Tuesday, April 22, 2008

Onwards and Upwards!

We currently have 73 active members!! That's pretty good considering it's only been two days since we changed hosts.

I have finally gotten the corrected ring code sent out to those folks who had the bad code I initially had listed or who were still showing the RingSurf code. I was able to move a bunch of people to the active site list today. Thank you very much!!

The original blog ring had approximately 600 site listed in it. When I sent out e-mail to all the site owners, I got well over 100 bounced messages, so I suspect a large number of sites may have also been bad. I think we can steadily grow our little ring back into a ring of hundreds of sites. By all means let your fellow fiber addicts friends know the ring is open to new members. The more the merrier!!

Sunday, April 20, 2008

Making Progress!

All righty! We seem to be headed in the right direction. I'm going through the list and activating sites.

A few sites have signed up with alt-webrings, but have the old RingSurf code posted. I'll be sending you e-mail with the current alt-webrings code, just as soon as my e-mail account is activated again. [It would seem that gmail got a bit concerned about the 1200 messages I sent out in the past 36 hours and deactivated me as a potential spammer. Oopsies. :-) ]

The other "problem" we have is that the first dozen or so folks that I activated actually have a bad chunk of ring code. I did a bad editing job and each of those sites is currently sharing the same Site ID according to the code. I'll be sending you the corrected bit of code too. I'm just glad I noticed the problem fairly early in the game. Kudos to Dee for also noticing the goofed up surfing ability.

Thanks again for all your patience!!

Fiber Arts Bloggers is moving

Ok. Between the deluge of complaints and the frustrations I already had with trying to sort out Ring Surf, I've decided to move the ring to alt-webrings.com. If you want to sign up, go here. I'll keep the RingSurf site up until June 1st to give people plenty of time to move, should they decide to do so. After that point I will delete the RingSurf site and all blogs which have not been migrated will be removed from the ring. Hopefully this will resolve the problems/complaints folks have.

To get signed up at alt-webrings, you will need to fill out the join form. For the majority of people, the "Site Entry URL" is your blog URL. Create a Site ID for your site and a password. Remember this information as you will need it to edit your entry later. You will also need to enter your name and e-mail address. The rest of the blanks should be self-explanatory. After filling out the form, click submit. On the next page, click the "Get Code" button on the left side. This generates your ring code. Copy that chunk of code into your site and remove the old RingSurf code.

I'll send another e-mail out to all the current ring members shortly advising you directly of the change. I'm sorry for the confusion and having to change things twice. It became very apparent that nobody was happy with the new RingSurf changes and that the new format was not going to satisfy the majority of members who replied about it. I hope this will resolve most of those troubles.

Saturday, April 19, 2008

Ring Check Failure List

Ring Surf has started to check all the blogs in the blogring for the proper ring code. As a result of the recent changes at RingSurf (and changes to the ring code), there are many member blogs which now have the "wrong" ring code posted. I'm attempting to e-mail all the ring members to let you know individually of these changes. In any event, I will NOT be deleting blogs from the failure list until at least Saturday May 3rd so you have time to put the new code in place. Depending upon how well/badly things go with the new, improved RingSurf, I may move the blog ring elsewhere.

The latest copy of the ring code is available here. There are two versions of the ring code. One of them is plain text and the other includes the blog button image. If you want to add the blog button manually, you can copy it from the menu to the right of this page. Please copy to your own computer/server rather than linking to the image here.

Feel free to send questions to msmorenna (at) gmail (dot) com or leave a comment.

Saturday, April 5, 2008

New RingSurf Format!

RingSurf apparently decided to change things drastically this past week. There is no longer any custom ringcode or any surfing the ring from within a blog. All links to the ring now go back to the RingSurf site and all ring surfing is done from there, which seems very awkward. I didn't have any notice that things would be changing or I'd have let you know. Be patient while we all adjust to the new system!

The new RingSurf automatically checks all member sites for the Ring Code. If you don't have the Ring Code on your site or you remove it, it appears that Ring Surf will remove your blog from the ring. I no longer have the option of sending you an e-mail or a copy of the code when your blog is flagged. When you apply to join the ring, Ring Surf checks your site to make sure the code is there and then puts your site in the queue for my approval. I check the queue on weekends, so approval isn't instant. With the new RingSurf format, the same rules still apply: your blog needs to be about fiber stuff and you need to post a minimum of once per month. As always, no purely commercial sites.