TajBoy has Barkin Good Websites

So as I look at Tajboy and the tag line "Barkin Good Websites" it sounds kind of interesting. I am hoping it will live up to the slogan, so the first thing I have done is click on some categories, and what is nice is there is a description that is interesting to read in most cases. Obviously some extra work was done here, and this should help insure these pages get indexed. Good job!

And kudos to you for making the About Us page. That is smart, and if someone reads it, I think you are more likely to get submissions including paid ones. One area that I am not familiar with but seems big is Ezine Articles, and that sounds good that you are a Platinum author there. I would assume you are building links to your directory that way including to internal pages, so that could be great for people that list with you, and also help you sell other services alongside directory listings.

This is probably just a pet peeve of mine, but I don't like the dark background for the content boxes on the right. I think it would be good to lighten that up a little for better readability, maybe something like you did on the submit page, which is nice and clean and readable.

I think you are off to a fantastic start, and I see potential for growth, and would love to review it again in a few months.

Global Business Directory

The Global Business Directory also uses the Elevation template (like my last review) so it seems to be quite popular!

What I like right off the bat is the category structure. It appears that you started with only top level categories, meaning we don't have a lot of empty categories floating around, and that makes for better distribution of content. What I also saw is some categories may need to be split up a little with sub categories now, as there are many pages. It shouldn't be all that time consuming to create a couple of subcategories, then use the multiple select and move in the phpLD admin interface.

I like the Webmaster Tools over on the left column. You figure a lot of people who submit to directories also use webmaster tools, so hopefully you are getting some click throughs to these sections.

Some categories like Pharmaceuticals may attract some spammy links, so I would make sure you have a good review process. Also, you might want to consider adding some of your own links to these categories and sort by something like pagerank (but don't show it). This will help insure there is quality one click from the homepage, and more questionable links deeper.

So good luck with your directory, and hopefully we'll take a look at it again in a few months!

Directory 4 You

Directory 4 You was created back in 2007 according to the Whois record. They are using the Elevation template which I have always liked.

Now as I go through the categories, I am a little concerned there are too many stub pages, or empty categories that have no links. It might be good to go add some helpful links to empty categories, or remove categories that are not likely to see expansion in the near future. This will help insure there is content throughout the directory.

As I have mentioned on other reviews, I would remove the Free with Reciprocal option, as that can attract low quality links. At the very least, watch your Yahoo inlinks and see what kind of quality you are getting. Too many of the wrong kind can cause harm, especially when reciprocals are involved.

I think this directory is off to a good start, but certainly more content, and some originality would help it toward the next level. It's always nice to have something on the homepage that is interesting that says "this is not your typical directory", and that is something to think about to help attract people deeper into your site.

Good luck with your directory!

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.