"Help Answers" compiled from Ringmasters-l mail list

Web Ring Help

WEBRING.ORG (HOW TO) SUB-TOPICS FOR WEBRING.ORG HOW TO USE WEBRING'S NEW SYSTEM ARTICLE ON WEBRING.0RG BOOKMARK THE MGMT. PAGE DISABLE URL CHECK E-MAIL NOTIFICATION LOGO GRAPHICS FOR WEBRING.ORG MOST POPULAR RINGS MOVE SITE FROM RING TO QUEUE NEWSGROUPS FOR WEBRING.ORG RING NUMBERS WHEN ADDING SITES SITE ID NUMBERS SUPPORT FORM BY WEBRING.ORG URL NOT REGISTERING WITH WEBRING.ORG WEBRINGS FOR RINGMASTERS WHAT DOES "SCORE" MEAN? HOW DO I GET MY RING LISTED IN RINGWORLD? WHY SHOULD I USE WEBRING'S CGI TO LIST RING PAGE? ARTICLE ON WEBRING.ORG There is an excellent article about the changes we've been experiencing with Webring.org. This article gives a lot of insight into what happened and why. E-MAIL NOTIFICATIONS FROM WEBRING.ORG Why aren't we getting e-mail notifications when someone is added to the queue? The machine that generated all the auto emails for queue and ring additions was having major email problems. During the repair period, most of the e-mail notification was disabled. It has now been repaired with modifications to the procedures. The email notifications have been re-instated, but with a slight change. Instead of receiving the add_notify and insert_notify forms, RingMasters will receive CC's of the add_mail and insert_mail forms that the Site Member receives. The forms are very similar and shouldn't pose much of a problem to RingMasters. This should help reduce the number of unique messages that the system generates, keeping the mail queue from getting out of hand. This should also help system performance by reducing the number of times we have to invoke the mail sending program. We'll let the list know if/when we have to take the mail down again. --Dave (Webring.Org Development) I've just started up a new webring, and I've figured most of it out, but when i test it out ti's sending 2 email notifications? Anyone know what that's all about? Yup, the email notification system was finally fixed a few days ago. Now instead of sending a separate email to the site owner and the ringmaster it sends an email to the owner and a copy to you (ringmaster). So from now on you'll be getting a copy of the notifications sent out to the site owner instead of the notification that used to be sent out to you. If you're testing this, you're just getting both copies. Hope this clears things up :) -- Dan Brizuela URL's NOT BEING REGISTERED WITH WEBRING.ORG When a prospective member signs up, their URL doesnt get registered with Webring.org. Why Not? I checked your submit form and you have "URL" as the name of your URL input box. Not such a crazy thing, really, except the system is only setup to accept lowercase names. The name for the box should be "url". Because the system only looks for the paramater named "url" it assumed there was NO URL passed with the form. You'll notice you always get a "This URL appears to be invalid...accept anyway?" page, that's why. Since this problem seems to happen often, I have coded the webring cgi to deal with uppercase parameters (ie. Convert them to lowercase internally). You should not have that problem after today. Also, this behavior can explain some of the "already in queue" errors ppl are reporting. An empty URL in the queue will match an empty URL in the AddForm and you'll get the "already in queue" error. -- Dave (Webring.Org Development) WEBRING SITE ID NUMBERS Why does Webring.org say to prospective members that their URL is invalid. This happened to my site as well. It may happen to other sites wishing to join the ring. This could turn a person off joining your ring. In WRM (Webring Management) go to ring configartion and click the box next to Ignore URL Check then click save. That might help. -- Peter Davidoff Bookmarking the Management Page On the webring management login page, there is a notation that we can bookmark this page to bypass having to enter our password to login. Every time I try to create a bookmark, the bookmark creates successfully, but when I try using it, I get an error message of *incorrect password* and have to login manually (same password that is presumably incorrect). Anyone else encounter this problem? I have encontered this problem. Your password is not wrong. Your last session has timed out. This is normal. You have bookmarked http://www.webring.org/cgi-bin/wrman?sid=5345676566some number and you must bookmark this url http://www.webring.org/cgi-bin/wrman?ring=your ring name;pw=your password;man -- Peter Davidoff Webring.Org Support Form Thank you for contacting WebRing Support Services, our special assistance offered free of charge to members. In order to serve you in the best and fastest way possible, we've provided a short Support Form located at http://www.webring.org/help/supportform.html. If you are experiencing problems with your Ring or the WebRing system, please submit your questions through the Support Form. Other help is available at WebRing FAQs http://www.webring.org/help/ -- Angelea Kelly (Director of Support Services) Logo Graphics in Webring.org How do I put my logo graphic into Webring.org so that it appears when certain pages are accessed? Just as Webring.org wants the image dimensions, good web site design also dictates that all graphics used on the internet have the height and width attributes in the Ergo, all gifs and Jpgs should have their dimensions included in the code so that web page loads faster. There are many graphic readers which will give you these dimensions, and ALL graphic design programs such as Photoshop and Paint Shop Pro will tell you the dimensions of any graphic you load into it. All graphic dimensions are (always) in pixels, as a pixel is the measurement of your monitor screen, which most browsers recognise. Since my images, including my webring logo, are kept in an "images" subdirectory, of my URL, to display my webring logo, you would write the code as <IMG SRC="images/lakewr.gif" height=42 width=268 border=0 ALT="Webring logo for America's Lakes"> The above means the graphic is 42 pixels high and 268 pixels wide, with no border. It will then display on most any monitor as 42 pixels high x 268 pixels wide. What Webring.org wants, to be able to display your graphic, is the complete URL to the graphic, which in my case would be: http://www.Jackson-lake.com/images/lakewr.gif. Give the height to them of 268 (in my case) and the width of 42. Then, anytime Webring.org is called upon to provide the "next 5" or whatever, it can display your personal webring graphic, rather than the generic one used by Webring.org for its own purposes. -- Morgan Smith What "Ring Number" do I enter when adding a member My question is, when you add a queue member to the ring, it tells you to enter a number and your password. Do I enter "my" ring number? The number they want is to "position" the new member within the webring. Let's say that the new member is Site ID# 79. When Webring.org asks you for a number, you can put, for example, # 78. Now the new member (#79) will follow the old member (#78) when the "next" button is selected. Or you decide, for whatever reason, that you want the new member to be in the fifth position in your webring. So you put #4 in the blank. Now new member(#79) is going to show up after old member (#4), when the "next" button is selected on your webring code (assuming, of course, the pushee is at #4). The Password they want is your ringmaster password. When you created your ring, you chose a password as Ringmaster. Therefore, as Ringmaster, only you are permitted to control who does what in your ring, and the way that Webring.org knows that the Ringmaster is doing the changes is by the password you got when you created the ring. Ring"member's" passwords will NOT work here. -- Morgan Smith How do you add a new member to the "top of the ring". When you go to Webring.org mgmt and get ready to move a site from the queue to the ring, it asks for a number to place the person in the ring. There is a statement that if you don't provide the number, the person will be added to the "top of the ring." Apparently it is automatic. Also in Webring mgmt is an option to have Webring.org scramble the sites on a timely basis. There is also a warning that if you select that option, you can NEVER automatically return to the chronological sort. -- Morgan Smith Most Popular Rings Where can you find a listing of Webring.org's Most Popular rings? Go to your webring management page. Click on "Ring Stats" Let the page load in fully and scroll to the bottom of the page. Click on "Webring Stats" Let the page load in fully and scroll to the bottom. Click on "Top 100 Rings" You are there. -- Lynn Crawford I can't remember who (I think I erased that message), but someone was asking how to find the overall top-rated webrings, well here it is: http://www.webring.org/cgi-bin/wrstats?toprings -- Sherry SCORE What does the word "Score" mean when I search Webring.org's Ringworld? The 'score' (as frequently used in search engines) is how close a match Webring's search thinks it made between what you searched for and the results. If your site is at the top of the list, then you're fine. -- jobey Disable URL Check Is there a way to disable the URL check when someone is submitting their site? Yes, you can disable the URL check on the ring configuration page of Webring Management. -- Mark C. Farrington FROM RING TO QUEUE Why would you move a site out of the ring and back into the queue? Because they changed the acceptable code. Because they changed the logo/graphics Because they moved the ring logo to an unacceptable location on another page Because they moved your ring to a "ring page" Because they changed their site to something different from when they were added to your ring. Because they no longer have the ring logo anywhere/under construction? Because they cause trouble for other ring members Because they have frames and won't add TARGET="_top" Because they are a "ring junkie" and yours is buried among 24 others. I'm sure there are other reasons. -- Morgan Because that site's server is temporarily down. Rather than break the ring at that point, you move that site out of it. Rather than make them re-enter their data all over again, you move them to the queue. -- ANITRA Is there any way to move a site to the queue except from the testing page? Under the "Manage Ring Sites" page, if you 'Edit' the site you want to move, you will find an option at the bottom of the page to place the site back into the queue. -- Dave (Webring.Org Development Webring Logos displayed by Webring.org How do I get my webring logo to display when someone selects "List Sites" or "Next Five"? Just as Webring.org wants the image dimensions, good web site design also dictates that all graphics used on the internet have the height and width attributes in the There are many graphic readers which will give you these dimensions, and ALL graphic design programs such as Photoshop and Paint Shop Pro will tell you the dimensions of any graphic you load into it. All graphic dimensions are (always) in pixels, as a pixel is the measurement of your monitor screen, which most browsers recognise. Since my images, including my webring logo, are kept in an "images" subdirectory, of my URL, to display my webring logo, you would write the code as <IMG SRC="images/lakewr.gif" height=42 width=268 border=0 ALT="Webring logo for America's Lakes"> The above means the graphic is 42 pixels high and 268 pixels wide, with no border. It will then display on most any monitor as 42 pixels high x 268 pixels wide. What Webring.org wants, to be able to display your graphic, is the complete URL to the graphic, which in my case would be: http://www.Jackson-lake.com/images/lakewr.gif give the height to them of 268 (in my case) and the width of 42. Then, anytime Webring.org is called upon to provide the "next 5" or whatever, it can display your personal webring graphic, rather than the generic one used by Webring.org for its own purposes. -- Morgan Smith Listing in Ringworld How do I get a listing in index/Ringworld? Log into Webring Mgmt with your ring name and password click on "Change listing in Ringworld". click "yes" you want it listed. scroll down to the categories of the listing. put a black dot (click) in only ONE selection, in your case, find "Computers" and down from that "Programming". Put the black dot in front of Programming. scroll down to and click on "Save Changes" That should do it. They say it takes 24 hours, maybe more. -- Morgan Smith Linking your Ring Page from Webrings CGI BIN I don't see the advantage of linking to webring.org/cgi-bin/ as opposed to a direct link to the home page...is there something I'm missing? Yup, there just might be. I can tell you from experience that I'm glad my ring sites all used the through the cgi link. When I first set up my ring I had the ring home page as a document in my ISP directory named (imaginatively) "ringhome.htm." So the URL was http://www/midwest.net/scribers/billw/ringhome.htm. Then my ISP changed the directory structure for user directories to "http://scribers.midwest.net/billw/" so the URL for the home page changed. If I had been using the other method I would have had to mail all the ring members (about 125 at the time), urge them to change the code on their pages, then verify that the code had been changed, then hound the laggards, etc. etc. Then a couple of months later I discovered that with the new FTP type transfers that my ISP started allowing I could make subdirectories off my main directory (I used to not be able to do that). So I decided to make a new directory for the home page so now the URL is "http://scribers.midwest.net/billw/dharmaring/" - the document being called "index.htm" of course. By then I was up around 150 sites, if I was using the non-cgi method I would have had to go through the above described bull**** again. Now, in the present day, I am looking into virtual hosting and getting a unique domain name for my ring. If that happens, of course, the URL will change a third time in a little over a year. With now 175 sites and climbing I would never want to have to use the non-cgi method. With the cgi method, I just have to make one change and I'm all done. And just think about people who use geocities or some other service; they might decide to or be forced to move. Some people change ISP's, graduate from college and lose access to certain domains, etc. etc. etc. For all these reasons I would always advise using the WebRing cgi server to serve up a ring's home page. -- Bill Wilson I've lost my Ringmaster's password. What do I do? You can go to this link below to get your ringowner password webring.org/cgi-bin/wrman?mailpw emailed to you. -- L Mckinney In Ringworld, why are some listings in bold type and the rest in regular type - and what about the color listings The bold text is added to your listing automatically when you get 20 sites in your ring. As far as I can tell, the ones with colors in the name are done just as you would do colors for any other text, with a "font color=" tag. -- Pat McInery How do I set up my E-mail address at Webring.org You need to have it set up like - ringmaster-yourwebringid@webring.org. I tried mine and it works ok. Try sending a test email using that email address and it should go to your email mail box. -- L. McKinney Hint: My Ringname is "America's Lakes" but the RingID is "Lakes50". Use the RingID in the address - mine would be ringmaster-lakes50@webring.org -- Morgan Smith WEB RINGS FOR RINGMASTERS Is There a web ring for Ringmasters? There are several. Try one of these: Ring Managers -- a webring for Ringmasters Ring Masters -- Another webring for Ringmasters A Ring for Ring Mistresses -- females only Ringmasters -- Morgan Smith WEBRING NEWSGROUP I found these Newsgroups on news.webring.org: webring.misc webring.news webring.ringmasters webring.ringmasters.customization webring.ringmasters.help webring.ringmasters.newring webring.suggestions -- Steven Kraus a.k.a. NeuroCrash I missed the original post, but if the original poster is using Netscape, clicking on the following link will open the Netscape newsreader and load one of the newsgroups. Adding other newsgroups is easy. news://news.webring.org Cya there. :-) -- Robin Kelly Hi. I couldn't get to this link. I'm using Netscape Communicator. When I clicked here, I got the hourglass mouse pointer, then the bar at the bottom said "document:done," but it hadn't gone anywhere. Make sure Communicator is set up to use that news server. Actually, how you do it is quite easy. Hit the button that looks like two cartoon thought bubbles (bottom right of your screen). This will bring up your "Netscape Message Center" box look at the top, click on "File", and "New Discussion Group Server" In the new box, type news.webring.org Click "OK" Notes from Morgan: an alternative would be to click on "Communicator" at the top of the screen, then "Message Center". When you get the box, do the above to add the "news.webring.org". When completed, the Newsgroup should be listed at the bottom of your "Message Center" Now you have to subscribe to any of, or all of, the seven Newsgroups. To do this, While still in "Message Center", highlite the "news.webring.org" by clicking on it. Then click on "File", then on "Subscribe to Discussion Groups". You will get another box, with the tab "All discussion groups". Click on all the little boxes with + signs inside to show all the groups. This will show you how many messages are in each group. Click on any group you are interested in, to highlite it. Then to the right of the box, click on "Subscribe". When you are finished, go to the bottom of the box and click on "OK". Now that you have subscribed you can read any of the newsgroups by double-clicking on it in the "Message Center". going to your Netscape Mail Probram. At the top, where it says "Inbox", click on the down arrow, scroll down and select (click on) the newsgroup you are interested in reading. in your normal Netscape window, go to the top and type in the URL of the newsgroup you want to access. For ex.: news://news.webring.org/webring.ringmasters End Morgan's notes. Original answer by -- John Meyer Netscape's newsreader can carry any newsgroup, even if your ISP doesn't carry it. See above. I use and it works just fine. Hope this helps all of you. -- Andrew Ferguson Has anyone elses queue been falling victom to fake sites being put into it, or sites that have nothing to do with the rings topic being put into it? It's happened to me. I solved the problem by implementing a Javascript that checks the URL input'd because I only allow addresses from http://www.geocities.com/SiliconValley/. It took care of the fake addresses. -- Rodent WEBRING HELP INQUIRY FORM WebRing Support Services has published a new support form to help handle the mass amounts of emails that are coming into the system. The form is at http://www.webring.org/help/supportform.html Cheers! How do I generate a mailing list of my Ring members? In Ring Management go to "Generate E-mail Lists (<-that's a hyperlink). Create an e-mail list with the ring or queue members." You will be able to generate email list of your ring members or queue members from there in many different fashions. -- Angelea Kelly I have a member who has a frames page. As I was doing a check of my ring today, I noticed that he moved the ring logo to another page. If he wishes to have it on the page it's on now, how do we point the webring link to that page? Go to Webring management. Click on Manage Ring Sites, click on Edit next to the site you want to update the listing for. When the edit page loads make any changes you want then click Submit Changes. The listing will refect the changes you made, to include changing where the ring will lead to. -- Bob Marion I would like to put my ring sites back into numerical order. Is there an option to do this? You can arrange them in numerical order by going to Webring management. Select "Edit Ring Sites", then select "Sorted by Site ID". -- Galaxi Allowed characters in Webring password What characters can a member use in their Password? All WebRing passwords must be between 4 and 16 characters long and contain only the characters A-Z, a-z, 0-9, and underscore ("_") ... -- Dave in Development Another message from SuperDave... We changed the Ring and Queue notification emails that the RingMaster gets to be a CC of the one the RingMember gets to reduce system load. Its much easier for the system to append a "CC" line to an email message than to generate 2 separate email messages. Plus it helps prevent our mail queue from going out of control if our email delivery system goes down. As far as "remedying" goes, it will most likely stay this way for a long time. In reference to users not being 'bounced' to the Ring Homepage, that was also done to speed up the system. In order to redirect a user to the Ring Homepage, we would have to load the ring's Config file just get the URL of the homepage. NOT loading the config file and just printing an error page allows us to cut the number of system file operations IN HALF. Again, we currently have no intentions of changing this behavior. -- Dave Launched 2-13-98 Copyright © 1997/1998 Morgan Smith All rights reserved. All Images, downloads and text are ths sole property of Morgan Smith and cannot be used without written permission of the this publisher.