For many folks, there's nothing more confusing than exploring the World Wide Web.
They start with a question and want a quick answer. Using a search engine, they link to a page, which has links to more pages, then more links, then more pages, and a few hours later, they can't remember what they saw or where they saw it.
And retracing all those steps (links) is just about impossible.
With Web pages now in the tens (or is it hundreds?) of millions and growing like Georgian kudzu, search engines just can't do it anymore.
For example, the 20th anniversary of the movie Star Wars has spawned hundreds of new Web sites on top of the hundreds that exist. Some are excellent; others are garbage. Many link to each other in a confusing waste of bandwidth. Search engines will list many and miss more. But the budding Luke Skywalkers want to see them all.
That's where rings come in.
An attempt at organization
Rings are the latest attempt to organize a chaotic virtual world. Sites with common themes can join in a group with sequential links. The theory is a visitor to these sites will see all in a logical order and never get lost, ending up at the starting point.
Currently, you might call up a page with hundreds of links, then spend an entire evening opening each link, exploring that site, then going backward to the referring page. And on and on.
Rings are an attempt to create a logical ''tour'' of all the sites. Just as you might find buttons for ''next page'' and ''previous page'' within a well-organized site, ring sites contain ''next site'' and ''previous site'' buttons.
Rings are most useful in areas that have hundreds of sites. For example, The X-Files television show and its smooth-talking star Gillian Anderson both have rings of sites. As do Star Wars and Star Trek. And geek queen Sandra Bullock.
The first ring was created in 1994 in England. EUROPA (Expanding Unidirectional Ring Of PAges) was a kind of chain letter, to see how far the concept could spread (most EUROPA pages have other links on them).
The concept was picked up by creators of common-themed pages, such as those devoted to celebrities. It was finally legitimized when a registry of rings was created (http://www.webring.org).
If you want to add your site to a Web ring, here's how to do it:
Find the ring's home page. With almost 500 rings in the Web Ring registry, you should find one to join.
Visit the site and ask the Ring Master to visit your site to see if it's suitable.
The site's Ring Master will send you the HTML code to add to your site. (Some rings post the code on the home page.) Then you must maintain your site so as not to break the chain.
Rings still imperfect
I should note that this is a young concept on the Web and still has its problems. For example, the Web registry site was closed last week, and a couple of the rings I explored linked to non-existent sites.
And since most rings are informal confederacies of personal pages, they haven't achieved the commercial elegance of search engines such as Yahoo! or Excite!.
But finding a ring could be a helpful way to explore a popular topic on the Web.
PAGE COMPETITION:
Proud of your Web page? You still have two weeks to enter your personal Web site in the first Enquirer Top 10 Personal Web Pages competition. The rules:
You must be a resident of the Tristate region.
The site must be a personal site - no corporate or business sites.
All sites must be in good taste.
You must e-mail the URL, your name, hometown or neighborhood and phone number to me (address below) by Feb. 15.
E-mail Charles Brewer with questions, comments and suggestions at CBrewer@enquirer.com. This column and Charles Brewer's past columns can be found on Enquirer.com, The Enquirer's Web site, at http://enquirer.com/columns/brewer