Changing the Background Image on a phpLD Template

Something that is quick and easy, but also can bring about a dramatic change to your directory's overall look is the background image. You can take a default template, change the logo and change the background image, and you have something unique. There is a quick tutorial called PHP Background Image over on the phpLD forums that tells you exactly how to change the image. This works on version 2 and up, so basically all phpLD versions. Now, some template designers may have changed their CSS or overall structure, but it should work in most cases.

Good luck!

Blog Directory Script

What has been popular over the last few years are blog directories which do some of the following:

1. Allow you to submit your blog

2. Let people rate and comment on blogs

3. Contain an RSS feed to the latest blog posts.

4. Have a profit model such as charging for blog submission or for featured blog listings.

A nice example of this is Delightful Blogs. It has been a blog directory for several years now and was recently revamped. Check it out!

Google Spreadsheets for Quick Data Management

As mentioned over on Warrior Forum, the Google Spreadsheets Import Export Mod for phpLD is a wonderful way to make it easy to manage your content. Rather than editing each page of your site, you can see all the content in the spreadsheet, search the spreadsheet, edit cells on the spreadsheet, etc.

And if you do a lot of hiring of content writers or link builders having everything on a spreadsheet makes it a lot easier to track the progress of your employees, and also makes their work faster and more organized.

In a recent test we found that hired help was able to add about 2-3 links with titles, descriptions and URLs per minute. For more simple data entry tasks, their are VERY competitive rates with people offering to do data entry for less than $2/hour. Even hiring employees in developed countries, it is not uncommon to see rates around $5/hour.

So we encourage you to try the speadsheets mod. We think you will like it very much. :)

Import and Export to Google Spreadsheets

There is a new phpLD Mod that allows you to Import and Export to Google Spreadsheets. I'm really having fun with it. I've been able to clean up the titles and descriptions on a directory of about 800 links in just a couple of hours of work. It is a nice feeling knowing that there are few if any junky titles or descriptions on your directory.

The next thing we will be working on for this mod is making it easy to enter lots of new links to your directory quickly. Basically, you would just add title, description and url, and also add a category. Then run the import.

For adding a category, you have to use the correct structure with a colon as the separator like this:

Computers : Internet : Scripts : Directory Scripts

Then the link will be automatically inserted into phpLD with the correct category.

It works really smooth already and I hope you will try it.

Directory Reports

There is a new mod released by phpLD user Bruleo that does an excellent job of showing stats that are helpful to the directory administrator titled Directory Reports. What is really cool is you can setup a cron job that produced the reports at regular intervals so you can track progress. Here are some of the stats published in each report:

• Active Links.
• Inactive Links
• Pending Links
• Unconfirmed Links **
• Active Articles *
• Inactive Articles *
• Pending Articles *
• Unconfirmed Articles * **
• Active Main Categories
• Active Sub-categories
• Pending Categories
• Symbolic Categories
• Inactive Categories
• Registered Members
• Confirmed Members **
• Unconfirmed members **
• Links about to expire
• Articles about to expire
• Banned IP Addresses
• Banned Email Addresses
• Banned Domains
• Banned Words
• Link Sequence Table Status
• Article Sequence table Status
• Category Sequence Table Status
• User Sequence Table Status
• Payment Sequence Table Status
• Tables with over 10% OverHead
• HIT Table size report.

And if you like this mod here is the big list by Bruleo.

phpLD in Chinese

There is a lot of work being done to make phpLD more available to Chinese users. If you want to see phpLD running in Chinese, isFree.cc is a good example. Here is a another one. We've also been working recently on making a section just for Chinese users. We've also completely revamped the translation going through line by line.

phpLD has been translated into every major language with successful sites running directories in every language as well. If you need help with a translation, feel free to drop us a line.

Tell Stats

Have you ever used Tell Stats? It's an interesting site for getting some basic information about a site. For example, here is the phpLD Listing on Tell Stats. I especially like the keyword feature, as it gives you a quick overview what the site is optimized for. I find the keywords it found for phpLD much more "centric" on directory related phrases:

directory script
php ld link directory
php link directory
phpld
link directory script
directory script
php directory script

But when I checked one of my directories the keywords were more "diverse"

Here are some of the keywords for Directhoo (Tell Stats listing)

religious supplies wicca new york
nadu furniture atlanta ga
kimption hotels
article payments phpld
national centenarian awareness project
phpld database inclusion
wiki hallucinogen

So not sure what to make of it, but an interesting tool!