Ooh. ^_^

Paging the techie types: can we fake a Webring? by Huinesoron on 2022-11-10 16:20:46 UTC Reply

For those who are under about 30 years old, Webrings were banners that you could place on your personal website (back when the internet ran on personal websites) which would automatically link to other sites in the same ring. So you could sign up to, say, an LotR Fanfic Webring, and visitors would be directed to your site from other LotR fic sites, and on from your site to others in the ring.

Thing is, that sounds like exactly what the PPC needs. The Wiki exists, but it's not set up to send you to a given PPC writer's website, or show you all their stories, or even show you the entirety of one spinoff! Most missions are on GDocs at the moment, so one mission with a given agent won't necessarily let you find others, or tell you where it sits in a series. I miss the days of browsing an author's entire body of work (like this), and I feel like a PPC Webring would be a way to bring that back.

The internet suggests that it might actually be... dare I say it... quite easy to do? This article talks about cobbling one together from CSS and a JSON file on GitHub, while this one... er... does something? I don't know; if I understood it, I wouldn't be asking for help from more tech-y minds than mine. ^_^

The downfall of this idea might be that a lot of PPC "homepages" are either GDocs themselves, or on blogs (LJ and Tumblr spring to mind). You probably can't embed CSS into a Tumblr, and I'm positive GDocs won't let you; but might there be a way to create a weird hybrid... thing that would still work?

"fake"? no. by Thoth on 2022-11-10 19:33:59 UTC Reply

...But can we have a webring? Yes, yes we can.

The approach you described in the first link is actually a pretty good one. We host a data file everyone points to, which gets fetched by a snippet of Javascript and then the webpage figures out where it is in the webring and uses this to generate forward and back links (and a random link). Just stick a div in the page at the right place and put a script tag in your header, and you're all set.

However, as you have pointed out, we have to operate in contexts where javascript is not present. Fortunately, we have a website, so I can suggest a hack to use as a fallback. We provide the URLs plotprotectors.org/webring/{next,previous,random} or whatever else we want there to be buttons for, and when you want to add yourself to the webring you put a link to https://plotprotectors.org/webring/next/the.url/of/the/webpage/you/put/this/link/on (and likewise for previous, random, etc). When you click the link, you get bounced out to the board's server, from which we can figure out where the link should go and redirect you.

Another thing we can actually do is utilize bookmarklets: you could have a folder on your bookmarks bar called "PPC Webring" with "next", "previous", "random", etc in it as bookmarks, and then when you click one it will run a bit of javascript that figures out if you're in the webring, what the next and/or previous site is if you are, and sends you there. Which would allow us to link docs we no longer can edit into the ring... But that might be a bit Much.

Ooh. ^_^ by Huinesoron on 2022-11-11 09:14:43 UTC Reply

Working backwards, my vague thought for inaccessible files is that we just fudge together some hub pages for them. A lot of older stuff has made it into one archive or another by now, and the stuff that hasn't... could be. ^_^ It's not perfect, but it should function.

If nothing else, your proposal to run it through the Board means it should work with the Wiki, right? Make a page called Oaken Thorinshield's Writings, categorise as a Spinoff, add the Webring, bam, done.

What are the problems with the Board 'hack'? You said it would be a fallback option, but there doesn't seem to be an obvious reason to use the more complicated-for-the-hoster version. Is it just because two page changes is going to chug on some computers, or what?

I'm guessing - or maybe hoping - that there's some way to make adding sites to the list at least partially automated. It wouldn't be ideal for the way to get on to be "message Thoth and hope he has time"; even assuming you always did, having to directly message a person seems to cut down on takeup. I know the example talked about GitHub; would that still work with the Board Hack?

hS

So to answer the questions by Thoth on 2022-11-11 19:10:14 UTC Edited Reply
1. Yeah, I'd agree with hub pages for works we don't still have access to. It's a better idea.
2. The board mechanism was proposed as a fallback because I didn't want to subject the board to extra traffic that could be avoided. Given, we don't get much traffic so I'm not overly concerned about that. The other reason I proposed it as a fallback is because I thought it would be more work for people. After all, what's easier: copy-pasting urls into links and having everything break if you get it wrong, or adding <script src="https://github.com/location/of/script.js"></script> in your header, and <div id="ppc-webring"></div> somewhere in the page, and having the rest take care of itself? However, given relative usage of that vs board routing, it might not be worth the bother to go make (although it is pretty quick...).
3. Yes, routing through the board would make it work with the wiki. And google docs. And tumblr, livejournal, dreamwidth, AO3, ff.net... really, anywhere you can insert hyperlinks.
4. Automation. I assumed this would be hosted through github (and then fetched by the board service periodically, if that's how we're doing things). So... yes, if you can submit an issue, or know JSON well enough to edit the thing yourself and submit a PR, you can use Github's tooling to get the attention of me or someone else on the technical side (we can have more than one person running that). If that's too intimidating we could use something like an application form, or something. Or look into further automating the process of adding people so that non-technical folks can help manage the list (which is a good idea either way, we're only human and could make mistakes, but it's more time and effort). I don't want to entirely cut humans out of the loop because if webring additions are 100% automatic it can be abused.
(this reminds me to get board-to-discord crossposting working. I actually have a patch, but it hasn't been tested yet...)

I understood about half of that. by Linstar on 2022-11-10 20:12:04 UTC Reply

But what I did understand I thought looked really exciting! I’d like to do this, if at all possible.

—Ls