We Don’t Just Miss Webrings – We Fixed Them

We love webrings.Like, really love them.

But we’re not here to blindly romanticize the past. Because anyone who used a webring in the late ’90s or early 2000s knows the truth. They broke. A lot.

You’d click “next” and end up on a 404. Or worse, a spam page. Or worst of all… you’d get stuck in a loop of two sites just linking to each other, forever.

We know, because we were there.

So why bring them back?

Because the original idea still matters. Connecting websites based on shared interests.Building community without the algorithm.Helping people find good things they weren’t already looking for.

That part? That’s still gold.

But if we were going to do it, we had to do it right.

Webring Studio isn’t just a cute retro throwback. It’s a ground-up rebuild of the entire concept – minus the headaches.

Here’s what we fixed:

• Link rot? We quietly check every site, every day. Inactive sites are skipped, not removed.
• Abandoned rings? We give ringmasters dashboards, tools, and auto-maintenance features.
• Weird navigation? Every ring uses a consistent, embeddable widget with multiple design options.
• Spam sites? Ring creators can require approval and set clear joining rules.
• Missing standards? We made everything necessary open source – from the JSON format to the styling.

This isn’t nostalgia. It’s a second chance to do it better.

You can host it yourself. Or let us handle it for free.

Want to build your own DIY ring using our open tools? Go for it. We even provide a PHP bot you can run to help maintain your ring data.

Don’t want to mess with any of that? Use our hosted version. We take care of everything: uptime checks, invite links, ring loops, even a member directory.

And we do it for free. Because keeping the small web alive shouldn’t require a credit card.

What’s in it for us?

Honestly? We’re building the kind of web we want to use. But yeah, we’ll eventually offer optional paid features for power users. Stuff like custom ring URLs, extra design options, maybe even cute analytics.

But the core? Always free. Always open.

The short version?

We don’t just miss webrings. We made them better. Because discovery deserves to feel human again.

Learn more about what we are doing to fix the old webring problems.