Denis Howe started EUROPa (Expanding Unidirectional Ring Of Pages) at
Imperial College in 1994. The idea developed further when
Giraldo Hierro conceptualized a central
CGI (Common Gateway Interface) script to enhance functionality.
Sage Weil developed such a script in May 1994. Weil's script gained popularity, pushing Weil in June 1995 to form a company called WebRing. In 1997, Weil sold WebRing to
Starseed, Inc. In 1998, Starseed was acquired by
GeoCities, which made no major changes to the system. Just a few months later, in early 1999,
Yahoo! bought GeoCities, and eighteen months after the acquisition, on September 5, 2000, Yahoo! unveiled a fully overhauled WebRing, known as Yahoo! WebRing. Although Yahoo!'s implementation was meant to streamline the way the rings were managed and provide a more consistent interface for all rings, many of these changes were unpopular with ringmasters accustomed to the older system which gave them more flexibility. On April 15, 2001, Yahoo! ended its support of WebRing, leaving the site in the hands of one technician from the original WebRing, Timothy Killeen. On October 12, 2001, he unveiled a WebRing no longer affiliated with Yahoo!. In the years since that change, many of the features which had been stripped by Yahoo!, particularly customization options, were re-implemented into the WebRing system. On September 26, 2006, WebRing Inc. announced a new WebRing Premium Membership Program. Memberships were separated into two types, WebRing 1.0 and WebRing 2.0. Sites that were part of WebRing 1.0 would be limited to 50 webrings per URL. Existing 1.0 members could maintain more than 50, but can not add more. In conjunction with the premium membership program, WebRing introduced an
affiliate program, in which webmasters earned money when others join webrings from their site, and they earned an additional payment if the new member purchases a premium membership. In early October 2007, the US Trademark office granted WebRing a trademark on its name. Also in that month, Yahoo!'s long partnership ended, when WebRing ownership repurchased WebRing stock held by Yahoo!, marking the first time since the late 1990s that WebRing was privately held. By August 15, 2020, webring.com became inaccessible, and as of December 18, 2021, the domain name has been taken over by a
domain squatter. ==Other webring websites==