Lunar Underground Web Ring
LUNAR UNDERGROUND WEB RING
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Lunar Underground Web Ring Home Page

Welcome to the Lunar Underground Web Ring!

This web ring will take you on tour of web sites about the moon, all around the Internet. This is the home page for the web ring. Here you can learn how to add your web site to the ring. This web page is mostly webmaster stuff. If you are looking for web sites about the moon, just follow one of the links in the web ring banner.

To add your site to the Lunar Underground Web Ring all you have to do is two easy steps:

  1. Add the Web Ring Code to Your Web Site

    Copy the code from http://www.asi.org/util/lugwr-code.txt, exactly, and paste it into the web document that you want to be in the ring. Be careful not to change the links; if you do, you will break the ring.

    This has to be complete before we can add your site to the web ring. If we were to add your site to the web ring first, it would break the ring.

    If a smaller banner would work better on your web site, try http://www.asi.org/util/lugwr-code.txt instead. Here's how it looks:

    Lunar Underground Web Ring
    LUNAR UNDERGROUND WEB RING
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    You can also use a grayscale version of the banner. To do that, you'll have <*shudder*> modify the code; but it's easy. To use the gray version of the larger banner, change the image reference from asi199900043.jpg to asi199900049.jpg. That is, change the "3" to a "9" and you've got it. For the smaller grayscale banner, get the code that goes with the small banner and change asi199900050.jpg to asi199900051.jpg; that is, change the last"0" to a "1". That's all there is to it.

    The web ring banner often looks best if you center it at the bottom of your web page. We don't include the <center> tags in the standard code, because that might mess up the way other folks have set up their web pages.

    Don't copy the web ring banner to your site and load it from here. If you just copy the code as is, someone coming in to your site will already have the image cached, so your site will load faster. It also means that you'll be displaying the latest banner if we update the image.

    Note: If you're running Cold Fusion on your web site, you should be able to pull in the code directly from the URL listed above each time the page is delivered. That would be a nifty way to make sure you've always got the latest rev, in case we revise it, though it might slow down delivery of your web page. We don't have a CF script for doing this yet, but if a Cold Fusion user writes one and sends it to us, we'll get it on line. (We don't use Cold Fusion on this site. It's only available for NT IIS servers, which are too unstable for our applications. But if you already have it, you might as well use it.)

    Also note: CyberTeams tells us that the next version of WebSite Director will be able to include in code from outside your local domain whenever a document is published to the public web; but that feature is not available in the current version (v1.2). (We do use WebSite Director to maintain this web site.)

  2. Send us the URL of Your Web Page

    At this point, you are pointing to the web ring. Now let's get the web ring pointing back to you.

    When the document containing this code is on the web, send email to ringmaster@asi.org with the URL of the document and the email address of the webmaster who maintains that file, along with a promise that you'll never, never, never change the location of that web page, modify the web ring code, or remove the code without notifying the ASI Ringmster at least a week in advance. (That last bit is because we want to avoid breaking the ring.)

    Note: The web ring won't know about you until we get this done. The good news is that we are very fast. Normally we will be able to add your web site to the ring within minutes we receive your email. Of course, if there are problems with the way you've implemented the web ring code on your site that will slow things down while we work out the bugs. The key is to follow the rules and make sure that you don't change the code.

Rules

  1. Don't change the URL of the page listed in the ring

    We promise that the home page for the Lunar Underground Web Ring will forever be at the URL you are reading right now:

    http://www.asi.org/adb/09/09/lugwrhome.html

    If you absolutely must move the web page that the web ring links to, write to us in advance. We will remove your old web page from the ring and insert the new one.

    Don't break the ring.

  2. Partipating sites must be related to the moon

    Obviously, web sites on this ring should have something to do with the moon. That's Earth's moon, Luna; not the cartoon character Sailor Moon, baby moon hubcaps, or that which is revealed by a thong bikini.

    Sites dealing with New Age religion and the astrological influence of the moon also would not fit the purpose of this web ring.

    Sites must have some original content related to the moon. We won't include sites in the ring if they contain nothing but a stack of banner ads.

  3. No adults-only content

    Let's keep it to web sites appropriate to a family audience.

  4. No browser crashers

    We won't add any sites that have browser-crashing code in them, or background music. If you use background music on your web site, just create a new web page as a portal to the web ring, and then link to your home page from there. We recommend you include a warning to visitors about the background music.

  5. Don't load LUGWR links into a frame

    Never set up the links to load someone else's web site into a frame on your web site.

  6. Don't open LUGWR links in a new window

    Don't modify the links to open a new window. If every site in the ring did this, a user browsing the ring would have new windows piling up until the web browser crashed on a memory fault.

    Having people find your site, and then leave via the web ring banner, is the nature of web rings. Users who find your site useful or interesting enough to keep the window open will either bookmark your site or manually open the next web ring link in a new window. Never force the user to do this.

  7. Where to put the web ring banner

    Generally, the web ring banner works best if it's centered at the bottom of the home page for your web site, but you are welcome to put it somewhere else if that fits better into the design of your site.

    The web ring banner does not have to be on the home page for your web site. (That is, the main entrance, or front page, or whatever you like to call the top page on your site) Obviously it does have to be somewhere on your web site.

  8. Linking back to your web ring portal page

    If you don't have the web ring banner on your home page, you must include links that make it straightfoward for a visitor to navigate back to the page containing the web ring banner.

    A simple text link will do. If you want to be more elegant, consider using a little button like this one from the Moon Society to link back to your web-ring portal page:

    Lunar Underground Web ring
    http://www.moonsociety.org/images/lugwr-btn.jpg

    Here's a grayscale version of the same button:

    Lunar Underground Web ring
    http://www.asi.org/images/1999/asi199900052.jpg

    For the minimalist approach, you could use one of these:

    Lunar Underground Web ring
    http://www.asi.org/images/1999/asi199900053.jpg
    Lunar Underground Web ring
    http://www.asi.org/images/1999/asi199900054.jpg

    You're welcome to be creative and design your own buttons. The only requirement is that they be obvious. If you do this, please tell us about it, and tell us whether other webmasters would be welcome to use your image.

    Incidentally, the Moon Society tells us that you are very welcome to use that button. It's just a variation on the web ring banner; provides a nice, consistent graphical appearance. This is good example of using a web-ring portal page rather than putting the banner on your web site's home page.

    If you use these buttons to link to a web ring portal page, do copy the button image to your site. That will speed up delivery of your web page because it's less likely that the user will have the button cached.

  9. Linking to the web ring without joining it

    Some webmasters might want to provide a link into the web ring, but not have their web sites join the ring. You're welcome to do that; and welcome to use any of the little buttons (the images without the text for the links) to illustrate the link.

    For a one-way link into the web ring, we recommend either linking to this home page for the Lunar Underground Web Ring; or, if you're feeling creative, send your visitor off on a random leap into the web ring with this:

    http://www.asi.org/cgi-bin/ring.pl?type=random&ring=lugwr.ring

Do we need any other rules?

We can figure out the rest of it and get more elegant documentation on line later, but right now, the Lunar Underground Web Ring is set up and working.

The Lunar Underground Web Ring is operated by Artemis Society International a service to the community of moon enthusiasts, astronomers, scientists, schools and organizations related to the study and development of the moon, and the members of the Lunar Industries Association. The web ring runs on a server owned by CyberTeams, hosted on pair networks. Response from the web ring server should be very, very fast except for those occasions when we experience network lag outside of pair networks.

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Lunar Underground Web Ring
LUNAR UNDERGROUND WEB RING
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