A new newbie with a question about freesites

[rabbitho]

I've been doing regular gallery submissions for a while, and have been looking into freesites....but...

After I started quailing about the extra work to maintain a separate linklist submit database & to create multiple index pages with different recips, I started looking at Chameleon LL Submitter for a solution to at least help in keeping a submit database and automate the recip/index page duplication.

Some of the folks on their support forum, though, were saying that many linklists do not want those index pages to be all alone in those folders -- that you pretty much have to dupe the whole freesite into each folder with its own index.html file, or they reject it as "misleading links".

At which point, now I'm going, "you've got to be kidding". I've got a lot of space on my host, but it's not infinite; I believe in conserving space. Is that true? Or am I misunderstanding what they're saying?

For example, I've got folder Freesite1, which contains:

index.html (the main recip & warning page)
gallery.html (the gallery display page)
gallery1 (the first gallery's folder, with its index.html & images)
gallery2 (the second gallery's folder, with its index.html & images)
images (folder for all the other banners & graphics used on the freesite)

The Chameleon users seemed to be saying that ALL that needs to be duplicated into each folder for each set of recips -- so if I have the index page duplicated 5 times (with a table of 9 recips on each page), that means I have to duplicate the entire freesite five times as well into each of those separate folders or risk getting rejected.

Is that right? That just seems to be a huge waste of webhost space.

[NY Jester]

In short - that is correct. I myself as a Link List owner do not want to be put on mirror index1817.html

The structure of a submitted free site is as follows:

Index Page - Warning Page/Enter Page which links to the main page and contains the reciprocal links usually 9-16
Main Page - Inner page that links to gallery 1 and gallery 2
Gallery 1 - contains either a pic gallery of 12-16 images or movie gallery of 3-4 clips which equals 60 seconds
Gallery 2 - contains either a pic gallery of 12-16 images or movie gallery of 3-4 clips which equals 60 seconds

All pages may contain 3 outbound links to sponsors, etc. All pages above are to be in the same folder/directory as well as the same domain (no hot linking)

[Bill]

Roughly right, yes.

The thing is, about 10 or 20 linklists will send you 95% of your traffic - so you can reasonably build one freesite, and make 95% of the money you would make anyway, and avoid the dupeage.

or, you could make mirror indexes and only stock them with recips from the more sensible little linklists that allow such things.

The one thing you can't do is try to stick the good big linklists on index2etc mirrors with the little link lists and expect to get reliably listed.

I agree, making multiple duped freesites to sub to all the littler lists is crazy.

But, coming to the linklists for extra traffic from gallery posting is half crazy to start.

[rabbitho]

Hey Jester -- I recognize you from MediumPimpin'.

So...all *pages* are to be in the same folder/directory as well as the same domain. Fine, well, and good, no problem there, html pages are very small in terms of filespace -- but what about the images & movies? Those would be on the same domain, but in a shared common folder for the overall freesite. Or do I have to duplicate those for each individual recip index.html as well?

Originally Posted by Bill

coming to the linklists for extra traffic from gallery posting is half crazy to start.

I don't know about that -- it seems like a natural progression to me.

[NY Jester]

Hey there RH - yes MP as well.

For me, as long as the images are on the same top level domain within an images type folder I am OK with it..I will not speak for anyone else however.

[Bill]

Originally Posted by rabbitho

I don't know about that -- it seems like a natural progression to me.

Argueably so. Don't mind me, I'm one of the resident cynics.

[rabbitho]

Originally Posted by Bill

Argueably so. Don't mind me, I'm one of the resident cynics.

Oh good. I tend to be the resident insane grumpy wench. I'm sure we'll get along like chalk and cheese.

[HowlingWulf]

You should only have to mirror the page with the linklist recips. Anything else is crazy talk.

Bill is correct most traffic comes from about 20 or so LLs. I also submit to many GGaJ members' linklists so I'm close to 40, with two mirrored pages only.

[abatis]

i don't think you should mirror/doorway, build for se.

-abatis

[Licker4U]

After you make the first site, make a new folder with a new name. Copy the "pages" from the first site and paste into the new folder. Change the title on each page. On the gallery pages use SSI to call the images from the original site. Same for any banners, other images, etc. Only takes a few minutes to make a mirror. I submit to around 85 LL's with no problems. (I also submit to most of those here at GG&J that have link lists, mainly just to "spread the love")

[rabbitho]

Originally Posted by Licker4U

After you make the first site, make a new folder with a new name. Copy the "pages" from the first site and paste into the new folder. Change the title on each page. On the gallery pages use SSI to call the images from the original site. Same for any banners, other images, etc. Only takes a few minutes to make a mirror. I submit to around 85 LL's with no problems. (I also submit to most of those here at GG&J that have link lists, mainly just to "spread the love")

Er..."SSI"? I don't know what that is. I use Dreamweaver.

I'm guessing that you have your recip tables already built and stored in a text file, and just copy/paste those to the individual index.html pages?

Does anyone here use Chameleon's LL Submitter? I'm trying the demo to see if it'll help automate the duplication process, but so far, I'm extremely underwhelmed.

[horndog]

I do almost exactly what licker does if I mirror a site but I don’t use SSI, because I don’t know how to use it. I put my pics or movie clips in an image folder or the root folder for that freesite and for each mirror you can link to the pics in the image folder and then the only thing you have to copy are the pages of the freesite in a different folder which can save you space. Most LL’s but not all don’t won’t their link on a doorway page so your only choice is to create a new folder with a new index.html page.

Example:
Root folder
Image folder( all the pics and banners in each folder link to this images in this folder)
Mirror folder 1
Mirror folder 2
Etc,Etc,etc,etc,

[Licker4U]

Originally Posted by rabbitho

Er..."SSI"? I don't know what that is. I use Dreamweaver.

I'm guessing that you have your recip tables already built and stored in a text file, and just copy/paste those to the individual index.html pages?

SSI=server side include. Yeah, I make a recip table and name it something like: lesbian1.txt. I upload all the .txt files to a folder I call recips. On the free site index page where I want the recip table to be I put: <!--#include virtual="/recips/lesbian1.txt" --> and it magically appears. (notice there is a space after .txt") For the next recip table, I call it lesbian2.txt and so on. When you copy your first index page to make the first mirror site all you have to do is change the number 1 to a 2 etc. If a LL drops dead or I decide not to submit to it anymore, I copy the recip table where that LL's recip is, put in a new LL and rename the .txt file lesbian1-1.txt .

On the gallery pages, instead of putting in the whole path to the original images I put ../(folder where images are)/image1.jpg, etc. And instead of having my images in a folder on the root, I put all the images and banners in the original site folder. That way I don't have to keep coming up with folder names for images on the root.

Hope that explains it.