The Civil War Circuit

JOINING THE RING

  

Hey! Awright! You're interested enough that you made it this far, huh? (Or maybe you're just curious, which is OK, too.) This part of the site is where you find out exactly what you have to do to get your page included in the Civil War Circuit. I'm assuming you already looked over our Membership Criteria. If not, please take a minute to do that, then come on back.

*  Membership Criteria  *

The first thing I want to do is let you know how we're going to go about this. From my experience in putting four Web sites in four different Webrings, I know the process can sometimes be a little tricky and more than a little confusing. So I designed the process for this ring to let me do the tricky stuff and keep you from getting confused. (Grin) Hope it works out well for you. If you've had experience with Webrings, you may find I'm doing more "hand-holding" than you need. Humor me, please. I'm trying to make this painless for our less "Web-savvy" friends and make my life easier by keeping the error rate down.

If you've taken a look at Webring home pages before and worried that you might not be able to handle all the techy stuff of getting your site into a ring, let's talk about that. What you need to handle this process is exactly this: enough knowledge of HTML to be able to cut and paste a chunk of code into a Web page, and a browser that lets you grab a couple of graphics off a page and supports forms (those little fill-in-the-blank things) so you can get signed up. And that's it!

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THE WHOLE PROCESS

Now I'm going to give you a quick run-down of the whole process so you'll know exactly what we're going to be doing. Then we'll let you take the first step, if you'd like. Here's what will happen:

(1) You send me e-mail telling me you'd like your site in the ring and giving me its URL.
(2) I go take a look at your site. If I feel it doesn't meet our membership criteria, I'll let you know. If it does meet the criteria, I send you e-mail with instructions for the next step.
(3) Following the instructions, you come back here and do two things: grab the two ring graphics and fill out the "ADD A SITE TO THE QUEUE" form on this page. The Webring server will add your site to the queue of sites waiting to get into the ring. It will also send you e-mail with some information. Now you sit tight.
(4) When I see your site in the Webring queue, I'll customize the required chunk of HTML for your site and e-mail it to you. (Note for AOL users: Because the AOL mail reader cannot handle HTML properly in e-mail, we'll have to do things differently. I'll give you instructions when your site goes in the queue.)
(5) You cut-and-paste the chunk of HTML into the appropriate spot on your page and upload the HTML and the two ring graphics to your server. At this point, you can e-mail me if you want and let me know your site is ready to go. Even if you don't, I'll be checking the queued sites regularly and, when I see your site is ready to go, I'll plop it into the ring.
(6) The last step is for me to add your site to the ring -- move it from the queue to the active list. Once I do that, you're in!

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QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS

Here are some answers to questions I thought you might have, especially if you've been around Webrings before.

Can I customize the ring code so the display works better on my page?

Sure. Have at it. Just don't break the part of the code that feeds the CGI monster. I'd also appreciate it if you'd use the graphics provided and keep all the functional choices intact.

On some rings, any member can approve a new site that's in the queue. Can we do that here?

Nope. Only me.

I'm already in another Webring. Can I be in this one too?

It's fine with me. Go ahead, unless the manager of the other ring objects. Michael Kelley, the founder of the Southron Ring, once commented that having sites in more than one ring was good for both rings. Sort of cross-pollination. I agree with him 100%.

My Web server won't allow me to use CGI scripts. Can I still be in the ring?

No problem. The CGI scripts run on the Webring server, not yours.

Other Webrings let you get the ring code off their home pages and make the necessary changes for your site. Why aren't you doing that?

Because that's been the part of the process that I've seen giving people the most problems. So I figured I'd provide the customized code to each site. Not much work when you're set up for it, and it should keep the problems down.

If you have a question I haven't answered, drop me some e-mail at jabba_hutt@mailexcite.com. I'll get back to you.

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WANT TO JOIN?

If you've decided to add your site to the Civil War Circuit, you can take the first step right here. Just fill out this form and click "Send it!" I'll get e-mail to start the process.

Your name:
E-mail address:
Title of your site:
URL of your site:

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ADD A SITE TO THE QUEUE

This is where you submit your site to the Webring queue, so it can be assigned an ID number in the ring. Please do this only if you've already sent me e-mail and received a positive answer from me! If you have, go ahead and fill in the form.

NOTICE
Please do not fill in this form unless you have already received approval of your site's membership! Sites placed in the queue without prior approval will be deleted from the queue and will not be admitted to the ring.

Submit a site to the Civil War Circuit
Site Title:
Site URL:
Name:
E-mail:

Password:
Please choose a password. (Don't forget it!!)
Keywords: Enter up to 20 keywords to describe your site.
Description: Enter a short description of your site.

You might as well go ahead and grab the ring graphics now, so you'll have 'em when I send you the HTML code. Keep the filenames the same as they are now so they'll work with the ring code. Here they are.

The Civil War Circuit  Next Site

OK! Next step's up to me. I'll go take a look at your queue entry, make sure it has all the necessary stuff, and make up your custom ring code. Look for it in your e-mail!

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Gilda
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