Quote:
Originally Posted by Bill
Which limitations bugged you the most about it, Simon?
The script it naturally compares to is gossamerthreads links2.0, and links2.0. I've only worked with older versions of links2.0, the "free" versions, but links2.0 was a lot eaier for me to work with, and seemed bug free.
But it didn't have built in posting accounts.
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Bill, I haven't worked with the Gossamer scripts, so I can't add anything about how they compare, but I'll outline what gave me some troubles with LinkX.
Note: I realize the LinkX script allows the creation of additonal database fields that kinda/sorta provide workarounds for some of these issues, but I think some of these things really should be built-in features that you don't need to add for yourself:
- I couldn't figure out a really good way to manage the different types of sites I wanted to be able to list (free sites, hfs, free-trial sites, paid trial sites, avs sites, blogs, other link lists, etc). The three built-in "types" of regular, premium or featured weren't enough, and then there are some restrictions regarding on which pages you can make those types appear.
- Posting accounts are actually a problem for me, at least the way they work right now. There are no separate "partner" accounts, so you have to restrict registration to only free site submitters unless you want everyone to be able to submit sites. Restricting user accounts to only free site submitters means you can't offer the commenting and rating features to your surfers.
- Using the "top" and "popular" features seems to require running the links through a redirect script to count the hits (I don't want to do that).
- Some template functions are restricted to only be available on certain pages. For example, the {categories} template function can only be used on the directory-category.tpl and directory-index.tpl, so there's no way to include links to categories on the -top, -new, -popular, or -search pages.
- No easy built-in way to track sponsors and HFS from sponsors; no permanent vs. submitted listings like with their AG SQL script.
- No easy way to intermix submitted free sites with hfs sites (for instance if you wanted every 10th listing to be an hfs). Actually, nowhere near enough (built-in) options for how you can display your listings.
- No way to resort/shuffle the database after importing a big block of hfs listings from a sponsor.
- Can not import categories; they must be chosen from inside the script admin. Since you can't include the category(ies) as part of the import file in LinkX, you have to import all the HFS from one category or one identical group of categories at a time. This compounds the "no-shuffle" problem; if you import a few hundred hosted free sites into the "amateur" category, those will all appear together in the listings on the New Links page or the Newest Links section on the main page (or anywhere else the latest links are featured).
- Template system is far more complex than it needs to be, based on what you can and can't do with templates in this script.
- No built-in way to indicate whether a free site contains photos or movies content.
- No integrated ad/banner manager and no integrated link trade manager.
Bill, basically the script seems way too complex and cumbersome to use from my perspective, particularly taking into account that for all the complexity I still couldn't get it to do some very simple, basic things.
Maybe we should get a thread started on LinkX. I'm sure there are other people here using/testing it. Maybe we can even get Jeremy (script author) to stop by here and talk with us about it.