HI everyone, I need some advice. I've decided to get into the world of directories. I've bought the domain and gone some research. Here's where the advice comes in...I need to know which script is best for my purposes. What i'm looking to do is create a directory for my niche and the categories would be based first on geography. So first they go through continents, countries, province/state, then finally cities. Once you pick your city/area, that is when you see the different niche categories. Is there a script that always has these categories set up or have these categories as an addon? I don't know which script I should buy based on my needs. I imagine it would be phpld, but I also want my directory to be different from the others out there. Any help you be great and rep would be added. Thanks
phpLD with a custom designed skin/template is the way to go Build your own category tree unique for your Directory Many folks on DP are very helpful take a good look round the threads to get more insight
I may be wrong but i think phplynx caters for that quite well. I haven't used it myself yet but i got the impression that it does what you require.
PHPLD should be good enough. As mentioned the key is categories... I have a niche that uses PHPLD v 2.1- Lakes Region
yup, i'm definitely going to build my own categories, but it's the geography that is the main hang-up for me. Is there a way to download preset geographic categories like the ones i mentioned (that go: continent->country->province->city->and then i input my own categories). Because going all the category work for most countries all the way down to the city is very daunting. reps added.
Yep there is, I'm doing it now with the phpLynx script as its the only one out there at a decent price that does the job. Here's how I'm doing it, Countries of the World (193), then Regions, Cities and Towns of these Countries. (Databases are out there, you just got to look hard enough. Difference with the way the phpLynx script works than others is that it can be used to search three ways, Service, i.e Plumbers, Business name, i.e Joe Bloggs plumbers, Location, ie. Alabama. It also has a built in spellchecker and suggestion for the country search which is pretty neat.
check my china directory , it is based on phpld - php link directory. feature includes tags clouds, thumbnails viewing, link popularity check, page rank sorting, a-z listing, details page viewing, same category links, sitewide partner place and many more.
Not to be a downer, but I'm thinking you might want to inverse your category structure. If someone has to drill down continents>country>state>city>real topic, you are going to have tons of continents, country, states and cities that lead to no actual listings - at least until the site gets really going. It might be a better idea to have real topic>continent>country>state>city that way you only create the country, state and city categories as you get submissions from them. I would also strongly suggest you check out the phpLynx script as it was designed to be a business directory and comes default with many of the listing fields you would require.
Phpld has just released a regional directory, pm dvduval for further infomation or visit http://www.phplinkdirectory.com/forum/forumdisplay.php?f=16
Have you seen how badly structured it is? You have to have www.mydirectory/regional/region/ even before you start. Besides it's also based on the free version so you'd have to pay lots for mods for it to stand up to phpLynx.
I created my UK regions on LinkLister manually. I really got into it and later realised the categories went too deep, so I changed it all. So my advice is plan carefully before you start, and consider how deep the categories will go.