Aussie Geek Webring
I typed those words into Google to see if one existed.
The result? Nothing close to what I was after.
My results included blogs written by Aussie Geeks, and a couple of other webrings. One was an Australian based webring, close, but still no bananas.
What I want is a webring exclusively for Australians who are Geeks.
If I don’t find one, i’ll start my own.
Why an Aussie geek webring?
Well, i’m sure there are many great minds out there across Australia. And i’m sure a lot of them have blogs. So this webring will be to link them all together.
Blog webrings have been around for awhile, I’ve signed up for a few in the past. They are a good way to link up other blogs that contain content from like minded individuals. So why hasn’t an Aussie Geek Webring been created? Good question… Laziness perhaps?
I don’t think restricting the webring to particular technologies is a good thing either, it should be open to all manners of geeks. One could be a gadgets lover, another could be a linux nut, and another could be a VB drinking VB programmer (eg: VB Can in one hand, while coding some VB [Visual Basic] using the other…).
Geeks are all alike, no matter what their key passion is. Do geeks love geeks? Definately! 
Is geek the right word to use? Hrm… I don’t know, unless somebody could give me a better term?
How about, Aussie Tech Lovers webring?
I’ll give this a few days to settle, and if I don’t find anything by midweek, i’ll have to start my own webring I suppose…
September 24th, 2004 at 01:05 am
[...] it failed twice. Hrmm… Speaking of Aussie Bloggers, i’m still yet to get the Aussie Geek WebRing up and running. I’ve been a bit busy, and have been feeli [...]
December 3rd, 2004 at 12:40 pm
[...] #8212; will @ 11:40 pm
Back in September, I posted about possibly a Aussie Geek Web Ring. Fast forward to now, i’ve still got nothing up. But I [...]
September 6th, 2004 at 03:27 pm
Geeks is the right word, and go for it! Maybe something to do for Frankarr’s new hosted site?
September 6th, 2004 at 03:43 pm
i know of a few webrings
aussieblogs – http://www.anthonyjhicks.com/aussieblogs
melbourne blogs – http://www.melbourneblogs.net/
September 6th, 2004 at 03:52 pm
re: Site Setup on http://frankarr.aspxconnection.com/
September 6th, 2004 at 03:57 pm
Yeah, those are the ones I found Frank, but there’s nothing for just us geeky aussies
Tristan: Sure, if Frank’s too busy, then I can try whip something up.
All the thing needs to do is accept two URLs, one for the website, the other for the RSS.
That’s the first thing, then second would be to have the ability to “spit out” an OPML of the RSS feeds. Yes, RSS is important
After a User registers, they need to have their website “authorised”, this way to disallow the bogus websites (eg: spam sites, etc…). Yeah this process will be manual, but I think it is better to tread carefully rather than be knee deep in spam later down the track.
And after the validation, a templated email is sent through to the user.
The email will contain the information for them to paste onto their own websites to show their status as being a member of the webring.
This will have 4 links. 3 of which are in text, and the other an image link. There should be a previous (browse to the previous blog in the ring), random (browse to a random blog in the ring) and forward (browse to the next blog in the ring).
And finally, the image link should be a logo for the ring. This logo should point to the webrings’ main website.
I think that’s it for now!
September 6th, 2004 at 04:25 pm
And here we go, I found something already. http://www.dotnetbips.com/displayarticle.aspx?id=252
All that needs to be done is to customize it a bit and extend it a bit.
The core of it is already done, so that’s the good news.
Because what I’d like to see is the main hub page displaying the recently updated blogs, perhaps an extract of a few words, and the blog post title, the blog post url.
However, looking at the sample, I don’t like the fact that it uses a web user control to contain the “web ring user interface”. I’d rather that be some html code so that it may be placed on every type of server, as some servers don’t allow for 1) ASP.NET or 2) File uploads.
But again, it is a starting point.
Perhaps 3 urls:
http://geekring.com.au/forward.aspx?uid=1
http://geekring.com.au/backward.aspx?uid=1
http://geekring.com.au/random.aspx?uid=1
Having the uid will tell the server where it came from, so the server can then decide where to take the user to next. uid also acts to ensure the user isn’t taken back to where they just left.
Including it as above, in my opinion allows more users to signup, as opposed to the usage of the web user control.
September 6th, 2004 at 08:26 pm
re: Site Setup on http://frankarr.aspxconnection.com/
September 6th, 2004 at 08:57 pm
Wow Will, you sure don’t half-spec things, do you?
And there I was in the car on the way home thinking “OK, we could crawl the sites once in a while to make sure they’re active, but apart from that we just need a site owner, an email and a random web link page”
September 6th, 2004 at 09:41 pm
Well, it’s an idea i’ve had for a few days so it’s gaining momentum with each and every thought.
I’ve seen many blog webrings in the few years i’ve been blogging, i’ve seen some great ones that are connected to some form of community. And i’ve seen some done quite nicely, and some are just beyond the concept of a webring, though they started as one.
You know, you just need something unique, something uniquely geeky, that way you know it was created by geeks for geeks!
I don’t think it should be too difficult to implement anyhow.
There are many resusable .NET components out there that can be made use of. RSS.NET for one, the sample in the link provided in my previous comment. I’m sure there are a lot of other free bits and pieces out there that can be made use of.