The ring
Sites that carry this counter and link to one another. Forward, back, or at random – this is how people found each other before search engines did it for them.
Nobody in the ring yet.
Joining
A site that carries the counter joins from its own statistics page – through the management link. We fetch the page once and check that the counter really is on it; after that a person looks at the entry before it appears in the ring.
The ring is a list among equals, the home page is a shop window – so we ask separately. Without the tick the entry stays only in the ring.
These four links go on the page itself – no script, no image: