An IPFS webring

Webrings were, traditionally, a great way of grouping a community of related websites together; they were particularly useful when search engines weren’t so ubiquitous or powerful.

One of the biggest problems with IPFS is a lack of community, and the difficulty finding active blogs and websites on the network. Search engines can’t help us yet. There are valiant efforts to make IPFS web-crawlers, but they aren’t really viable for everyday usage yet. Because of this, in a way, IPFS feels dead.

Webrings might be a bit passé, a tad bit retro, but I think it’s a valid approach for making IPFS feel more lively. It’s the perfect platform for a webring to thrive, and a webring could really help its ecosystem.

And so, with this post, I’d like to found a fully decentralized and autonomous IPFS webring!​^†

Why should I join?

Now, there are some clear benefits for joining the webring:

• To help your site get discovered by more people
• To drive up engagement with the IPFS community
• I personally pledge to pin every site on the webring I possibly can ― and I’ve got around 700GB to spare.^‡

How can I join?

Traditionally, webrings are managed centrally on some server, via some HTML widget or a link to somewhere on an HTTP server, so webrings were dynamic; doing something like that would clearly defeat the purpose of being distributed.

Every site in the webring will have a little footer or indicator somewhere, that says “IPFS Webring”, with a “previous” and a “next” button on them.

However, this webring is more linear than most — it’s more of a webchain — there is to be a clear beginning and end.

If you want to join the webring, find the leftmost (most previous) or rightmost (most next) website: this site will have a dead link as previous or right. At your “IPFS webring” footer, add their site to your webring accordingly, and them e-mail (or otherwise contact them) to tell them you’ve done this, so they can update their site. And then, you wait for someone to contact you, so that you can fill in your dead link. :)

If you’re not comfortable putting your e-mail out publically on your website, you can add an obscured comment in the webring footer’s HTML, stating your email or other contact method. For obvious reasons, simple /ipfs/ files won’t work, only dynamic (/ipns/) sites will work.

HTML Template

Here is a template webring HTML, which I’m using on this site:

<style>
    #ipfs-webring { padding-bottom: 10px; background-color: #675F74; hidden; display: inline-block;
            text-align: center; width: auto; color: white; font-family: sans-serif; border-radius: 5px; }
    #ipfs-webring div div { margin-top: 0px; }
    #ipfs-webring p { margin-right: 20px; margin-left: 20px; float: left; }
    #ipfs-webring a { font-weight: bold; color: white; }
</style>

<div id="ipfs-webring">
    <!-- here is my obfuscated mail, to maybe avoid spam:  jadedctrl ATTHESERVER teknik DOT io -->
    <p> <a href="https://ipfs.io/ipns/blahblah"> Prev </a> </p>

    <div style="float: left;">
        <a href="https://ipfs.io">
        <img style="width: 120px;"
         src="https://ipfs.io/ipfs/bafkreigtdgsgv2f3bkhsmxvku3bpnnqzubcxeupf7fff5f7l7tlm2v237a" />
        </a>
        <div> <a href="https://xwx.moe/lib/ipfs-webring.html"> Webring </a> </div>
    </div>

    <p> <a href="https://ipfs.io/ipns/blahblah"> Next </a> </p>
</div>

Yeah my HTML isn’t so hot. But it’s a good starting point, an easy copy-paste. (You can see it in action at the front-page.)

Since I intend on pinning every webring member, feel free to use the gateway that I run this website on ― gateway.xwx.moe^§ ― instead of ipfs.io’s gateway.

Anyway, if you want to be one of the first people to join the webring, go ahead and e-mail me your address at redacted @ redacted, and whether you want to be the first “Previous” or the first “Next.”

Post-mortem (2024)