A webring (or web ring) is a collection of websites linked together in a circular structure, and usually organized around a specific theme, often educational or social. They were popular in the 1990s and early 2000s, particularly among amateur websites. To be a part of the webring, each site has a common navigation bar; it contains links to the previous and next sites. By selecting next (or previous) repeatedly, the user will eventually reach the site they started at; this is the origin of the term webring. However, the select-through route around the ring is usually supplemented by a central site with links to all member sites; this prevents the ring from breaking completely if a member site goes offline. A webring is managed from one website which is able to omit the websites that have dropped out or are no longer reachable. The advantage of a webring is that if the user is interested in the topic on one website, they can quickly connect to another website on the same topic. Webrings usually have a moderator who decides which pages to include in the webring. After approval, webmasters add their pages to the ring by 'linking in' to the ring; this requires adding the necessary HTML or JavaScript to their site. Sites usually join a webring in order to receive traffic from related sites. When used to improve search engine rankings, webrings can be considered a search engine optimization technique. Webrings are mainly viewed as a relic of the early web of the 1990s. When the primary site that managed web rings, webring.org was acquired by Yahoo, "ring masters" lost access to their webrings and the web ring hubs were replaced by a Yahoo page. By the time Yahoo stopped controlling webring.org in 2001, search engines had become good enough that web rings were no longer as useful. The webring.org site was still active in the mid-2010s. WebRing.com Denis Howe started EUROPa (Expanding Unidirectional Ring Of Pages) at Imperial College in 1994. The idea developed further when Giraldo Hierro conceptualized a central CGI (Common Gateway Interface) script to enhance functionality. Sage Weil developed such a script in May 1994. Weil's script gained popularity, pushing Weil in June 1995 to form a company called WebRing. In 1997, Weil sold WebRing to Starseed, Inc. In 1998, Starseed was acquired by GeoCities, which made no major changes to the system. Just a