Your Ultimate Link List Script

[MadMax]

Originally Posted by Chop Smith

Max, I have been keeping up with your progress here. Seems like you are heading in the right direction for a good product.

I hope you do not consider my posting here as whoring in your thread.

As you know, it is my belief that host free sites will be widely used in the future for the same reason that TGP's jumped on the free hosted galleries craze. Therefore, I would consider admin controls to deal with hfs' separate from submitted sites. Some of the things you will want to consider:

1. Entering several hundreds or thousands of sites into a database is boring and very time consuming. Therefore, you should have the ability to mass import sites via a delimited text file. (Stay away for insert statements as I don't think average WM will be able to handle that)
2. Most often the import would cause the sites for each sponsor lumped together. Since most db apps will pull the sites from the table in the order they were enter, you will want the ability to randomize your hfs database.
3. You should have the ability to tell the script how many hfs' to include each day and define the algorithm to be used to pull the sites from the database. I would also include a scheduling feature to allow one to specify when a site becomes eligible for display.
4. Click tracking has been mentioned. Consider adding a field for sponsor names in your db so you can track sponsor clicks. Increase productivity should be increased by knowing which sites, categories and sponsors are the most poplar with the surfers.
5. It is natural for me to think it is cool to be able to go to one site and get links for most available hfs'. How cool would it be to have your script poll such a site for new hfs' and have them imported into the script owners' hfs database? This could be done with a cron job or manually. Or perhaps go the other way and have HFS resource send an RSS update as new sites are added to its database.

One final thought. I would not limit this to a Link List script. IMO, there is a trend to do hybrid sites. This should not increase scripting too much but the templating system would be a little more complicated to handle thumbnails. You will also need a field in the database for type - FS, TGP, MGP.

I'd never consider you to be whoring bud

You bring up a bunch of excellent points, and I thank you for taking the time.

1. Bulk import is a must have. I'm heading for something similar in functionality to the one on AGS, allowing comma or pipe delimited text to be imported. I like the interface in AGS for the most part, so the style will be the same.

2 & 3 This will only become an issue if the sites are being displayed by date and not alphabetically in one or more different formats. There will be a function to put a site's "approved date" into the future, and it won't display until after that date. I could probably work something in the mass import to apply sequential dates as it's importing the sites if the option is checked, and since HFS should always be reviewed there will be another option to change the display date. Let me know how feasible this sounds to ya.

4. Sponsors will have their own section of script Admin, including the ability to put all links from a sponsor (or from a given submitter) on "hold" status and keep them from being displayed (or the ability to bulk delete all the links from a sponsor or submitter at once instead of requiring a search beforehand. If I implement the click tracking in version one, I'll certianly be able to track clicks to a given sponsor. The Admin interface will be full of statistics options. One benefit of being a stats junkie myself

5. I would CERTAINLY like to discuss this more, and for obvious reasons you'd be the man to talk to

Also, the user creates their own "site types" with this script, so they will be able to create as many different ones as they like. Tumbnail management won't likely make it into the first version since there's so much else that needs to be done, but this script will continually evolve.

Thanks as always for all your advice