Improving the webring links, one build at a time

If you have ever clicked the little ← and → arrows on a member’s site, you have used the plumbing that ties Static.Quest together. Those links are how a web ring works: every site points to the next and previous member, and visitors can walk the whole circle without ever visiting the hub. This post is a look at how those links worked until recently, what was wrong with them, and how we made them better while staying 100% static. How it used to work The original approach leaned on the browser. Members embedded links like this: <a href="https://static.quest/next/?host=yourwebsite.com">&#8594;</a> When someone clicked that link, they landed on a small page on Static.Quest whose only job was to run some JavaScript: Read the host value out of the query string fetch() a JSON file listing all the members Find the current host in the array Set window.location to the neighbor’s URL It worked, and honestly it worked fine for years. But it had a few rough edges worth fixing: JavaScript required.…