Oregon who built a whole Victorian house to one-twelfth scale with working gaslights, a retired machinist who turned brass candlesticks the size of a grain of rice, and me, with my half-done Cape Cod and my tutorials on wallpapering with scrapbook paper. It was the best thing I ever did on the Internet.

In April I closed it. I'll tell you why on the second page, because it's the whole reason this site exists. But first, joining a ring, which is the easy part and the fun part, and which I still recommend to anybody with a home page that's about something.

What a ring is

A WebRing is a circle of home pages about the same thing. At the bottom of every page on the ring there's a little box with the ring's name and three links: one to the page before it in the circle, one to the page after it, and one to the ring's home page, which is usually called the hub. The hub lists every page on the ring. Keep clicking Next and you'll visit every one, and come back around to where you started.

 [ Page 1 ] --Next--> [ Page 2 ]
     ^                    |
   Next                 Next
     |                    v
 [ Page 4 ] <--Next-- [ Page 3 ]

Why join? Because people who like your subject find you. A search engine sends you strangers. A ring sends you people who were already looking at a page just like yours and wanted another. Half my best friends in the miniatures world found me by clicking Next.

How to join one, step by step

1. Find a ring that fits. Look at the bottom of pages you like. If you see a ring box, click through to its hub and look at who else is on it. If your page would feel at home there, you've found it.

2. Read the rules. All of them. Every ring has some. Most want pages that are finished enough to read, on the subject, and suitable for the whole family. Some don't take businesses. A lot of ringmasters say no to pages that are nothing but an "under construction" sign, and they're right to.

3. Get your page ready first. Fix your broken links and pictures. Make sure it loads in a reasonable time. The ringmaster is going to visit, and you only get to make a first impression once.

4. Write to the ringmaster. Give your name the way you'd like it listed, the title of your page, its exact address, and one line about what's on it. That line usually goes right onto the hub, so make it a good one. Tell them which page the ring box will go on.

5. Put the box on your page exactly as they send it. The ringmaster will tell you who your neighbors are and give you the box to copy. Don't change the links, and don't leave any of them out. If your page has two pages, the box goes on the one that's listed on the hub, usually your front page.

6. Be patient. Ringmasters are volunteers with jobs and families and, in my case, a dollhouse with no roof on it. A week is normal.

What a ring box looks like inside

Here is the box from the Tiny Rooms Ring, the way I used to send it out. Every ring's box is a little different, but they all have the same parts. The words in capitals are where the ringmaster fills in your neighbors' addresses.

Once you're on

• Keep the box on your page. If it comes off, anybody going round the ring hits a dead end at your house. It's the one thing you promised.
• Tell the ringmaster if you move. New address, new page name, new server: write them before you delete the old one, not after.
• When they send you new neighbors, change your box that week. Rings change as people join and leave, and the ringmaster can't touch your page. Only you can.
• Visit your neighbors and sign their guestbooks. That's the whole point.
• If you leave, say so. A two-line e-mail. It saves somebody an evening.

Rings here on GeoCities.us

These rings have their hubs right here in the neighborhoods, and each one explains how to join on its hub page. Read their rules before you write. I've been round every one of them and they're all well kept, which after my own experience I notice.

• Front Porch: friendly, family-style personal home pages.
• Backroads: road trips, the outdoors, cars and the places in between.
• Kitchen Table: cooking, gardening, crafts and making a home.
• Stage Door: music lovers, theater people and artists of every kind.
• Hobby Horse: people who collect, build, restore or play something for the love of it. (If I ever get the Cape Cod finished, I'm writing to Walt.)
• Time Capsule: local history, family history, collections and the way things used to be.
• Glass House Journals: online journals kept by grown-ups about their real lives.

Now, if you're thinking of starting a ring of your own, please read Part Two first. I wish somebody had made me.

visitors since 1997. This used to be the Tiny Rooms hub, and I kept the counter.

Jeanne Parkins · outside Grand Rapids, Michigan
[email protected]
Last updated Tuesday, September 21, 1999
© 1999 Jeanne Parkins