Hello everyone, my name is Gus & I’m working on a project called the Smallweb Subway! It’s a series of webrings that are visualized on a subway style map. Each “line” is a webring with a different theme. This is an open project that folks are welcome to join as an experiment in community building. The map is a WIP, but you can find all the widgets here: gusbus.space/smallweb-subway
Current Lines
Scifi (Silver Line) : Websites with original scifi work.
Zines (Blue Line) : Websites with zines and zine resources.
Comics (Orange Line) : Websites showcasing original comics.
Creatives Club (Yellow Line) : Websites belonging to member of a DMV-based art club.
Doodle Crew (Green Line) : Websites belonging to members of the Doodle Crew Discord server.
Poetry (Red Line) : Websites showcasing original poetry.
Instructions to join
You can find the instructions to join on the project’s GitHub repo
Potential Future Lines
fantasy art
music?
Please let me know if you’d add your site to a potential future line, and feel free to suggest a theme for a new line. I’d love to hear what folks think about the project in general!
Ah I haven’t seen the Rail before! Thanks for sharing!
Intersecting routes is actually already possible! Right now it’s just two widget on the same page, but it still enables “transfers” from one line to the other! You can see that on my DoodleBot page. In the future I’d like to make a single widget for stations that are on multiple lines to make it feel/look a bit more like transfering from one subway line to another.
Woah I definitely think so! You’re art definitely has a scifi feel to it. I really like it
There’s even an unoccupied spot where the Scifi & Zine lines already intersect that you could fill if you’d like If you add both the widgets, I’d be happy to add you to the map as a transfer station!
This is the cutest thing ever – call it hormones if you want, but it nearly has me in tears…! I may try to join once my artsy-page is more set up, haha. Maybe a future line could be train/public transport related stuff? :P maybe a bit meta and niche, but as someone interested in city planning it’d be cute. I can also see it being cute to add a train station to marigold town :)
omg stop…i want to make a public transit shrine soooooooo badly but im trying to figure out how to do that without using too much personal information haha. id looooove a train/transit based webring…this subway idea is cute as hell i just dont have any pages that would put me on it!!
I’m also keeping a list of potential lines that folks have expressed interest in (fantasy, music, game dev, computer hardware, etc.), so you’re welcome to suggest a line for consideration if you’d like!
Here’s the current list of potential lines with tallies for the number of folks interested:
Fantasy: II
Game dev: I
Music: I
Linux/open source technologies: I
Activism: II
Maker: I
For anyone reading, please feel free to voice interest in one of these and I will add your tally (and make note of your username to notify you if the line materializes)!
A couple of people mentioned The Rail. It was a very early webring system. WebRing was the original in 1995, followed by Bomis and The Rail in 1996.
The Rail had a Conductor, Enjay Sea, who ran it for 20 years, 166 days and 15 hours before he closed it down in 2017 - he really did keep track (lol) of it. At one time he had 100 websites a day asking to join. I never joined it, but the little track logo was everywhere.
If you add both the widgets, I’d be happy to add you to the map as a transfer station!
like which are the most requested…