rootring is live!
I've been working on a new project, and now it's time to make it public.
I love blogs, and I especially love the TTRPG blogosphere, as one might have guessed from all my other projects. There is a lot of good writing out there, but it is often hard to find, easy to miss, and strangely difficult to revisit once you do.
Over time I've tried to build tools that help with that in different ways: the blogosphere map, the bloggies archive and podcast, which I helped with, or my newsletter. The newest one is rootring: a curated webring for TTRPG blogs.
Yes, a webring. An old piece of internet technology. But I think it still solves a very current problem: helping people find good writing without relying on timelines or recommendation algorithms.
What Is It?
rootring links blogs together so readers can move from site to site while actually visiting the blogs themselves. The point is not to centralize writing, but to make independently run sites easier to find again.
A ring is especially good at that because it makes discovery directional and deliberate. Instead of scrolling a feed, you follow links from one actual site to another.
But it is not only a ring of links. rootring also acts as a small hub. You can browse the latest posts in the ring, filter that down to only the latest post from each blog, or use some basic search to look for keywords and topics. You can also build your own custom OPML files for your RSS readers.
I wanted something that feels closer to the older web, where you could wander, explore for a while, and find something unexpected. A small community path through the TTRPG blogosphere. A way to reward the people who still run their own sites.
How Does It Work?
Each blog in the ring adds a small set of rootring links to its site:
- prev goes to the previous blog in the ring
- next goes to the next blog in the ring
- random jumps to a random blog in the ring
- directory goes back to the main ring directory
That is the core of it: simple links that connect one blog to another.
If you want to join with your own blog, you can apply here. If you do, also check out the setup guide. I spent some time making a snippet gallery with copy-paste styles for the links, though plain links work perfectly well too. I also wrote some basic platform guides for different blogging setups and ways to add the ring links.
A few expectations are worth keeping in mind.
- Blogs are reviewed manually, so approval is not instant.
- Applying does not immediately add your blog to the ring.
- After approval, the ring links need to be added to a public page on your site and then verified before the blog can be activated.
It is curated on purpose. I want the ring to stay focused, welcoming, and genuinely useful for people looking for TTRPG blogs, so not every submission will necessarily be accepted.
Some platforms are easier to work with than others, but in general, if you can add links to a page, you can probably join the ring. And if you run into technical issues, reach out to me and I will try my best to help.
Welcome to the Ring!
Whether you are a blogger or just someone who likes reading blogs, rootring is meant to make wandering easier. You can browse the ring, hop from site to site, keep up with the latest posts, or hit random and see where you end up.
This is a newly launched project that I built mostly from scratch because I felt the webring idea could be taken further. I plan to keep maintaining it, and I'm very open to suggestions.
If you miss wandering the web, this is for you.
So, come take a look around. Follow a few links. See where they lead.