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a decentralized approach to webrings

leafy
Nov 17, 2025 · 1 min read
2

n case you don't know, webrings are teeny tiny curated directories of websites sorted by topic, they have been around before search engines went into mainstream

however, webrings are most likely centralized and once they shut down, you can lost connection with your online neighborhood

webrings are meant to decentralize website discovery and we could improve that by creating a wide self-curated directory of personal websites

and once the mainstream webring shuts down, one of the webmasters starts rehosting it and websites will stay connected

sound cool, but uhhh... how?

we could use atproto repositories to place website data and/or webring data in their respective records

the webring data points to the active webring service with a valid did:web identifier, which is kinda identical to bluesky's feed generators

ebsite data can hold as much more information about it or it's owner as possible! for example:

  • social media links
  • last.fm/listenbrainz/teal.fm scrobbles
  • your neocities profile page (most webrings have neocities sites or use neocities as their host)
  • gpg public key

is there any chance that you will make a ref implementation of it?

maybe... i am not sure tho

i could fork fling and adapt it to atproto

leafy
leafy
@fizzylimesoda.nya.je
BlueskyDiscussion
fizzylimesoda
fizzylimesoda@fizzylimesoda.nya.je
1 reply
Leaflet
Leaflet@leaflet.pub

Leaflet's Atmospheric Advent Almanac, Day 12

a decentralized approach to webrings, by @yoyle.city

Fun sketch of an idea for decentralized webrings…which could be very cool to explore with Leaflet / @wisp.place / other atproto data!

2 replies