The Freedom Campaign is trying to expand a Webring it runs.
This is the information page for wishing to or that have
been invited to join. Please note membership information is now hopelessly
out of date and due to be revised in mid-2005AD.
The Small Crusaders Webring covers/brings together small
protest groups and civil liberties campaigns that are
(in the UK particularly) so hard to find. The Webring is run
by, but is not part of, the Freedom Campaign.
If you feel joining the Webring would not be
appropriate for you, would you consider linking
to The Freedom Campaign (“Ringmaster”’s site)
with a Button?
Contents
The Small Crusaders Webring
Contents
Example of the Navbar
How do I Join?
Scope of This Webring
Who else is in the Ring?
Who Runs this?
And where are they Geographically?
What Is A Webring?
What Are the Advantages of Joining
a Webring?
And the Disadvantages?
This a copy of the one on The Freedom Campaign’s main page, and
behaves as if it was operating from there: Cf. the diagram below.
How do I Join?
To become a member of this Ring, first read the rest of this page.
Then
Join
Here and follow the instructions.
There is online help, and
more in depth help (including Quick
Reference Steps) if you need it after you have read that.
For support, contact the
Ringmaster (of this Ring only) (Removing the NOSPAM bit first).
Tel. +44 (0)7811 550086 (Mobile/Cellphone), if you must.
Please note that joining is not an automatic process, requires
approval, and the insertion of a small chunk of code in your main page.
Scope of This Webring
I have to include a range of interests wider than the
campaign site I run, but not too wide, to avoid diluting
the information users will be searching for, and it can be
a complex decision.
The aim is to invite/accept sites from small local protest
groups, miscarriage of justice/prisoner support groups,
some anti-corrupt-police (and pro-police sites for
balance), and some anti-discriminatory sites. There are
not many British Civil Liberties groups, and I cannot let
the Webring be swamped by the multitude of American Civil
Rights groups that exist with no international interest.
The Webring is run by, but is not part of, the Freedom Campaign.
Who else is in the Ring?
There were originally three sites linked in, including
The Max Hirshfeld Center for Human Rights.
Fifteen invitation emails are “lost in cyberspace”. This is
probably my fault for sending them from hotmail.com, the largest repository
of junkmail in the known universe. Rewritten invitations are/will be in the
post to them soon.
A comprehensive list of current members is on a
separate page, and an automatic list is, of course, on the Webring Hubpage
itself.
When the webring started, there was a a month of technical problems, now
traced (-and fixed!) to a small non-serious bug in some javascript on one
site. Invitations are staggered into groups of five at a time, to avoid
excessive complexity.
You can view the
Ring Hub.
You can
Join here.
Who Runs this?
The Small Crusaders Webring currently uses the webring provider
Webring.org .
They have online help and info.
The Small Crusaders Webring is run by The Freedom Campaign
(small Civil Liberties Campaign Group), which is
one of the two founder members, the other one being the long-suffering
(of bugs, now fixed) westview.com
(Lone Wolf local Protester).
And where are they Geographically?
The Freedom Campaign is in Chippenham, Wiltshire, England, and covers
much of the surrounding region.
westview.com lives in Westview, Pittsburgh, USA.
Webring.org are in Oregan, USA.
All Webrings themselves have by definition only an online existence, with
no physical presence, although the groups or individuals they represent may
well do. These locations vary too contantly to be researched or included
onto this page.
What Is A Webring?
The structure of a Webring: The Hub links to all
sites. Member sites, five shown here (a-e), but no upper limit.
The “ghost” of the Navbar shown on this page is
represented in grey above: It functions identically to the Navbar on The
Freedom Campaign’s (Ringmaster's site) main page.
An automatic linking machine. A simple link is from one [web]site to
another. A crosslink is where they link to each other. A webring has
a Navbar on each site in the Ring, and a
Ring Hub
listing all sites,
their descriptions, and a description of the Ring itself.
Links on each Navbar point to the next and previous sites in the Ring
(hence the name), a random site, and the ring hub. There is also a
link for sites wishing to join.
The Navbar and Ring Hub links all update automatically when a site
joins or leaves the Ring.
The Small Crusaders Webring currently uses the services provided by
Webring.org to host the ring, but has in the past used Freeserver’s
solution, and has considered independent hosting using custom-written
javascript.
The advantages of using a separate site to the Ringmaster’s site to
host the Ring is that if the Ringmaster’s site goes offline the Ring
will not be affected, and control of the Ring can be passed to or
shared with other sites if the Ringmaster wishes to leave the Ring.
The advantages of using Webring.org as a Ring provider are the Yahoo-style
Search Directory or other rings, and the slightly missing-the-point feature
of enabling sites to join more than one ring.
The traditional idea of a Webring is of there being only one of
them on a site, and the Ring being well-run and reputable.
Webring.org also provides this description:
On WebRing, similar sites are grouped together in Rings and linked to each
other by a simple navigation bar. Rings are created and maintained by the
RingMaster, who determines the look and feel of the Ring, approves sites
submitted to the Ring, and encourages others to join.
What Are the Advantages of Joining a Webring?
They show prestige (they look very impressive to a visitor),
they generate a lot of traffic. If a Webring contains ten members and
only two of them are listed on search engines, all of them will
receive visitors from the search engines (and possibly the search
engine will spider (index) the other sites from the links in the Webring).
Please note that Webrings have no effect on your PageRanking in the
search engines, because mutal links cancel-out. Please also note that it is
not desirable for your PageRanking to be affected in this way, anyway.
Webrings add to the range of information retrieval independently of the
search engines, not by piggy-backing off them.
If a visitor to one of the sites can’t find similar sites through
the search engines, they will through the Webring.
It is maintenance-free.
All problems are handled by the Ringmaster, including those generated
by the Ring Host (Grrrr).
And the Disadvantages?
The initial joining process can be complex-looking, but you only have
to go through it once and it is not as complex as publishing a site
on the internet in the first place.
Using an external Webring provider means the Webring is slave to
changes by them, like the odd text that suddenly appeared above some
Navbars. This seems to be a bug, and they are snowed under with
complaints about this (one of them from us!). Fixed!
Fixed! It is not in the Webring provider’s interests to be too
controversial, and, if they are, the Webring (with much difficulty for the
Ringmaster) will be switched to another provider, or run independently by
the Ringmaster.
Terminology & Misc
Webrings are nothing to do with:
Money-laundering rings (criminal slang for a gang).
The Lord of the Rings (literiature).
Jewellery &c (the shortened term ‘ring’ is also short
for other terms).
Bookclubs that siphon cash off you (Webrings are not clubs, most
including this one are non-profit.)
Individuals cannot join a webring. Only websites can.
