If you could build your own link list, what would you want?

[Jim]

As in features...
What would be your wish list?
So far I have
Toplist
Checking for recips and changes to the pages daily
A few other things but not much.

Help me out here...you guys have been doing this for years, help me out.

[Greenguy]

You seem to know it all - why ask on the board :D

[Cleo]

What does this have to do with motorcycles and lumber?

[Rocco]

think a good design is the most important thing :D

http://www.******.com/
http://www.link-o-rama.com/

[RawAlex]

At least to start with, you want to work hard to make sure that most of your incoming traffic is converted into outgoing traffic. That will help to drive demand to be on your list, and will allow you better link trades.

As your list grows, you can add more "roadblocks" and diversions to the game.

Alex

[Mr. Blue]

Basically Autogal SQL only for Link Lists. I love everything about the Autogal tgp script.

[terry]

Good one Jim.. I always wanted to get my own link list but could never really get around to making one properly... will be good to see what others have to say.

[plateman]

import hosted FS and gall through a text file.. I think jim you mentioned other good features and if sparky is making a script - I may buy it, I am in the market for one soon, I can get another link admin for 150 so its got to be around the same price.. Oh and if its template driven it should be easy to code...

[Smutferret]

Hey Jim,

Off the top of my head, if I were looking for a link list script right now I would probably look for features like...

A very flexible template system that would be able to produce good SE friendly pages.

An advanced blacklist feature for blocking cheaters and maybe a whitelist as well.

Some kind of email confirmation and rejection template system.

A good site review system that would allow me to skip sites and come back to them later.

Maybe and email database for contacting submitters.

Those are all I can think of at the moment...:)

Regards,
SF

[Boogie]

The things that my current link script doesnt have that I really wish it did are

1) easy import of mass links, FHS and etc...

2) a really good linkbot that could check for various important stuff
a) linkback
b) changes in the content
c) possible changes in HTML
d) the other important linkbot stuff

3) if you're adding a toplist script for it why not add one for each category as well? To encourage linking to category pages as well as the main :)

[Useless]

As the Boogmeister said, everyone seems to be looking for a better bot. The bot becomes more and more important every day.

Otherwise, I'd want Raw Alex's FindPics design and Cleo's recips.

[eman]

Easy importation of free hosted galleries and sites is a biggy.
Also I'd like to have a facility to share listings between scripts - in my case linkadmin and gossamer links. That would require some sort of database translation, I imagine (he said, totally ignorant of what might be the best way to do it). Point is, I'm entering stuff twice and I've got better things to do.

[Jim]

Thanks guys, except Greenie :)
We are starting from scratch almost so any and all good features will be there.

[Jim]

You seem to know it all - why ask on the board :D
While I can't argue about most of what you said, I really don't know much about link list admin features. But the rest of what you said is true. :)

[Greenguy]

Here's a couple of tips, my friend (even though I had to hear about this little project that you will own when you announced it on the board)

Toplist
That's not really part of a Link List's admin, since it runs off the server stats & there's so many top list & ranking scripts out there that I wouldn't bother building something custom into an admin.

Checking for recips and changes to the pages dailyThe recip part is easy - but the changes to the pages, this would be rather tricky - see, a TGP can check the galleries that it's linking to for html changes because (and someone correct me if I'm wrong) they check the characters on the page & keep a list of the page sizes that they are linking to - a change in the page size would mean a change in the html & thus, a verification process would have to take place. The big point is that it's only 1 page.

But Link Lists link to Free Sites, which are usually 4 pages, so you'd need to have the script spider the pages on the site & check the sizes for all of the pages. But the problem with that is if the site has any other links to pages on that domain (which is a very common thing with copyrights & extra links & 2257 stuff & whatnot) then the spider would either have to total up a lot of pages (assuming that all the links are not hard links with the domain in them, which would probably throw the spider off) OR the reviewer would have to tell the admin which pages to monitor & which pages to ignore & that seems like it'd be a HUGE pain in the ass.

Any other dreams of yours that I can crush? :D

[Jim]

Here's a couple of tips, my friend (even though I had to hear about this little project that you will own when you announced it on the board)


That's not really part of a Link List's admin, since it runs off the server stats & there's so many top list & ranking scripts out there that I wouldn't bother building something custom into an admin.

The recip part is easy - but the changes to the pages, this would be rather tricky - see, a TGP can check the galleries that it's linking to for html changes because (and someone correct me if I'm wrong) they check the characters on the page & keep a list of the page sizes that they are linking to - a change in the page size would mean a change in the html & thus, a verification process would have to take place. The big point is that it's only 1 page.

But Link Lists link to Free Sites, which are usually 4 pages, so you'd need to have the script spider the pages on the site & check the sizes for all of the pages. But the problem with that is if the site has any other links to pages on that domain (which is a very common thing with copyrights & extra links & 2257 stuff & whatnot) then the spider would either have to total up a lot of pages (assuming that all the links are not hard links with the domain in them, which would probably throw the spider off) OR the reviewer would have to tell the admin which pages to monitor & which pages to ignore & that seems like it'd be a HUGE pain in the ass.

Any other dreams of yours that I can crush? :D
You are crushing Sparkys dreams if that is possible :)

[Greenguy]

If you can come up with an idea that I can't squish with my puny little mind, then you will have a rock solid project on your hands.

I'm a phone call away |waves|

[Jim]

We are woking on it my friend :)
Sparky is building away as well as urb.
I'll call in the morning. Tomorrow morning is lumber day. Do yourself a favor when you can. Get a Rhino lining on your truck. You would not believe the rust I saw under the plastic liner we both used.

[Linkster]

Adding a few items to the wishlist as requested :)

The ability to run the link-checker as a cronjob and also have it remove links (sites) that go 404,302 etc (variable so I can set it to only 404s or only 302s) - with the ability to do a snapshot prior to the deletes as part of the cron (just in case)

I dont think you want to check for changes to the pages as GG stated, however the ability to check for the if-modified-since to "update" dates on sites in case you only list sites for 6 months or so. (this should also be an included setting variable - time links are good and time links are new, featured, recommended etc)
Which also brings up the next feature - the ability to break a category down into featured, new , recommended etc - and have those be able to be randomly rotated from a database table per category

definitely agree with the import text file feature for HFS's

ability to select any number of sites from a search (say for a particular domain or submitter, or email) and delete all of them in one button push - no check box selects required - however the ability to also delete one-by-one if desired.

blacklist and whitelist definitely - with the ability to have a separate whitelist partner submit system - working independently of the normal submit system

ability to select more that 1 site per day by type of submitter for acceptance - say categories of submitters that can submit 5 per day etc.

theres just a few to chew on :) - oh yeah - the ability to edit anything in the database myself LOL - without learning a new language

[swedguy]

But Link Lists link to Free Sites, which are usually 4 pages, so you'd need to have the script spider the pages on the site & check the sizes for all of the pages. But the problem with that is if the site has any other links to pages on that domain (which is a very common thing with copyrights & extra links & 2257 stuff & whatnot) then the spider would either have to total up a lot of pages (assuming that all the links are not hard links with the domain in them, which would probably throw the spider off) OR the reviewer would have to tell the admin which pages to monitor & which pages to ignore & that seems like it'd be a HUGE pain in the ass.

Any other dreams of yours that I can crush? :D
It is very doable. Mine gets it right 99 times out of 100.

[terry]

damn.. now this is interesting.. I cant wait to see some final product .. you guys gonna sell me a copy?

[JohnnyR]

What I want is a good acceptance/rejection mailing system. Which would eventually mention the site in question too.

[Jim]

Keep them coming guys. I talked to Sparky yesterday and he said he was taking notes :) I truly believe that if it is possible to do, he can do it.

Javes.com A Sparky and Jim Joint

[Jim]

I have no idea why I started this in Chit Chat but I am going to move it to the main forum. There is no spam and it is nothing but business. I will leave a redirect up.

[Jim]

And...the graphic and html design is done. So, as soon as Sparky is done, we are ready for business. Of course, it looks beautiful :) Now the features are being added to the admin.

[Rocco]

And...the graphic and html design is done. So, as soon as Sparky is done, we are ready for business. Of course, it looks beautiful :) Now the features are being added to the admin.

hahaha LOL :D see Jim - as I told:

think a good design is the most important thing :D

http://www.******.com/
http://www.link-o-rama.com/

[Greenguy]

I have no idea why I started this in Chit Chat but I am going to move it to the main forum. There is no spam and it is nothing but business. I will leave a redirect up.One would think that it belongs here (http://www.greenguysboard.com/board/forumdisplay.php?f=7) (even I post my LOR announcements there)

[Fido]

I made myself a program, which allows me to control site reviewing for my LL by voice commands. It is a BIG time saver.

[Verbal]

What's up guys? |waves|

I think this is a *great* plan, Jim & Sparky. I am very much in the market for a new LL script. I coded my own several years ago that I still use, but I just don't have the time these days to add all the new features I'd like. It would be great to have you guys develop one, based on the input of everyone here that'll actually use the script. All the other scripts available seem to lack in some crucial areas, so I've been pushing off buying one. The best would be a combination of xpowerlinks, link admin and links sql.

Suggestions/Wish List:

- Partner Accounts! (with an option to turn this feature on/off and also still allow/disallow free submissions too at the same time. Also, different types of Partners - to let the one's you trust most be approved instantly w/o review, etc.)

- Partner Control Panel! (a backend where partners could login and see all the sites they've listed, what's in the review queue, reviewer's comments, how many hits their sites have received, any advertising campaigns they've purchased. Also, it would be cool if partners could queue up to X sites at a time so they don't have to submit sites every damn day.)

- Reviewer Control Panel! (allow for multiple reviewers to be able to have their own accounts, that have stats about how many sites they've reviewed and in what categories, etc. Their own review queues, so like Reviewer X can choose only to review certain categories. Or a way to divide the master queue up evenly amongst reviewers. This will also help the site owner keep tabs on his reviewers.)

- Template based front end! (where you upload your website template w/ tags where all the links and categories should appear. The script could then generate your pages on the fly, or write them out daily/hourly with cron to an include file. Should be very SE friendly and crawlable. Maybe have options for each page to specify page titles, keywords, etc.)

- Multiple link list management! (Imagine running 10 linklists through this one script. This should be as easy as adding an extra MySQL field to specify which linklist the site belongs too, or if the site belongs to multiple linklist. Submitters/Partners could then submit once and be listed on several sites. Reviewers could manage everything from one admin area.)

I have tons of other ideas.. but, I'll stop for now. :)

Also.. Agree w/ others on other stuff:
HFS importer, better link-checker, improved blacklist, advanced search

Agree w/ Greenguy, you don't need a traffic trade script.. the site owner can use any of the existing ones, by putting that code into their site template.

[Verbal]

But Link Lists link to Free Sites, which are usually 4 pages, so you'd need to have the script spider the pages on the site & check the sizes for all of the pages.

Well, why can't this be done? Have the bot spider each page, then add up the total size of the entire freesite and add up the total number of links for the freesite. Store these values to check against when the bot comes back later. :)

Don't listen to GG, Jim. :D if you guys get this going I'll be one of your first customers. Now get coding already!

[swedguy]

You can also cut down on the review time a lot by incorporating http://www.getid3.org/ :)

[Linkster]

Adding to the list:

A built in ad rotator - similar to the rotating HFS's listings - so that we dont have to use external programs

The ability to build an html (detailed info and reviews if wanted) page for each free or pay site listed from a template in addition to its regular link listing in a category and have a small link next to the regular listing for "details" - and straight static html listing - no redirecting/302/cgi etc. make it easy for the bots to follow :)

[SortLinks]

good 404 bad link checker in front of new 2257 regulations :) So you could check who was scared and deleted his free site :)

[Greenguy]

Well, why can't this be done? Have the bot spider each page, then add up the total size of the entire freesite and add up the total number of links for the freesite. Store these values to check against when the bot comes back later. :)Re-read my entire post my friend :)

[Verbal]

Re-read my entire post my friend :)

Ah, I just re-read it and noticed I've totally overlooked your point (and a good one). :) So I have to agree with you, the freesite link-checker would certainly be a bitch to code without some sort of crazy limits on where it goes and stores. I would sure hate to code this thing. :)

Now I'm interested in how Swedguy has implemented this so that it works so well.

[PR_Tom]

Make sure the "link check bot" crawls the entire free site. Maybe take a CRC sum (or whatever) of the entire free site, that way ANY change should show and you can dig deeper.

[PR_Tom]

Hmm ok so I skipped ahead then went back and read more..
Maybe lay down the law and require 4 pages. index, main , gal1, gal2. Period.

[swedguy]

Now I'm interested in how Swedguy has implemented this so that it works so well.
It's not that hard actually.

Go to the index page and fetch all links, keep all links that are 1 dir deep (works on 99% of all sites). I'll fine tune that part when I get some time over. It should be dynamic depending on how many dirs deep the original site is.

Now we have a bunch of links that the script thinks are main page links. Fetch all links on the "main" page and keep the ones that are 1 dir deep. Go to the links and see if it has links to images, if it doesn't, discard it, it's not a gallery. If it does, keep it.

Now we have an index, main, gallery and images trail that we can do whatever we want to do with :)

There are some other filters. But that's the basics of it.

[swedguy]

And it doesn't work to save the size of the html pages. There's way too many who have rotating banners :(

There are other ways that I think are better and still letting the webmaster be a lil creative :)

[Verbal]

Cool, thanks for sharing, Swedguy. |thumb It was that "1 dir deep" thing I wasn't sure about, but yeah for the most part that seems to be how most freesites are laid out. (I have seen many that jump up a directory too from the index page, for example).

[Jim]

Well, I have been told by Sparky that everything mentioned here can be done and most of it is already working. When I open, it will all be working.

[Mishi]

I have tons of other ideas.. but, I'll stop for now. :)

Don't stop, baby! ;)

DragonList v.2.3 has a lot of the features you mentioned. V.3.0 will be a complete overhaul, and the more input I can get (directly or indirectly, bwahahaha) the better. |pink

[Verbal]

Hi Mishi, checking out your script now (looks impressive!). |waves|

Couple other ideas:

Sponsors Table:
Basically a table containing each sponsor's name, url and a text box for notes.

Sponsor Sites Table:
A table storing paysite name, paysite affiliate url, pretty/fake url (to be shown to surfers on mouseover for example), # clicks sent to that site (by day,month,year), which category(s) it belongs to and which sponsor it belongs to.

Better Mass-Site Editing Controls:
You know how hotmail has a check box next to each email and one at the top that lets you check all the boxes? A LL script could use this feature too. :) You could then pull up say Teen sites or Bob's sites, click the check button to check all of them off, and either edit, delete, de-activate, approve, blacklist or even move them all to a different category. With one click.

Option to turn on/off click tracking: Not everyone needs it, and hard-links seem to be the way to go anyways.

Easy Way to Mass Review:
Right now all these scripts require you to click on "Edit" to make changes approve/ban the site. That's OK, but it means you have to do this one-by-one for every site. What would be very cool, is to turn on a feature that let's you edit say 1-X number of sites on a page. Or when you show all sites in your queue, have all the fields already editable, and a "Save" button at the bottom.

Better Database Backup, Import/Export Tools: should have at least some simple tools to backup or at least let you download your database from the admin. Also, stuff like Exporting all your Partners email addresses to a file, for example.


So, you guys are gonna give me a nice discount for all these ideas, right? :D

[Xeno]

lol....Jim....watch out for ideas that might get others to opt in and use them...then you wouldn't have anything unique ...hehe.

I would personally say make it your own ideas and features that will give it appeal and make it a signature of who you are ;) If we made our sites like everyone elses, it would be too boring...

[SI]

someone already said about thumb feature? I mean feature that can build thumb-LL. IMHO thumb-LL will help for bookmarkers increase

[Thumbler]

I would have thought thumbs are the last thing you'd want unless you want to get involved in 2257 documentation

[Jim]

I would have thought thumbs are the last thing you'd want unless you want to get involved in 2257 documentation
I would enjoy thumbs without documentation. But, I don't really like the thumb idea that much.

[Mishi]

Hi Mishi, checking out your script now (looks impressive!). |waves|

Thanks! |waves| (back)


Couple other ideas:

Sponsors Table:
Basically a table containing each sponsor's name, url and a text box for notes.

Sponsor Sites Table:
A table storing paysite name, paysite affiliate url, pretty/fake url (to be shown to surfers on mouseover for example)



Have that!

# clicks sent to that site (by day,month,year), which category(s) it belongs to and which sponsor it belongs to.


DL has overall stats from the begining of time. That is my most loved feature and most hated implementation. Will be seriously overhauling this part.


Better Mass-Site Editing Controls:
You know how hotmail has a check box next to each email and one at the top that lets you check all the boxes? A LL script could use this feature too. :) You could then pull up say Teen sites or Bob's sites, click the check button to check all of them off, and either edit, delete, de-activate, approve, blacklist or even move them all to a different category. With one click.


Sort of have this...there are a lot of filtering capabilities.


Option to turn on/off click tracking: Not everyone needs it, and hard-links seem to be the way to go anyways.


Agreed. Static pages do appear to be the way to go. I so wish there was a way to "split" a link so it could go two places, lol.


Easy Way to Mass Review:
Right now all these scripts require you to click on "Edit" to make changes approve/ban the site. That's OK, but it means you have to do this one-by-one for every site. What would be very cool, is to turn on a feature that let's you edit say 1-X number of sites on a page. Or when you show all sites in your queue, have all the fields already editable, and a "Save" button at the bottom.


I think my brain just exploded. ;)


Better Database Backup, Import/Export Tools: should have at least some simple tools to backup or at least let you download your database from the admin. Also, stuff like Exporting all your Partners email addresses to a file, for example.


Agreed. I've not bothered with a lot of this sort of thing, because I didn't want to re-write PHPMyAdmin. But the deeper I get into things, the more I realize the need.

So, you guys are gonna give me a nice discount for all these ideas, right? :D

How's about tree-fiddy and a ham sammich? |thumb

[Jim]

Update..Sparky tells me that we will be opening early next week. Opening with all the cool features mentioned here. :)

[Greenguy]

Open as in surfers looking at things or open as in taking submits?

Surfers tend to get pissed if there's 30 categories & 50 total links :D

[Useless]

Let me know when you start handing out free beta copies of the script. ;)