9/28/2000 - New News - The Web Ring is moving & narrowing it's scope!

I just wanted to write a quick note to inform you of what's going on with the A Cappella Web Ring.

In early September, 2000, Yahoo! took over the web ring system. They didn't just take it over in name, but they completely re-designed it. I have a list of some of the relevant changes at the end of this message. The main jist of it is that they dumbed down the system to make it similar to their Clubs system. It's easier for people who know nothing about web site design to build and maintain their own ring, but they have taken away a lot of the features that made the web ring as nice as it was.

Many of the changes are completely unacceptable, in my own opinion, and that of several other ring masters that I have been in communication with. Yahoo has said that they are addressing many of our issues, as well as several technical problems that occurred when they took over the web ring system.

Currently we are on hold. I am waiting to see what kind of changes Yahoo makes in response to our complaints, but I am also investigating other web ring systems.

Either way, I am afraid, everyone will have to make changes to their code to stay in the A Cappella Web ring. Either changes to stay with Yahoo, or changes to move to the new system.

There are a couple problems with migrating to a new system. If we migrate to another ring hosting system like what we had, there is no guarantee that this won't happen again. Another alternative is for me host the webring on my own system, but that would take a lot of work for me to set up, which I am not sure I want to do. If we migrate to a new system everyone would have to re-submit their sites to the new system.

Staying with Yahoo would be the easiest, but only if we are willing to live with their changes.

As soon as I know what is going on, I will let you all know. In the mean time, I will not be adding any new sites.

I apologize for the inconvenience.

Loren Finkelstein
The A Cappella Web Ring
Webmaster@LRF.NET

Here are some of the changes Yahoo has implemented.

1. All new sites must have a Yahoo ID associated with their site.
2. The web ring links are now encoded in a Java Script Applet, instead of our customized html.
3. While your sites with the older html code work now, eventually they won't, unless you associate them with a Yahoo ID and put up the new Java Script Applet.
4. There is no link to the A Cappella Web Ring Home page anywhere in the links.
5. Once a site is submitted it must be approved by the ringmaster first. Then the code for the links is sent to the new site.
   (This means that sites get added to the ring whether they have the code or not)
6. Sites get removed automatically if they don't have the Java Script Applet on them.
7. My ability to manage the ring is almost completely gone. I can't edit sites, or even search for problem sites.

Here are some of the reasons I find some of these changes to be unacceptable

All sites will eventually have to be associated with a Yahoo ID. This seems to be an added nuisance for people who don't have or don't want Yahoo Ids.

Now all sites must get added to the ring BEFORE they can get the required code. If they don't put up the code they will eventually be automatically removed, but I prefer making sites add the required code before putting them in the ring.

The new webring code is a Java Script applet generated by Yahoo. You can see what it looks like at the bottom of this page. Here are some of the problems related to that.

1. It is not customizable, except for the color.
2. The graphic can only be 50x50 pixels. very small.
3. No link to the A Cappella Web Ring Home page.
4. No way to contact the Ring Master
5. Many sites refuse to incorporate JavaScript, for one reason or another.
6. People with older computers, or WebTV can't access JavaScript at all.

The management of the web ring has been made fairly automatic, but that means I have no control. If you tell me "I was at xxx's site and clicked on next and it got me a 404 error" I now have no way to look up xxx's site number, or what comes next.

The Yahoo A Cappella Web Ring hub (it's supposed new home page) only has room for me to put up 500 characters. That's not enough space to describe the ring and list it's requirements. It also doesn't support a link to another web ring home page that would have such a description.

I can't edit any sites (if a site moves) and there is no way for me to see a site's e-mail address. The only way I can contact someone is if I either e-mail everyone in the ring, or go surfing through the site for an e-mail address. Which is no good if I need to reach several sites.

Here the old/current webring code

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This site is a member of the A Cappella Web Ring.
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And here is the new Yahoo javascript code

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