Is it possible to create an open source linklist script? - Page 2

Bill · 2004-07-31, 04:33 PM

I wrote a bigger version of this but lost it, buggy connection, shit!

Entreri, do you have a version of phplinks that works? If you do, could you make it available for download or get it to me so that I can make it available for download?

I haven't tried installing it yet, because I gathered the version available was buggy. But I'm planning on installing it on an undeveloped domain I've got to use as a demo and a test bed.

Acidmax, have you looked at phplinks? Would you take a look at it and let me know what you think?

I think the first task should be to examine phplinks and see if it could be the core of an open source adult links package.

Then define what we would need to write as add-ons and changes to make it equivalent to a good links2 setup

I think phplinks is probably good enough to use as a core.

We should look at phpadsnew and phpbb, and those related scripts, and see if they can be integrated into this package, so that adult webmasters couyld download one set of scripts and be pretty sure of them working well out of the box.

I can provide a site for demo and downloading, and on that site have generous links to the coders who work on this project to advertise their own scripting businesses.

This post isn't as nice as the first one I wrote, but I'm in a hurry now, ha ha...

Bill · 2004-07-31, 06:57 PM

Oh, and BTW, I want to encourage anyone else who's interested to set up their own demo version of this open source link list package, whatever it turns out to be, and we'll link em all together.

Useless · 2004-07-31, 11:44 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by Bill
Oh, and BTW, I want to encourage anyone else who's interested to set up their own demo version of this open source link list package, whatever it turns out to be, and we'll link em all together.

The thing to do is to scan source forge and other script sites, for a variety of open source scripts and functions that can be duct taped together to form one large powerful script. As long as you give credit to where credit is due, it should not be a problem.

I agree with Venturi on the fact that there is very little motivation for a pro scripter to get involved. Damned capitalists! When I installed OSCommerce on a site a couple years ago I was astounded by the damned thing. It still amazes me something so powerful and useful is free.

RawAlex · 2004-08-01, 12:33 AM

I am not a big fan of open source anything that deals with files, databases, etc. Way to easy to teach people how to hack - the source code is there for all to see.

Secured source freeware is much nicer.

Alex

Entreri · 2004-08-01, 04:42 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by RawAlex
I am not a big fan of open source anything that deals with files, databases, etc. Way to easy to teach people how to hack - the source code is there for all to see.

Secured source freeware is much nicer.

Alex

That's quite the opposite for me. I feel quite at home with an open-source product because I know many people have seen the code before me. I can audit the code myself to see if there's anything I don't like and strip down anything I don't need. The history of the open source project is also invaluable - if the project as an history of SQL injection issues, I know what to keep my eyes open for (and where I need to harden the code).

Plus, it would be difficult to have "secured source" freeware when it comes down to a PHP script. I recall on Windows that cart32 software (which is commercial) that we had at work and a backdoor was found in it - they were using it to provide support to their customers. Yuck!

Entreri.

AcidMaX · 2004-08-01, 05:00 PM

I have never seen phpLinks but my suggestion would be to use a seperate product entirely and start from scratch. I think making it use entirely opensource products like Smarty & Pear would be the way to go. Provides the flexibility of modules that come with PHP and a template system (Smarty) that is so phenomenal its unbelievable and gives the end user the ability to customize their pages however they see fit. I am using it on my link list software and because I am in such a hurry to get it working on my sites it still lacks a bunch of features but I think the base is fantastic, and although we may not use it because it was rushed the principle behind it is a good start I think. As I said I would be more than willing if other programmers had time to help out on this project, but I don't have a ton of time unfortunately.

Andy

Entreri · 2004-08-01, 05:11 PM

Quote:

Entreri, do you have a version of phplinks that works? If you do, could you make it available for download or get it to me so that I can make it available for download?

Yes, but it is at work. We've been using it to store our team's favorites.

Otherwise, I could re-download it now and fix it a bit.

Quote:

I think the first task should be to examine phplinks and see if it could be the core of an open source adult links package.

I don't think phplinks would be appropriate as a "core" - it's not well-designed to start with. You might "borrow" certain aspects of it (with credit) if the license permits it but that's about as far as I'd go if I were to code a would-be powerful linklist. If you want something that's going to be solid and flexible, you have to design it first before you start coding it.

That said, I haven't been able to give it a thought recently because I've been very busy at the office lately. However, Venturi's words of wisdom ring true - I doubt there'd be many (adult) developers willing to lend a hand...

Entreri.

Note: I just noticed AcidMax's message while I'm writting this - I too would suggest the use of Smarty & PEAR.

RawAlex · 2004-08-02, 12:28 AM

Entreri, I wouldn't run anything "mission critical" on windows. That is just asking for trouble. I laugh every time the local corner store's business comes to a grinding halt while they have to reboot their cash register.

Oh well!

Alex

Entreri · 2004-08-02, 07:45 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by RawAlex
Entreri, I wouldn't run anything "mission critical" on windows. That is just asking for trouble. I laugh every time the local corner store's business comes to a grinding halt while they have to reboot their cash register.

The OS is irrelevant here - we were talking about closed versus open source. Anyhow, back to link list...

Entreri.

Bill · 2004-08-02, 08:39 PM

It sounds like building a link list with smarty and pear is kind of a "snap-together" operation. If I am understanding what you ae saying, these are open source(?) programming tools with prebuilt modules to accomplish programming jobs.

How much would it cost to have someone use these tools to snap together a rugged open source link list core?

How much would it cost if we outsourced it to some Indian programmer?

Tell me more about smarty and pear, if you would?

And, ultimately, beggars can't be choosers, so if none of you good coders can help, I guess we are stuck with phplinks.

What was wrong with phplinks, Entreri? If we rip out somthing like that time-wasting hits in-hits out subroutine, would that make it better?

AcidMaX · 2004-08-03, 09:21 AM

Smarty & Pear isnt snap together anything there is still coding that needs to be done.

Smarty: http://smarty.php.net
This is nothing more than a template engine. It is etremely reobust and works well between programmers and designers. You can pretty much accomplish any layout objective you want with this templating set of code. It even has built in page caching to help reduce overhead on database query calls (of course you need to program that in.) It is also very expandable by writing modules/functions etc to extend the use of their existing template classes.

Pear: http://pear.php.net
Pear is a set of classes that can be used for numerous things, from DB abstraction to logging, ftp etc. Again you can extend PEAR with your own classes and take advantage of the base functions. I mostly use the DB abstraction layer so that the code is cross RDBMS compatible.

Even though you use these functions there is still coding, design, db structure process and organization that needs to be done. Creating an opensource application needs to have a few things.

1. A good gameplan.
2. A good infrastructure and updating/release scheme.
3. A good project manager.
4. Programmers

Sure once person could do most of this work and I would be more than happy to lend a hand as I said, but it would have to be more than just me to do it. Realistically if we could get 3-4 programmers and 1 project manager the project could probably go pretty fast. The reason I say 3-4 programmers is because 1, you could get it done faster, and 2 because most of us are already super busy you would need 4 of em to keep progress moving.

As far as outsourcing to India that could be something you might want to do but that wont work imho for a typical open source project.

Andy

Useless · 2004-08-03, 05:08 PM

I loaded phplinks in the background of one of my sites through fantastico. Outside being ugly, it doesn't horrible. It seems manageable enough. But I don't run a link list. I am not fully aware of the features a ll webmster wants and needs in their interface.
There is a fair amount of garbage to be pulled out of phplinks. For example, it plants the national flag of the submitter next to the approved link. Simple-minded shit like that.
What are the must-haves?

Bill · 2004-08-04, 02:09 PM

Thru fantastico? What is that? (he said, revealing his horrible ignorance of the scripting universe...)

So the version you downloaded worked out of the box? What's the link to that version?

Yes, the first thing to do is rip the useless dreck out of phplinks, like the countries thing and the hits in-out counter. And whatever else on further examination is useless for adult.

Then we need to make sure it's output is search engine friendly. This means the links urls shounld be standard, no "jump" codes. And the pages it outputs have to be highly editable, so that it's easy to control the page titles and text and adverts on the pages.

Possibly bypass templates or whatever it uses altogether, and move purely to having it output raw html of the links that can be included with ssi or the like in handbuilt category pages.

At that point we have something equivalent to a patched up links2.

Then, we need to decide what else to add. A blacklist, a partners system, and a link verifier suggest themselves.

But, I'm hoping Entreri or Andy or somebody else will dissect phplinks first and tell us what's wrong with it. If it's too weak for a moderate sized linklist we should consider some other approach.

Useless · 2004-08-04, 04:46 PM

It would help if I knew it weaknesses. A couple of folks have pretty much stated that it is shit. But why? I've begun toying with the admin section for the hell of it. The admin was all frames, which was annoying as all hell. So I've plucked out the frames. It's a tad prettier. I've also eliminated most instances of sesson IDs in the admin links. I'm still hunting for some of them. One of phplinks HUGE weaknesses is the use of session IDs in its linking. They will have to be plucked for it to be search engine freindly, as well as nervous surfer friendly. It does have a built-in link verifier, but no recip tester. There isn't a black list of any type. Otherwise it has site configuration, site specs, edit categories, related categories, and you can add sites via the admin as well.
The submit page asks for a username and password, but you can still submit without entering anything. Apparently, if you choose a username, a submitter can go back and edit their site's description and link. That doesn't sound like such a smart idea to me on an adult link list.
BTW, I am not programmer, just a bit of hack with too much spare time.
The version I am working with is 2.1.2.
Fantastico is an automatic script installer often bundled with CPanel. This is the first time I have used it. Pretty cool really. It installed the dbase too.

Bill · 2004-08-04, 05:15 PM

Ahh, yes, now I remember, phplinks puts these ungodly huge php session IDs on everything that it does...

And that is, as far as I'm concerned, unacceptable for general adult use.

If that session ID thing can't be stripped out, then phplinks is probably useless as a core of an open source adult linking system. But it may not critical to function, so maybe it _can_ be ripped out.

That password thing that let's you modify entries is clearly one of the first things that has to be ripped out. We don't want submitters to be able to modify anything.

Entreri · 2004-08-04, 09:48 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by Bill
Ahh, yes, now I remember, phplinks puts these ungodly huge php session IDs on everything that it does...

And that is, as far as I'm concerned, unacceptable for general adult use.

If that session ID thing can't be stripped out, then phplinks is probably useless as a core of an open source adult linking system. But it may not critical to function, so maybe it _can_ be ripped out.

That password thing that let's you modify entries is clearly one of the first things that has to be ripped out. We don't want submitters to be able to modify anything.

I've been insanely busy at the office lately and on top of that, I caught a damn cold (in summer!!!).

Here goes :

Yes, the session ID could indeed be stripped away. I'm not sure which version Useless Warrior installed but mine definitely didn't work without modifications to the code. A word of warning, by default, the admin section of phplinks has no protection by the way. (do a simple google search and you'll be able to access the admin panel on many)

Even if it would work, I wouldn't use it as a core for reasons I've stated before : a core is something that must be well-designed.

Entreri.

Note : If you want to look further into PHPLinks, this guy has branched the code and added a bunch of features (including recip checking) : http://www.dew-code.com/modules/mydownloads/

Useless · 2004-08-09, 09:06 AM

Here is a minor update on the lack of progress I have made. PHPlinks ran without bugs on my webserver, but I installed on my home machine and it is glitchy as all hell. It has to be run with globals on, which is no-no for many hosts. Plus there are tons of other 'minor' errors. If you turn off some of the error reporting in PHP, it works. But how many hosts run PHP with all error reporting off?

Here is the golden question? Would a dumbed down free link list script serve this community well, or would it just steal business from those who work hard to create good scripts? There are several free TGP scripts, which is why there are thousands of TGPs with 50 hits a day. At least those free TGP scripts go for the upsell with a more adorned version.

I'm sure I can eek out something by manipulating a few os scripts, but it certainly won't have the functionality of a purchased ll script. And frankly, I'm beginning to believe that it shouldn't. Don't get me wrong, I am all for open source. But I'm not sure the adult community would like to see a hundred new link lists day, each one slowly thinning out the the good traffic currently held by the big guys.

What are you opinions?

Bill · 2004-08-09, 03:17 PM

Interesting to hear that phplinks is buggy as shit, because that was the impression I had already gotten from studying it without installing it.

Now, as far as your other questions go:

"Free" is not an issue for me, I've got money and don't mind paying for good tools. A good tool will make you profit years after you've forgotten what it cost you.

But, as far as I can tell, every single linklist software out there has significant flaws. I hate spending money on a tool that doesn't do what I need it to do. Then I feel ripped off and pissed on. I've bought too many pieces of useless software to want to be screwed yet again.

Linkadmin is fine software, but it's barely supported anymore, if at all, and it's a bitch to modify or get modified.

Links2 costs $150, very reasonable, but out of the box it's a useless piece of shit, and you have to add mod after mod to get it to work the way an adult LL needs to work.

Haven't tried LinksSQL, but I'll bet it's in exactly the same shape as links2, it has to be modded to the max to get it to work as an adult linklist.

Xpowerlinks looks okay out of the box, at least what I've seen of it, but will it be secure and will it be supported? Who knows? All I know is that nobody I trust is using it now.

Money is so much not the issue that it's not even funny.

All I want is a trustable piece of software that is flexible, easily modified, supported, and which does what I want it to do out of the box.

Between $100 and $200 is the amount I think such a soft should cost. I mean, get serious, we aren't talking about programming a Photoshop here, it's a web script.

I don't particularly care about proliferation. There are already 500 little linklists and a thousand abandoned or extinct LLs. Proliferation is happening no matter what the soft costs.

Verbal · 2004-08-09, 04:12 PM

I think it's a bad idea. I can't see how this benefits the LL community at all, or even what you stand to gain by doing this for free.

I'm sure most LL owners here have spent a *lot* of time and money on their sites and scripts. This is their main income source. Do you think they want this sector flooded by thousands of new LL, that anyone can create at no cost? Look at TGP's, like you said.

If a webmaster isn't willing to invest some money into their business then they aren't serious. They are probably doing this "on the side" for beer money. Your free script would appeal greatly to that crowd.

I know your intentions are good, but I think the results would be unfavorable in the long run.

|goodnight

2004-08-09, 09:06 AM	#17
Useless Certified Nice Person Join Date: Oct 2003 Location: Dirty Undies, NY Posts: 11,268	Here is a minor update on the lack of progress I have made. PHPlinks ran without bugs on my webserver, but I installed on my home machine and it is glitchy as all hell. It has to be run with globals on, which is no-no for many hosts. Plus there are tons of other 'minor' errors. If you turn off some of the error reporting in PHP, it works. But how many hosts run PHP with all error reporting off? Here is the golden question? Would a dumbed down free link list script serve this community well, or would it just steal business from those who work hard to create good scripts? There are several free TGP scripts, which is why there are thousands of TGPs with 50 hits a day. At least those free TGP scripts go for the upsell with a more adorned version. I'm sure I can eek out something by manipulating a few os scripts, but it certainly won't have the functionality of a purchased ll script. And frankly, I'm beginning to believe that it shouldn't. Don't get me wrong, I am all for open source. But I'm not sure the adult community would like to see a hundred new link lists day, each one slowly thinning out the the good traffic currently held by the big guys. What are you opinions? __________________ Click here to purchase a bridge I'm selling.

2004-07-31, 04:33 PM	#1
Bill Selling porn allows me to stay in a constant state of Bliss - ain't that a trip! Join Date: Apr 2003 Posts: 3,914	I wrote a bigger version of this but lost it, buggy connection, shit! Entreri, do you have a version of phplinks that works? If you do, could you make it available for download or get it to me so that I can make it available for download? I haven't tried installing it yet, because I gathered the version available was buggy. But I'm planning on installing it on an undeveloped domain I've got to use as a demo and a test bed. Acidmax, have you looked at phplinks? Would you take a look at it and let me know what you think? I think the first task should be to examine phplinks and see if it could be the core of an open source adult links package. Then define what we would need to write as add-ons and changes to make it equivalent to a good links2 setup I think phplinks is probably good enough to use as a core. We should look at phpadsnew and phpbb, and those related scripts, and see if they can be integrated into this package, so that adult webmasters couyld download one set of scripts and be pretty sure of them working well out of the box. I can provide a site for demo and downloading, and on that site have generous links to the coders who work on this project to advertise their own scripting businesses. This post isn't as nice as the first one I wrote, but I'm in a hurry now, ha ha...

2004-07-31, 06:57 PM	#2
Bill Selling porn allows me to stay in a constant state of Bliss - ain't that a trip! Join Date: Apr 2003 Posts: 3,914	Oh, and BTW, I want to encourage anyone else who's interested to set up their own demo version of this open source link list package, whatever it turns out to be, and we'll link em all together.

2004-08-01, 12:33 AM	#4
RawAlex Took the hint. Join Date: Mar 2003 Posts: 5,597	I am not a big fan of open source anything that deals with files, databases, etc. Way to easy to teach people how to hack - the source code is there for all to see. Secured source freeware is much nicer. Alex

2004-08-01, 05:00 PM	#6
AcidMaX Programming till my fingers bleed. Join Date: Aug 2003 Location: Michigan Posts: 876	I have never seen phpLinks but my suggestion would be to use a seperate product entirely and start from scratch. I think making it use entirely opensource products like Smarty & Pear would be the way to go. Provides the flexibility of modules that come with PHP and a template system (Smarty) that is so phenomenal its unbelievable and gives the end user the ability to customize their pages however they see fit. I am using it on my link list software and because I am in such a hurry to get it working on my sites it still lacks a bunch of features but I think the base is fantastic, and although we may not use it because it was rushed the principle behind it is a good start I think. As I said I would be more than willing if other programmers had time to help out on this project, but I don't have a ton of time unfortunately. Andy

2004-08-02, 12:28 AM	#8
RawAlex Took the hint. Join Date: Mar 2003 Posts: 5,597	Entreri, I wouldn't run anything "mission critical" on windows. That is just asking for trouble. I laugh every time the local corner store's business comes to a grinding halt while they have to reboot their cash register. Oh well! Alex

2004-08-02, 08:39 PM	#10
Bill Selling porn allows me to stay in a constant state of Bliss - ain't that a trip! Join Date: Apr 2003 Posts: 3,914	It sounds like building a link list with smarty and pear is kind of a "snap-together" operation. If I am understanding what you ae saying, these are open source(?) programming tools with prebuilt modules to accomplish programming jobs. How much would it cost to have someone use these tools to snap together a rugged open source link list core? How much would it cost if we outsourced it to some Indian programmer? Tell me more about smarty and pear, if you would? And, ultimately, beggars can't be choosers, so if none of you good coders can help, I guess we are stuck with phplinks. What was wrong with phplinks, Entreri? If we rip out somthing like that time-wasting hits in-hits out subroutine, would that make it better?

2004-08-03, 09:21 AM	#11
AcidMaX Programming till my fingers bleed. Join Date: Aug 2003 Location: Michigan Posts: 876	Smarty & Pear isnt snap together anything there is still coding that needs to be done. Smarty: http://smarty.php.net This is nothing more than a template engine. It is etremely reobust and works well between programmers and designers. You can pretty much accomplish any layout objective you want with this templating set of code. It even has built in page caching to help reduce overhead on database query calls (of course you need to program that in.) It is also very expandable by writing modules/functions etc to extend the use of their existing template classes. Pear: http://pear.php.net Pear is a set of classes that can be used for numerous things, from DB abstraction to logging, ftp etc. Again you can extend PEAR with your own classes and take advantage of the base functions. I mostly use the DB abstraction layer so that the code is cross RDBMS compatible. Even though you use these functions there is still coding, design, db structure process and organization that needs to be done. Creating an opensource application needs to have a few things. 1. A good gameplan. 2. A good infrastructure and updating/release scheme. 3. A good project manager. 4. Programmers Sure once person could do most of this work and I would be more than happy to lend a hand as I said, but it would have to be more than just me to do it. Realistically if we could get 3-4 programmers and 1 project manager the project could probably go pretty fast. The reason I say 3-4 programmers is because 1, you could get it done faster, and 2 because most of us are already super busy you would need 4 of em to keep progress moving. As far as outsourcing to India that could be something you might want to do but that wont work imho for a typical open source project. Andy

2004-08-03, 05:08 PM	#12
Useless Certified Nice Person Join Date: Oct 2003 Location: Dirty Undies, NY Posts: 11,268	I loaded phplinks in the background of one of my sites through fantastico. Outside being ugly, it doesn't horrible. It seems manageable enough. But I don't run a link list. I am not fully aware of the features a ll webmster wants and needs in their interface. There is a fair amount of garbage to be pulled out of phplinks. For example, it plants the national flag of the submitter next to the approved link. Simple-minded shit like that. What are the must-haves?

2004-08-04, 02:09 PM	#13
Bill Selling porn allows me to stay in a constant state of Bliss - ain't that a trip! Join Date: Apr 2003 Posts: 3,914	Thru fantastico? What is that? (he said, revealing his horrible ignorance of the scripting universe...) So the version you downloaded worked out of the box? What's the link to that version? Yes, the first thing to do is rip the useless dreck out of phplinks, like the countries thing and the hits in-out counter. And whatever else on further examination is useless for adult. Then we need to make sure it's output is search engine friendly. This means the links urls shounld be standard, no "jump" codes. And the pages it outputs have to be highly editable, so that it's easy to control the page titles and text and adverts on the pages. Possibly bypass templates or whatever it uses altogether, and move purely to having it output raw html of the links that can be included with ssi or the like in handbuilt category pages. At that point we have something equivalent to a patched up links2. Then, we need to decide what else to add. A blacklist, a partners system, and a link verifier suggest themselves. But, I'm hoping Entreri or Andy or somebody else will dissect phplinks first and tell us what's wrong with it. If it's too weak for a moderate sized linklist we should consider some other approach.

2004-08-04, 04:46 PM	#14
Useless Certified Nice Person Join Date: Oct 2003 Location: Dirty Undies, NY Posts: 11,268	It would help if I knew it weaknesses. A couple of folks have pretty much stated that it is shit. But why? I've begun toying with the admin section for the hell of it. The admin was all frames, which was annoying as all hell. So I've plucked out the frames. It's a tad prettier. I've also eliminated most instances of sesson IDs in the admin links. I'm still hunting for some of them. One of phplinks HUGE weaknesses is the use of session IDs in its linking. They will have to be plucked for it to be search engine freindly, as well as nervous surfer friendly. It does have a built-in link verifier, but no recip tester. There isn't a black list of any type. Otherwise it has site configuration, site specs, edit categories, related categories, and you can add sites via the admin as well. The submit page asks for a username and password, but you can still submit without entering anything. Apparently, if you choose a username, a submitter can go back and edit their site's description and link. That doesn't sound like such a smart idea to me on an adult link list. BTW, I am not programmer, just a bit of hack with too much spare time. The version I am working with is 2.1.2. Fantastico is an automatic script installer often bundled with CPanel. This is the first time I have used it. Pretty cool really. It installed the dbase too.

2004-08-04, 05:15 PM	#15
Bill Selling porn allows me to stay in a constant state of Bliss - ain't that a trip! Join Date: Apr 2003 Posts: 3,914	Ahh, yes, now I remember, phplinks puts these ungodly huge php session IDs on everything that it does... And that is, as far as I'm concerned, unacceptable for general adult use. If that session ID thing can't be stripped out, then phplinks is probably useless as a core of an open source adult linking system. But it may not critical to function, so maybe it _can_ be ripped out. That password thing that let's you modify entries is clearly one of the first things that has to be ripped out. We don't want submitters to be able to modify anything.

2004-08-09, 03:17 PM	#18
Bill Selling porn allows me to stay in a constant state of Bliss - ain't that a trip! Join Date: Apr 2003 Posts: 3,914	Interesting to hear that phplinks is buggy as shit, because that was the impression I had already gotten from studying it without installing it. Now, as far as your other questions go: "Free" is not an issue for me, I've got money and don't mind paying for good tools. A good tool will make you profit years after you've forgotten what it cost you. But, as far as I can tell, every single linklist software out there has significant flaws. I hate spending money on a tool that doesn't do what I need it to do. Then I feel ripped off and pissed on. I've bought too many pieces of useless software to want to be screwed yet again. Linkadmin is fine software, but it's barely supported anymore, if at all, and it's a bitch to modify or get modified. Links2 costs $150, very reasonable, but out of the box it's a useless piece of shit, and you have to add mod after mod to get it to work the way an adult LL needs to work. Haven't tried LinksSQL, but I'll bet it's in exactly the same shape as links2, it has to be modded to the max to get it to work as an adult linklist. Xpowerlinks looks okay out of the box, at least what I've seen of it, but will it be secure and will it be supported? Who knows? All I know is that nobody I trust is using it now. Money is so much not the issue that it's not even funny. All I want is a trustable piece of software that is flexible, easily modified, supported, and which does what I want it to do out of the box. Between $100 and $200 is the amount I think such a soft should cost. I mean, get serious, we aren't talking about programming a Photoshop here, it's a web script. I don't particularly care about proliferation. There are already 500 little linklists and a thousand abandoned or extinct LLs. Proliferation is happening no matter what the soft costs.

2004-08-09, 04:12 PM	#19
Verbal Verbal prefers 56K Join Date: Sep 2003 Location: Chicago, IL Posts: 563	I think it's a bad idea. I can't see how this benefits the LL community at all, or even what you stand to gain by doing this for free. I'm sure most LL owners here have spent a lot of time and money on their sites and scripts. This is their main income source. Do you think they want this sector flooded by thousands of new LL, that anyone can create at no cost? Look at TGP's, like you said. If a webmaster isn't willing to invest some money into their business then they aren't serious. They are probably doing this "on the side" for beer money. Your free script would appeal greatly to that crowd. I know your intentions are good, but I think the results would be unfavorable in the long run. \|goodnight