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Conversion of a huge directory to PHPLD

Discussion in 'Directories' started by hotftuna, Apr 24, 2011.

  1. #1
    Some of you may know of my large, hand-coded directory CannyLink.com. I kept the directory hand-coded as a way to stand-out in the crowd.

    After 7 years of ownership, I finally decided to convert CannyLink to a script-driven site. I went to the guys at PHPLD because I knew that they would be able to handle this complex job. One of the big challenges in this project is that I wanted the 2500 subcat pages to retain the URL stucture.

    All of the guys at PHPLD worked very hard on my site and I just wanted to take the opportunity to say Thank You.
     
    Last edited: Apr 24, 2011
    hotftuna, Apr 24, 2011 IP
  2. Leo Ghost

    Leo Ghost Well-Known Member

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    #2
    I've always heard very good things about PHPLD, glad to know your experience went well :)

    I do have a couple of questions though, if you don't mind.
    -Why did you finally decide to switch? Was your hand-coded script giving you trouble, or take too much time to manage?
    -Did PHPLD perform the service for free, and if not, can you give us a general outline of the cost?

    I've been looking at starting a network of fresh directories running custom software.
     
    Leo Ghost, Apr 24, 2011 IP
  3. discover

    discover Notable Member

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    #3
    Personally I think you will regret it.
    Yes it may be easier to manage but your directory is that one step closer to the footprint of thousands of other phpld directories.
    I think you would have been better investing the money in building your own custom script.
     
    discover, Apr 24, 2011 IP
  4. dvduval

    dvduval Notable Member

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    #4
    There may be some advantages to making your own directory script, just like there are advantages to making your own blog script like wordpress, or your own directory script like vbulletin, but to make something from scratch that is comparable to Wordpress or vBulletin or phpLD also carries a high price tag, much more than working with a script that has been in development for many years.

    Thank you hotftuna for talking about your experience working with us. We really appreciate it.

    In this project we maintained the exact same URL structure and design as the original. And then what was especially beneficial was there were hundreds of links that were dead or parked or containing malware that had accumulated over the years, and we identified and removed them all in one shot. Here is a little video about the tool.

    I will leave it to the OP to comment on the cost, but I felt the project went very well, and it was very cool to see massive html site created in Frontpage to be quickly converted over to phpLD with use of a spider we built from scratch in just a few hours. It was an exciting project for us.
     
    dvduval, Apr 24, 2011 IP
  5. Brandon Sheley

    Brandon Sheley Illustrious Member

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    #5
    I've always been pleased with phpLD, top quality work.
     
    Brandon Sheley, Apr 24, 2011 IP
  6. discover

    discover Notable Member

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    #6
    I still think there is no comparison with a script used all over the web and one you have custom coded.
    A lot of the larger directories are running custom scripts and I think it is the recommended direction for a directory owner to take once the directory reaches a certain level.
    Hotftuna has just made his directory more like the thousands of other directories and I think that is a bad thing.
    I think he was proud that his directory was hand coded and unique and I think not going with a custom script is a mistake.
    Good luck to him either way.
     
    discover, Apr 25, 2011 IP
  7. sunilmamo

    sunilmamo Well-Known Member

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    #7
    Looks like an impressive job done, but I think there is an issue involving paginated pages for categories. For example, in the cannylink.com/business.htm page, the sub-pages 2 - 3 are showing as /business.htmpage-2.html and/business.htmpage-3.html, which I think is bad for SEO. Might want to look into fixing that.
     
    sunilmamo, Apr 25, 2011 IP
  8. hotftuna

    hotftuna Active Member

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    #8
    Thanks- conversion is very recent and there may be some bugs- thanks for pointing this out.
     
    hotftuna, Apr 25, 2011 IP
    sunilmamo likes this.
  9. hotftuna

    hotftuna Active Member

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    #9
    My directory was literally hand-coded, not a hand-coded script. I added listings with FrontPage. It was time consuming and it meant that it was almost impossible for me to go on vacation. I had a dedicated computer I used to update the site and it was near impossible to update on the road.

    I will not give cost except to say that it was more than reasonable.
     
    hotftuna, Apr 25, 2011 IP
  10. YMC

    YMC Well-Known Member

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    #10
    Flat html files ran your directory with over 62,000 listings? Goodness, that must have been indeed been a big effort and probably required several programs just to harvest the listings from each page. Can't imagine how you managed to make it work this long.

    Checked a few links in a category I'm interested in and it looks like you're probably going to need to audit everything too - one site was domained and another which you had a number of links to articles has apparently pulled some or redesigned their site's structure. Now that it will be so much easier to add additional categories and longer descriptions, it might not be a bad investment to go through everything. Granted my directories are much smaller but I've found if you take it one subcategory at a time, it eventually gets done.

    Good luck. So nice to see a positive post about what folks are doing with their directories.
     
    Last edited: Apr 26, 2011
    YMC, Apr 26, 2011 IP
  11. noobpreneur

    noobpreneur Well-Known Member

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    #11
    I honestly don't understand that by using a PHPLD, one directory will be just like any other web directories running on PHPLD.

    Having plenty of low quality/spammy/scammy directories running on PHPLD doesn't make PHPLD a bad directory script. It is powerful, IMO.

    You can in fact develop your own uniqueness based on PHPLD - some via hard-coding/script customization, some via unique directory design and layout, some by their very own unique selling propositions.
     
    noobpreneur, Apr 26, 2011 IP
  12. dvduval

    dvduval Notable Member

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    #12
    It's like saying there are a bunch of spammy wordpress sites or phpbb sites. There are, but that would not be a reason not to use these products.
     
    dvduval, Apr 26, 2011 IP
    fastreplies likes this.
  13. imperialDirectory

    imperialDirectory Peon

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    #13
    Really impressive ... Hand-coded 62000 listings and 2500 categories..! I can imagine how much trouble you might went through when making slight changes to common areas. Glad your directory found a good home.

    If you don't mind a comment. Seems there's slight encoding issue in some characters.
    http://cannylink.com/entertainment.htm

    Some of the text are showing question marks instead of characters. Most likely caused by UTF-8 encoding issue. Would be an easy fix.

    Good luck!
     
    imperialDirectory, Apr 26, 2011 IP
  14. stock_post

    stock_post Prominent Member

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    #14
    stock_post, Apr 26, 2011 IP
  15. dvduval

    dvduval Notable Member

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    #15
    At this time (and since starting this about 9 months ago) we have plenty of server capacity and there are no limits in place. In the future, if needed we would give some resources for free, and then charge those who have higher usage. But I don't anticipate any constraints as we have plenty of server capacity and it is not something you need to run all that often.
     
    dvduval, Apr 26, 2011 IP