What happened to the Traveller webring?

[aramis]

Back in the day, my 'Candles Against The Night' was hosted on Geocities. So were a LOT of Traveller sites. Then Geocities died.

I tried running my game on my own domain, but, not having a ton of money, my domain died the Real Death due to finances. Now, I run it on Unseen Servant. I'm one of 3 Traveller games there.

Just for reference, my website costs me about $120 per year...

 

[GypsyComet]

Webrings were an organizational answer for the early web. As the rise of easy mailing list services spelled the end of the TML's best years (since anyone could start a specialized sublist in minutes), the rise of fora like this one, and of several persistent conglomerators, as well as the fall of GeoCities, the cessation of web hosting at AOL, and a few other sea changes shrank the body of independent sites. Not all of that information vanished, ending up in the archives at Freelance or Downport, or in the file section here on CotI or some now obscure Yahoo list.

Another factor is a side effect of the commercialization of the web. Sites got slicker, taking more and more design effort with each passing year. Similar to what happened to video and computer games and hobby apps, web pages that looked current generally ceased to be one-person operations. A few of us are graphic designers, illustrators, and web monkeys in addition to being gamers, but for most a personal site will require a team of people or look like a holdover from 1997.

 

[aramis]

Another factor is a side effect of the commercialization of the web. Sites got slicker, taking more and more design effort with each passing year. Similar to what happened to video and computer games and hobby apps, web pages that looked current generally ceased to be one-person operations. A few of us are graphic designers, illustrators, and web monkeys in addition to being gamers, but for most a personal site will require a team of people or look like a holdover from 1997.

More importantly, most sites now use extensive violations of the rules and non-HTML content to "slick up" the look. Flash, Javascript, SSI/SHTML, Dynamic XML...

My Star Trek Uniforms page was optimized for the 1997-1999 range... small thumbnail graphics, and used to take over a minute to load; now, BOOM. page has been up since the mid 90's. It was specifically limited so as to be readable via 56K modem connection

 

[creativehum]

Aramis, can you talk more about this:
"most sites now use extensive violations of the rules..."

What rules? What violations?

 

[aramis]

Aramis, can you talk more about this:
"most sites now use extensive violations of the rules..."

What rules? What violations?

very few modern site actually obey the W3C standards for HTML. My own is one of the closest, and even it violates a few.

The real decay started with Front Page by Microsoft. MS refused to follow the rules, and so MSFP based sites had a specific look and feel on MSIE, but not on anything else. It was different on NS and FF than on IE, because MS added specific tags to IE that were not in HTML 1, 2, nor early 3, and so HTML compliant browsers varied in how they handled these rulebreakers.

It's part of how MS hedged their bets in the browser wars of the early 2000's. (Another example of their corporate "Break every rule and be too big to break up" approach.)

 

[Barsanuphius]

More importantly, most sites now use extensive violations of the rules and non-HTML content to "slick up" the look. Flash, Javascript, SSI/SHTML, Dynamic XML...

My Star Trek Uniforms page was optimized for the 1997-1999 range... small thumbnail graphics, and used to take over a minute to load; now, BOOM. page has been up since the mid 90's. It was specifically limited so as to be readable via 56K modem connection

I checked it out and it'spretty nice for 1997. Still nice job. :coffeesip:

 

[aramis]

I checked it out and it'spretty nice for 1997. Still nice job. :coffeesip:

Thanks. Most stable ST uniform page on the web...

Everything hand-coded, including the star wars dice-roller. Which a player used in game yesterday.

 

[ffilz]

I checked it out and it'spretty nice for 1997. Still nice job. :coffeesip:

I wend and had a look also. I've actually grabbed one or two bits from your site.

I don't care about pretty looks when they aren't needed. I've always thought we went for too much flashy stuff... Lots of active content that has no need to be so, creating much more security holes than is necessary.

Sure, some sites need video (like news or facebook), but why should a site that is just serving up what is ultimately text need active content every time you turn around?

Frank

 

[Blue Ghost]

In the late 90s one of the webrings I used to cruise was the Dark Forces webring. About a year after the game came out AOL was the first to host something called "The Dark Forces ... [something or other]". From there other sites cropped up with addon missions for the game. It was another great time to cruise hundreds of sites by various fans who were also coders who made addons missions. Some with new graphics.

Now the only one left, I think, is called DF-21.net or something.

It was really cool to stay up late with some comfort food cruising those sites, then DLing a mission and playing it. And that's kind of what I felt about the old Star Fleet Battles and Traveller webrings, as well as a few others out there for various things.

I'm sorry they're gone.

p.s. I still see, even on Spinward Scout's page that there's a link to the actual "Traveller Webring", but like I say, it's been bought up by some marketing firm.

 

[Barsanuphius]

In the late 90s one of the webrings I used to cruise was the Dark Forces webring. About a year after the game came out AOL was the first to host something called "The Dark Forces ... .

Now the only one left, I think, is called DF-21.net or something.

Yes this is the correct address. Just checked through google. :coffeegulp:

 

[ShawnDriscoll]

WebRings are pretty much infected/compromised these days. Do not visit those old servers.

 

[Hyphen]

A few of us are graphic designers, illustrators, and web monkeys in addition to being gamers, but for most a personal site will require a team of people or look like a holdover from 1997.

Hey! You're talking about MY site there! ;-) ;-)

BTW, the whole "keeping it updated" thing is why my Jump Points are so out-of-date. To do it properly, I would have to update a very old database, resurrect the code that generated the links from the old database, and add an automated system that checked for dead links. And *then* still have to maintain it...

I've only left it up because it at least allows people to use old URLs to look for material on the Internet Archive.

 

[JimMarn]

Not sure if I posted about this before or not. I used to have huge html sites and then tried various php systems. I settled on textpattern.com as the one that did what I wanted.

A free add-on they have allows unlimited categories. I try to keep them up to date, but making maps, stopping by the various forums I post to, working on my ham radio shack so rthe wasps wont get in, going through storage boxes and doing things with decades old university notes, etc. and thats just the easy bits.

Hopefully none of my sites look like they are from last century.

 

[Blue Ghost]

A link that explains what happened to webrings. I'm sorry the Traveller webring fell to the same fate. As per forum policy this is a safe site with no offensive material, but it is an op-ed of how Yahoo and various other parties essentially made the webring go the way of the dinosaur, including the Traveller webring;

https://www.hover.com/blog/what-ever-happened-to-webrings/

 

[robject]

If some folks re-created an informal version of the Traveller webring, it might attract some interest and nostalgia.

Sort of like Historic Route 66 I suppose.

Freelance Traveller
Spinward Scout's Way Station
The Zhodani Base
StuffOnLine
The Traveller Map
Wil's Traveller Pages
Far Future Enterprises

 

[GypsyComet]

Hey! You're talking about MY site there!

And my own. I have the whole thing archived in a corner of my Traveller material. Since I was using AOL's Hometown, the entire thing would almost fit on a floppy.

 

[robject]

And my own. I have the whole thing archived in a corner of my Traveller material. Since I was using AOL's Hometown, the entire thing would almost fit on a floppy.

I have a few versions of my site archived, as well. One of the versions also has the "Active Traveller Campaigns" (ATC) list...

 

[robject]

To make a self-organizing (non-centralized) webring, you'd just need a "Next" and a "Prev" link, linking to your neighbor, assuming you know who your neighbor is.

Joining the webring would be similar to an insert into a doubly-linked list: you'd contact someone on the webring, asking to be included, and if they agree, then the two of you would talk to one of the guy's neighbors and arrange to reroute to your page, and you route to theirs.

Yes, it requires communication, but that's a good thing. They're your neighbors; you should at least know who your neighbor is.

I mean, who wouldn't want their website sandwiched between Freelance and Zhodani?

Prev (Freelance Traveller) | Next (The Zhodani Base)

 

[robject]

https://github.com/maxboeck/webring

Alternately, here's the way to do a WebRing in 2019.

 

[Blue Ghost]

Pretty good ideas.

I necromanced this thread because interest in the game seems to ebb and flow, and quite frankly GOOGLE and a variety of other search engines simply don't give good results. Around the fifth or tenth search result yields something total unrelated, and that's after scrolling past the ads. Searching for Traveller usually gives hotel and travel links. The same happens with Traveller RPG, with RPG standing for something, and then role playing results scattered among tourist links.

I miss webrings. I think Yahoo and GOOGLE just needlessly destroyed them, and are largely responsible for scattering interests in war gaming, scifi wargaming, and RPGs and other interests of all sorts. And in this sense, in my opinion, responsible for sites being hijacked because no one visited them because the webrings were virtually destroyed.

In the 18 years I've been coming hear as an enthusiast, I've seen traffic fluctuate on this site. The last couple of weeks it peaked, but then the day before yesterday it was utterly dead for two or three days. When I fist came here the site was jumping with debates, arguments and flame wars, but also good decent exchanges. It would be nice if more people came back.

I'm just a hobbyist, but the whole setting was a staple of not just my pre-teen years, but also through university, and I would hate to see game and system merely melt away due to lack of traffic and interest.

Just my take.

I mean I've started to migrate away from Traveller, however much I love it, but I don't want to leave nor take a hiatus and come back to find the site gone with no player base.