The Calligraphy Ring Newsletters
December 1997 February 1998 May 1998
The Calligraphy Ring is off to a great start! There are 10 sites already in the ring and 7 more waiting in the queue.* I am really encouraged and I hope that you are too.
If you are waiting in the queue and have not been entered into the ring yet, the reason is you have not put the ring's HTML fragment on your page. As soon as you get the HTML added to your page, please e-mail me. If you need to get the HTML code or update information about your site, you can do this simply by using the "edit site" option at the bottom of the ring homepage.
The order of the sites in the ring is automatically rearranged by the WebRing computer once a week. The order is random. We can specify that the "reshuffling" be done on any time schedule we want. If you are unhappy with the weekly schedule, please tell me.
If you have any problems, questions, suggestions, please contact me. I am really busy, but I have made managing the Calligraphy Ring a top priority. I believe in what the ing stands for - promoting more interest in calligraphy on the internet.
If you ever have a concern that another site in the ring is hurting the quality of the ring as a whole, please do not hesitate to contact me. Your complaint will be kept confidential. Indeed, if a site is pulling down the quality of the ring, I will remove that site (at least until the site owner makes improvements).
If you know a calligrapher who has a site that you think should be in the ring, please contact that person and encourage them to join us. The ring is a great opportunity to get noticed on the internet. This should be especially attractive to new sites.
Lastly, if everyone who understands how would download the ring graphics, put them on your own server, and edit your HTML accordingly, it would help a great deal, especially as the ring grows larger. If you don't know how to do this, then please don't attempt it.
I will try to send out a newsletter on a monthly basis. In the next newsletter, I will give you some statistics on how well the ring is doing. I think you'll be delightfully surprised! I hope everyone has a great holiday season. Best wishes for a super 1998 to all of you!
Jim Bennett - Manager - The Calligraphy Ring
* There are several more than this now!
Our ring is growing! We now have 21 members on board! I would say that we have had a very successful beginning. I anticipate that 1998 will be a good "growth year" for us.
I promised you statistics, and here they are!
The Webring stats show that there have been 2988 hits at our ring sites since the Calligraphy Ring began just three months ago! Here is a chart which shows some individual site statistics.
Traffic received from the Webring
Total 2wks Site
1. 128 35 Andrew's Pages
2. 107 26 Calligraphy with Jim Bennett
3. 104 36 Callig Mailing List Site
4. 100 23 Kate Gladstone's Handwriting Page
5. 99 14 Dunleavy Design (Calligraphy)
6. 88 14 Angelo's Calligraphy Page
7. 84 12 Calligraphy, Celtic Art and Quilling pages
8. 82 17 Calligraphy Page
9. 76 22 Literary Calligraphy by Susan Loy
10. 76 63 Calligrafx
11. 74 42 Catherine's Celtic Cloister
12. 73 16 Calligraphy Ring Homepage
13. 69 15 Special Touch Calligraphy
14. 64 20 The Calligraphers Guild of Manitoba
15. 62 39 Ketubah by Karny
16. 55 14 Calligraphy by Victorian Elegance
17. 50 13 Glen Epsteins Calendars
18. 50 18 Calligraphy Designs by Eileen Elfers
19. 25 25 Elins homepage
20. 8 8 Classic Calligraphy
21. 7 7 Extraordinary Letterforms
Impressed? Please note that these are all hits that none of us would have received had we not been in the ring! These stats only show the visits we received FROM THE RING - specifically, these stats count only the visits you received because visitors clicked ring links. These stats do not include hits you received when people came to your site from any other source such as from search engines. Which brings up another subject:
REGISTERING WITH SEARCH ENGINES To bring in visitors, we must be registered with the search engines. There are a number of ways to do this, but my favorite method is to use SignPost. This web site takes you through the process step-by-step. Their URL is: http://www.signpost.ca/
INVITING OTHERS TO JOIN THE RING Please extend an invitation to others to join our ring. The ring brings more visitors and it helps promote calligraphy on the internet. A personal e-mail note is by far the best way to attract a new member. We especially want to attract people who already have top listings on the search engines. My suggestion: periodically do a search for "calligraphy," and, when you locate a good site which is not in our ring, send the people an e-mail commending them for their site and extending an invitation for them to check us out and consider joining our association.
SELF-POLICING If you know of a site in our ring which is not displaying the ring link properly or is somehow causing trouble for the rest of us, please report it to me, and I will take care of the matter.
MESSAGE BOARD I will be installing a message board on the ring homepage which is now officially located at http://members.xoom.com/studioarts/calligring.html
NEWSLETTER ARCHIVE I will also be adding an archive page for ring newsletters. ICQ Anyone have
ICQ? My ICQ# is 6996021. If you have ICQ, I'd appreciate having your number. If you don't know what ICQ is, check their web site at http://www.icq.com/ ICQ is a communication system which enables people to contact friends on the web faster than e-mail.
CONCLUSION Remember, the suggestion box is always open; I am on-line just about every day. Please share your thoughts - questions - ramblings. Happy calligraphying! Our next newsletter will be the Spring issue.
NEWS
The big news is that the Calligraphy Ring is now 30 sites strong! That's correct; we now have 30 members in our ring! That is 9 more than what we had when I sent out the previous newsletter.
Talking of numbers, our statistics are up too. During the last 8 weeks, we have had 3956 hits through the ring. That is up from 2988 which was the statistic for the 8 weeks prior to the February newsletter. So, the ring is generating more hits for everyone.
I urge all of you to take a tour through our (your) ring, and when you land on a new site or a site that has been recently updated, take the time to e-mail the person a short note. There is truly some excellent work in our ring. Personally, I am honored to be affiliated with such a fantastic group of scribes.
NEW FEATURE
I am planning to add a new feature to the ring homepage - a members' preview page. This will be a page of thumbnails and short descriptions which will link directly to member pages. It would enable a visitor to view a preview of your site and go directly there from the ring home site.
If you would like to participate in the preview page, please e-mail me the following: (1) your site title and URL, (2) a short description of your site, and (3) the URL for your thumbnail. For the thumbnail, I would like to link directly to your graphic file so I can get the page up and running as quickly and easily as possible. Also, if we do it this way, it gives you the capability of changing the graphic that appears on the preview page.
GROWING
We are definitely growing. I am looking forward to more growth during the summer when I am on vacation from teaching and can devote more of my time to developing/promoting the ring.
I continue to encourage each of you to contact other calligraphers that you know who are not in our ring and invite them to join us.
Also, I invite you to send me your suggestions, criticisms, accolades, etc. Please share your thoughts. I would appreciate hearing what you think.
I will send another newsletter during the summer.