Adding lareg numbers of frequently changing relevant pages.

General conjecture seems to have it that search engines like sites with large page counts and sites whose page content changes frequently. There is no guarantee that suddenly adding several thousand pages relevant to your site theme, which pages change content at least daily, and all of which link back to your site's home page, will boost your SERP or your PR, but it might, it might . . . .

So, I made a little package that will do that for your site. It is free, and is, I think anyway, easy to install, and once installed needs no maintenance.

The package adds an Amazon book outlet to your site, listing books on a topic of your selection, so they're all reasonably relevant. It includes a tool that lets you see about how many titles (and you get two new pages a title) a given phrase would probably add, so you can try out different phrases to get the right sized addition. (I say "about" because one of the package's features is that it filters out "unbuyable" books--usually those out of print--so your visitors get only real, fresh listings; but the percentage of raw hits from Amazon that are really available varies, though my experience is that it's about 30% valid.)

The package also includes, as ancillary tools, a power search of Amazon that I reckon better than Amazon's own, plus a power search of Abebooks for used books.

Note that almost none of these thousands of new pages have any physical existence (so you have no disk-space concerns) because they're dynamic pages generated by php scripts, then made to look static with mod_rewrite.

The only system requirements are an Apache-based server running php.

Note that while the package is free, if you are not an Amazon associate, whatever modest sales commissions it makes go to me. If you are--or become--an Associate, we split 50-50 on a randomized basis. My theory is that this is more of a site-augmentation package than anyone's attempt to become a Book Baron.

You can look over the whole thing at:

http://owlcroft.com/FREEBIE/​

 

Can you post a sight where this thing is in action? Looks interesting.

 

Hello Eric, I like the idea, and tried installing it on my web host, but they do not allow creating files from php as I found out, and thus the installation fails. Is there any other way to install your package, i.e. could you make available the complete directory and file structure, so that I could get this to work?

 

Well: run into a new one every day. I guess that's why it's beta.

Yes to all that. It's a little messy, so take notes:

1. From whatever directory you made for the package, create these subdirectories (the names are important):

bookpages
count
logs
originals
working

2. Place in originals copies of all the files that end in .SCRIPT and .SAMPLE.

3. Rename the files with .SCRIPT and .SAMPLE endings to eliminate those endings
(the general form is xxxx.php.SCRIPT becomes xxxx.php).

4. I am changing the instruction sheet right now. The easiest way to go on is to delete all the files in the directory on your local computer (where, I presume, you downloaded the package), then re-populate the directory by downloading the renamed files (well, all the files) from the host directory. Maybe this is too complicated, but I don't like having xxxx.php files floating about till they're where they want to end up.

You should, at this point, be able to re-join the flow of the instruction sheet. But you might also wait a little, till I post here--which I will do, as a follow-up, in a few(?!?) more minutes that I have updated the package with better instructions.

It is so very hard to write instructions to others for what you know well how to do yourself . . . .

 

OK, the distro with revised instructions (and a few other trivial fixes) is now in place. My Lord, am I going to have to start giving these things serial numbers? I haven't done that in years . . . .

Instructions for dealing with hosts that don't let you use php scripts to do as you please within your own directories are not yet in the instructions; I'll get to that tomorrow (too many brandies to do that tonight). Should I sign up as a reseller for Pair.Com? They treat customers like adults.

For those who want to see an example in action:

Well, I cobbled one up quick, using the only site I have that doesn't already have an extensive customized Amazon setup. The site is about cooking with induction range tops, and it was not easy to select a book keyword phrase: closely relevant ones yielded trivial numbers, "cooking" was--to my taste--too huge, so I settled, just to get something done, on "cook", which yields a few thousand titles (and pages). For a real-world use (this demo is not, strictly speaking, "attached" to the actual site yet via any Site Directory references), I would be more fastidious and careful in selecting a search phrase, but, as I say, I wanted to get something up right away.

You can look at it by going to:

http://theinductionsite.com/bookshop.shtml​

 

Thanks for the instructions Eric, that got me going. Now, however, if I run the dofind.php, this also tries to create a number of files in the various subdirectories, which, unfortunately, also fails with an impressive number of warnings. It does look like the file names are fixed, and not dynamically generated, so pre-creating those would probably also work. Any chance that you add the to-be-created files and directories to the zip file, with lenghts 0 if need be? That would probably get the whole thing rolling.

 

". . . which, unfortunately, also fails with an impressive number of warnings."

You certainly seem to have a picky host. All it's trying to do is copy and rename some files, so you don't have to do that manually.

What I will do is create a new iteration of the package--this time, I'll start using a version number, I guess 0.3--in which I will give up the "safety" false names (like adding .SCRIPT to xxx.php to make xxx.php.SCRIPT) and assume (ha!) that people will be careful with their files.

I hope to have that done with a modest while after I make this post, and will post here when it is ready.

I will also further fine-tune the installation instructions. The installation is one of those things that is much easier to actually do than to explain the doing of.

 

I'm trying to be a quick learner here. I have now re-done the package mightily as regards installation (none of the functional scripts have changed except the one-time install aid "makedirs.php").

The scripts are now just named with their right names. If a given host server doesn't allow php scripts to do stuff like make directories or copy files, the necessary manual procedures, which are few anyway, are detailed in the heavily re-written and expanded install instructions.

I went back into tech-writer mode (after an absence of years), and I think installation should be an easy walk now. (Well, it always was, but now, I hope, it's clear that the walk is easy.)

Feedback is anxiously awaited. The URL to get the latest package is still:

http://owlcroft.com/FREEBIE/​

Addendum: As of 5:10 p.m. Pacific Time, there is a very slightly updated version (0.31) on the site. I just did a complete install of the package on one of my own sites working strictly from my own directions, and so found a few points in the instructions that needed further clarification, which have been attended to.

That working sample can be seen at:

http://highboskage.com/bookshop.shtml​

 

when I run

http://web-design-is.us/FREEBIE/dofind.php

Here is part of what I get:Amazon Web Design-Books Job:

Warning: fopen(logs/Log.File): failed to open stream: No such file or directory in /home/whitegyr/public_html/FREEBIE/dofind.php on line 49

Warning: fwrite(): supplied argument is not a valid stream resource in /home/whitegyr/public_html/FREEBIE/dofind.php on line 50

Warning: fclose(): supplied argument is not a valid stream resource in /home/whitegyr/public_html/FREEBIE/dofind.php on line 51

Warning: file(pagebottom.php): failed to open stream: No such file or directory in /home/whitegyr/public_html/FREEBIE/findbooks.php on line 83

Warning: Invalid argument supplied for foreach() in /home/whitegyr/public_html/FREEBIE/findbooks.php on line 85
BEGUN 306

INDEX 0

Warning: fopen(working/KeyBooks.Raw): failed to open stream: No such file or directory in /home/whitegyr/public_html/FREEBIE/findbooks.php on line 537

 

I thought I had already posted a response, but I don't see it so here we go again.

Yes, two things are wrong.

First, you do not have a copy of the package file "pagebottom.php" in your FREEBIE package directory; it is required.

Second, apparently your server is not giving your php scripts write access. That that can be so is news to me, but I am taking a crash course in server permissions, and should have something you can try up here in an hour or two (it's be sooner, but dinner is about to hit the table). I do know that "bookcount.php" works OK for you and gives the correct raw count of Amazon titles for your keyword phrase.

Stay tuned . . . .

 

OK, I think I have the answer. (I never thought it would be a problem for me to have a sane, satisfactory web host, but I guess it is.)

I have reworked the setup script "makedirs.php" so that it will--if this works right--set the permissions mode for your package subdirectory, FREEBIE or whatever, to writable for the php scripts, which should allow sibdirectories to be made; it will then make the needed subdirectories and set each of them to php-writable, so any file put in them should be writable. (It should also work on already extant subdirectories.)

I could urgently use feedback on whether this patch works, so if WhiteGyr wants to give it a whirl, I anxiously await.

I can't figure out how to Attach a file to this post--clicking the <Manage Attachments> button does zip--so I must refer you to a URL to download, a modified copy of the "makedirs.php" script file.

Get the modified script as:

http://owlcroft.com/FREEBIE/makedirs.php​

To test it, upload it over the old version in your package directory, then run it and see if all the message reports look OK.

If fo, then use "Spokane" as your keyword search phrase (so as not to waste time) and re-run "dofind.php" and see if you get valid results.

Please let me know a.s.a.p., here or by email, or both, what happens. I am very frustrated having a working package blocked by server permissions!

 

I get this"

Warning: Failed opening 'customize.php' for inclusion (include_path='.:/usr/local/lib/php') in /usr/www/users/ewalker/FREEBIE/makedirs.php on line 129
·
Warning: chmod failed: No such file or directory in /usr/www/users/ewalker/FREEBIE/makedirs.php on line 45
The subdirectory bookpages was created, but could not be set to "writable by php scripts"! (Aborting)

 

Revised/Updated Information:

I thank the interested for bearing with me through this beta. I don't know how people generally deal with development if they have only their own one host server to try things on. (Obviously, I tried the package myself--twice, on different sites--before setting it for public use, and it all worked fine for me.) A fellow forum member kindly let me play around on his server, and I believe the "safe-mode" permissions difficulties are now resolved. What a can of worms "safe mode" is!

I have placed a new package, v. 0.50, up at the download page. If any of you tried the older versions, it's probably best to first wipe them out completely, even the package directory, and start anew.

And please let me know, here or by emai or both, what happens this time.

Thank you all yet again for your patience and help.

 

Download v4.0 and ran http://www.domainname.com/FREEBIE/makedirs.php

I get:

Running php version 4.3.5, on Apache/1.3.29 (Unix) mod_auth_passthrough/1.8 mod_log_bytes/1.2 mod_bwlimited/1.4 PHP/4.3.5 FrontPage/5.0.2.2634 mod_ssl/2.8.16 OpenSSL/0.9.7a server software.

Could not set ../FREEBIE mode for write access by php scripts!

 

WhiteGyr emailed me about this, and I have responded, but for everyone else:

The version with the correct method for getting around the ubiquitous "safe-mode" problem is 0.50 (now up to 0.52 with a couple of trivial html typos fixed). The download page also now includes a telephone number at which I will be pleased to give such help as I can to anyone trying the package during its beta phase.

That download page, again, is http://owlcroft.com/FREEBIE/

I expect that when this gets out of beta I will be adding several enhancements, some of which will further up the added-pages count materially.

 

I have downloaded and run V5.3

and have successfully gone through step 8a. Run the script "dofind.php",

and got the following

"
Amazon Web Design-Books Job:


Amazon Web Design-Books Job: FINISHED"
However there is no subdirectory (folder) /bookpages/ so I can not do: "8b. Use your browser to look at some results pages."

Nor is there a Log.File

also the <!--#include virtual="/FREEBIE/count/bookcount.html" --> does not work in FrontPage please see http://web-design-is.us/bookshop.shtml

 

Thanks Eric the .htaccess addition let your php do it's work. However, that also stops FrontPage from being able to publish. So, I have to remove your code from .htaccess file to use FP and then paste it back to do http://www.mywonderfulsite.com/FREEBIE/dofind.php which took from 1545hrs to 1635hrs at my line speed of 46.6 Kbps When you get an automated tools for

 

That is now at least two sites (besides mine) on which we seem to have the mechanics running fine. The problem with FrontPage needs to be resolved, and I will be asking for help on that in another part of this forum.

The run time is less than reported, because we are now dumping the master-slave setup; the workhorse script by itself seems to take, on three different servers now, about 10 minutes to do its work if there are going to be about 2,000 titles. (But you can run it as a daemon anyway.)

The number of added new pages for a site (not counting a couple of perfectly static ancillary ones) is, for a number of titles N, ((N*2)+30), so WhiteGyr with 1,706 titles has added 3,442 new and daily-changing pages to his site. He just needs to customize the one ordinary-HTML access page to the package for his desired look-and-feel and he's ready to point internal site links at it and add in those pages.

A slightly cleaned-up v. 0.60 will be going up a little later today. I added a few things, like a failsafe for those rare but not nonexistant days when Amazon has a bellyache, so that the pages won't get updated if the day's title total is less than 80% of the previous day's, and some other stuff. Features will be coming along fairly fast now. When it stabilizes at 1.0, I will be adding an internationalization, so that the book (and hence site-page) count will be materially augmented.

Stay tuned . . . .

 

If you are looking for a large volume pages with fresh content check out Eric Walker's "Freebie" package.

Right now, every day, this package generates over 2000 of fresh pages for my site.

Even better, Google indexes every single one of them.

Even better yet, Eric provides tech support for the package.

Eric has other Seo-Toys for building fresh content. Check them out!

 

I am considering using AWS or Amazon Web Services (leverage code like Eric's) to add well a lot of pages to my website. But as a relative newbie I wonder how much value it will add in terms keyword rankings or pr value?

So webmasters of Digital Point is this a worthwhile endeavor to add thousands of pages of duplicated content from Amazon? If it works, why doen't everyone learn some code and make more money?
Thanks...