Home of the Insidious Ring of Moriarty

History of the webring --who made this? who's Moriarty? who's the Ringmaster?
Criteria of the webring --who should join? how are websites chosen?
Joining the webring --how do I join? how do I edit my site info once I join?
Help on joining --wait, can you explain joining again, more slowly?
Two Kinds of Navigation --what's a nav-box and what's a nav-bar? how do I install the code?

History

This webring, originally founded by David Rohrman aka Professor Moriarty, was passed onto Rick Freeman aka Fred Porlock at Yoxley Old Place when David graduated from his college and could no longer keep his website nor his ring. It has now passed onto me, as Porlock did not want to maintain two separate webrings on the same subject indefinitely. I, Cress, aka Miss Roylott in Sherlockian circles, shall do my best to maintain the ring to the satisfaction of the members. Here is a quotation about the original Moriarty, our ring's namesake:

No, I don't know why Dave made nearly all the Moriarty ring's graphics and logos relate to Holmes, rather than Moriarty.

Criteria

This webring is dedicated to Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's classic works, the Sherlock Holmes novels and short stories, which are collectively called the canon. Any website containing material about Sherlock Holmes is eligible for the webring provided it meets the following criteria as well:

I also have noticed lately that a lot of websites are commercial in nature, trying to sell some product to Sherlockians and often having little else to do with Sherlock Holmes. I will consider letting such commercial sites into the webring--and there are indeed some worthwhile Sherlockian businesses on the web--but I do not want this webring to become a mere collection of crass merchandising. So please understand that I don't guarantee that I'll let everyone in. You can always apply, though.

If your site meets the above criteria, then please fill out the form for joining the ring.

Joining the webring

If you want to, either print out these instructions or keep this window open so that you can read these instructions while following along at the Webring website.

To join the webring, you need to go to this ring's "hub" page, click on the "Join This Ring" link, and then follow the instructions given. It will ask you first for your Webring ID (which is a username and password); if you don't already have such an ID, you shall have to get one. After getting that ID, it will ask you for website information so that you can join the Moriarty webring. Fill in everything required and then wait for me to come view and approve your website.

Please make sure that you provide a working email address and a working URL (website address). I hate having websites in the ring that are nonfunctional and/or provide me with no way to contact the person who maintains the site! And if either of these addresses changes while you are a member, please be sure to update this information by following the steps to edit your site info. You can email me for help if you have any trouble, but I am not able to access and edit that information for you.

Once you've applied for membership through the "Join This Ring" button, you need to wait a bit. What happens next is that I get an email telling me of your application for membership. I'll go to your website and approve it or deny it, then you'll get an email from Webring telling you my decision. If you're accepted, I'll tell you the steps for getting a nav-bar, which is a required bit of HTML code that you must install somewhere on your website. You can put this either on the front page or on a clearly labeled and accessible Webrings page. If you don't understand how to copy and paste the HTML code into your site, let me know, and I'll talk you through it. When the code is on your website, a navigation bar will appear on it for the Moriarty ring. If you are a member of more than one Webring, their nav-bars will be grouped together into one block.

In some cases, though, there may be something wrong with your application and I will try to contact you but will receive an error message saying that your email address doesn't work. In that case, I will have no way to contact you unless I can obtain a good, working address from your website, or can reach you through a guestbook, if you have one. If you don't hear from me at all within about a week after you try to join, please try to contact me directly through email to ask me about it. I appreciate it if you will try to do this, because sometimes people just won't inquire at all, and I'm forced to simply deny or delete them by default.

Edit your site info

All editing & management of your site information will be done at Webring's website.

Assuming that you're not logged-in right now, go first to the Webring homepage and log-in with your Webring ID so that the page no longer says, "Welcome Guest" and instead says "Welcome [username]". (Look for the "Sign-in" link at the top right of the page.)

Now that you are logged in, there should now appear a box in the left-hand column of the page called "Member Tools", which allows you to View Rings (if you manage one or more webrings), View Ring Sites, and View Websites. The View Ring Sites link allows you edit your site's information in the Ring and allows you to get the navigation code that is required for ring membership.

But, if you want to change/update your website's URL, you should click on the View Websites Link, which allows you to edit that information.

Two Kinds of Navigation

The nav-box

This is a sample of what an installed navigation box, or nav-box, will look like on your website:

This Insidious Ring of Moriarty site is owned by NAME_HERE. Want to join the Insidious Ring of Moriarty?
\|Previous 5 \|Prev \|Next \|Skip Next \|Random \|Next 5 \|List\|

Use the "View Source" command on your web browser to look at this HTML code, or you can copy & paste any of the codes on the Navigator page. When you've copied the HTML code that you want, place it somewhere on your website, and try not to bury it where it can't be seen, because visitors sometimes get lost looking for it. Also, you need to replace each SITE_ID_HERE with your actual Site ID Number, replace each EMAIL_HERE with your actual email address, and replace each NAME_HERE with your name. If you're at all uncomfortable with working with HTML code, or think it's a hassle, use the new navigation instead. If you don't know your Site ID number, please tell me, and I'll find it out for you.

Please note that the two images used in this nav-box also need to be installed on your own website for them to show up there. Save the images from here and upload them to your own webpage server, and then just make sure that the images are placed into the same directory as the HTML document that has the webring nav-box.

To Save each image:
On Windows, right-click your mouse on the image and choose the "Save Image As..." option.
On a Mac, hold down the mouse button on the image until the menu pops up, and choose the "Save Image As..." option.

If you are savvy with HTML code and know how to, you may customize the colors, the fonts, and such things of the nav-box for your own website, but don't mess with the links in the nav-box, or you'll risk breaking the navigation code. If something breaks, be sure to email me for help.

Also, David created a few different versions of the nav-box so that you may choose a navigator other than the default one shown here.

The nav-bar

The newer version of the code is a simpler navigation bar that is scripted and is supposed to help prevent broken webrings. This is what the new nav-bar looks like:

If you belong to more than one webring, then a nav-bar for each one that is associated to your webring ID will automatically be added to your website. All the nav-bars group together in a stack on your website. However, you have no control over the appearance of the nav-bar, and cannot customize it like the old HTML version of the code.