THE  BLACKSMITH'S  RING This web ring is dedicated to the art of blacksmithing, the works, the smiths and those who supply and educate them. Previously abandoned, adopted and rebuilt, the ring now is on a NEW hosting service Rings @ anvilfire.com Yes! We now have a NEW home and are now accepting new members. As of September 20, 2000 we are hosting our rings using Gunnar Hjalmarsson's Ringlink. This move was forced by major changes in the Webring system that in our opinion were not in the spirit of the Internet. Ringlink is easy to use and has the flexibility of the original webring system. What is a web ring? A web ring is a group of sites with common interest or about a common subject on the World Wide Web that are linked together via their "ring navigation code" and identifying logo. Web rings are a form of web community. Sites on the ring are neighbors that have joined together to help make the visitor's exploration of their community more enjoyable. Web rings can be "navigated" from beginning to end, hopping from site to site using the next, prev or random buttons on the navigation bar. They can also be explored from the list of sites on the ring host. Web rings generate traffic to the member sites by making it easy and convienient for visitors to find them on the web. Generaly large popular sites feed trafic to the smaller sites but the larger sites benefit by becoming "portals" for getting on the ring. Everyone benefits. Joining the blacksmiths ring not only brings traffic to your site but also shows your support for the rest of the internet blacksmithing community. Being a member is good public relations and makes you part of a unique community. There is only ONE Blacksmiths Ring! Changes from the old system include new ring code block, a new ring server (host) and new mangement software. We previously maintained the OLD Blacksmiths Ring on Yahoo as a gateway but now that the new webring.org has taken over we have let it die a quite death. NOTICE! We no longer accept sites with pop-up advertising windows. Server Side Navigation Bar is the biggest change that you will notice. Your new new ring code will consist of two short lines of code. It will load the actual "code fragment" and graphics from our ring server. In the likely event that changes are made in the future they will automaticaly show on your page without your editing the code. This makes it much simpler for you to intstall and maintain. Advertising space can now be offered on the ring's list pages at reasonable rates. New code for all members of the ring is now available on your ring management page. We will setup a page with simple instructions to help you through editing or reinstallation of your webring code fragment and retrieving your password if you have lost it (see RULES). PLEASE JOIN! Blacksmith's Webring Ringmaster HISTORY OF THE BLACKSMITHS RING: This ring was established by Carol A. Casey, a student of library science on December 27, 1998 and had its first site on January 9th 1999. In December 1999 the original ring home was removed from its server and the ring was abandonded after a period without maintenance. In December we were asked by a ring member to look into the reason his ring graphic was missing. We found that the original ring home's server was no longer "live". Later when it came back on line it no longer had the smithring folder. Letters were written about the problem to no avail. On January 29, 2000 we applied to the adopt-a-ring program to take over the ring. Then in February we found that we could add sites to the ring. We started the task as "Ersatz" Ringmaster of checking and admiting sites to the ring. There were 45 sites in the ring and 47 waiting in the queue! Many had been in the queue for as long as five months! We immediately added 10 sites. Others had not installed their code or no longer existed. In mid March we were given the ring after much negotiation with a Webring administrator. On March 29, 2000 we established this page. There were 40 working sites. On September 5th (Black Tuesday) Yahoo.inc replaced the old Webring.org system with one based on their business model that gave them control of the rings. The new system requires Ringmasters and site members to register for a "yahoo ID". It also took away the Ringmaster's access to the databases WE had created. We were locked out. (After several years of disasterious management Yahoo sold the webring system back to a NEW webring.org). September 20 after several weeks of research and communication with other Ringmasters we decided to join the thousands that were moving to other systems. We decided to setup our own ring hosting system using Ringlink software so that we would never be in the position of being "locked out" again. September 25, 2000 we reopened The Blacksmiths Ring to new member applications and informed the members of the change. A year later the Blacksmiths ring has double the membership of a year ago with over 90 member sites. Today (February 2003) the Blacksmith's Ring has 120 member sites and is one of the best managed web rings on the internet. The Blacksmith's Ring, Ringmaster    - anvilfire guru YOUR NEW VER.3.0 RING CODE WILL LOOK LIKE THIS.... OLD Ver 2.0 Webring [ Previous | Next | Next 5 Sites | List Sites ] Do more welding than forging? Here's another Webring [ Home | JOIN! | Rules | Edit | Friends | List Sites | anvilfire!  ]

February 2003 -