I'd love to give you an answer as "Use product A" over product B, or C..etc. It took me 2 years to finally find the right one for my link directory. But what it comes down to is some things to think about
:
- How serious are you with the establishment of a LL?
- Are you planning to have a Link List or a directory?
- Are there specific features you "MUST" have?
- Do you have a budget set in place?
- How much time each day do you have to put towards this project?
- Is this a "long-term" project as in years?
- Do you want easy templates to modify to your design?
- What is your hosting server preference...linux or Windows?
- Are there any features you want available for users?
- How strong are your html, php, or other skills?
- Will you be integrating anything into your LL that isn't part of the script?
- What is your Time frame to get something in place?
I've personally used several scripts out there and there are a ton of them (paid and free). Here is something to think about...dont' sacrifice your site and business by opting in for something just because its free or low cost. Your business is important and you do not want a low quality script to jeopardize all your hard work. You want something that has been around for a long time that is tried and true and hopefully with a programming team that put good thought into their development of it to create strong stability. Not only that, you want something that has good support for it...this is so critical. If you visit a site that offers one, look for a support forum and read what issues previous users have posted and see if they've been solved by the support team. Even do searches on the net for the script with the name of a script you have found (or even here at GG&Jim).
If you look in past posts in the forums, you will probably see a few names show up more than others like xpowerlinks, gossamer-threads Links SQL, and a couple others I can't think of at the moment. For myself, I decided to go with a mainstream directory script from focalmedia.net called PowerSeek SQL.
There's lots more I can say, but this is a start...I know others will add to this or give direct suggestions of ones to seek out.
laters
