New directory, coming soon :)

I'm almost finished wrinting the code for my new directory.
So far I'm aiming for the following:
1) free basic listings (this will remain and will never change ie there will always be free listings).
2) some premium paid listings (once the directory is big enough for it to be worthwhile for the sites).
3) automated listing (checked by bots and backed up by human checking).
4) rotating featured site (on home page).
5) submitted sites get spidered.
6) search feature - searching both the directory and.or data generated by (5).
7) additional description page - you can add a page (with limited html codes available) describing your site further.
8) notification of submission.
9) notification of site addition to directory.
10) notification if site is rejected - and reasons why (human produced email) - all sites rejected by the 'bot are human checked
11) notication of site removal - you will be notified that the site has been deactivated in the directory and have the option to reactivate (subject to human checking).
12) initial email will show how many sites are currently waiting in the submission queue (we're not sure how many sites the bots can handle per hour at present).
13) update emails letting you know the current position of your site in the submission queue - this is perhaps being a little ambitious (thinking that there will be too many sites for the bots to handle).
14) multiple site submission - we're still working how this is implemented.
15) forum for disussion of the directory - eg why was my site removed etc etc.
16) absolutely no requirement for reciprocal links.
17) diectory will be completely Search Engine friendly.

The only sites that won't be handled by the bots will be those who apply for premium listings. Premium listings will be available as: max 5 per category, and a total of 10 for the home page. Obviously in the beginning there will be no benefit in paying for any premium listings, so we'll be offering incentives to the for the first xx amount of sites on a first come first served basis - the first xx amount of sites will get premium listings until the next PR update FOC (or the next 4 months which ever occurs first).

We're intending that #15 won't be used much as we'll be providing plenty of info on how a site submission is progressing via email.
The whole site is generated from 5 pages, with various amounts of mod_rewrite trickery to make the site SE friendly, and our initial tests show that there should be no problem having the pages indexed.

A bit of background on the directory:
It came about due to one thing, my in ability to get a clients' site into DMOZ. The client simply said why haven't you got your own directory - and I had no better reason than 'everyone else has one '. So I've written one. They have no idea how useful getting a listing in DMOZ can be

The various bots use are still under major development and I'm sure that will continue 'til the end of time.
The rules for the directory will be pretty straight forward, we'll accept anything that's not illegal (illegal being what we define it to be - which may or may not coincide with what the courts think).

After quite a bit of discussion, we've decided that we'll accept listings of site subdirectories in different categories (for the beginning at least) - but we will reserve the right to limited the number of subdirectories listed from anyone site.

Now to the whole point of this post:

Can anyone think of any other features which they'd like to see in a directory ?

 

Sounds like a great directory, is it going to be in a certain niche, or a category for everything directory? Also are they going to be direct links (I assume they are from your post)? Also, are you interested in selling your code? I have a jewelry store directory I made, I am using a free directory PHP Script, and I found a few things I dont like about it. (They dont give direct links to website, etc)

Best Wishes.
Mike.

 

Yeah, cool features.

I wrote my own code for Tsection, and I haven't got around to adding some of those features in yet (like automated bot checking) because I haven't really needed it.

Automation is good, however the real problem is people submitting entries with wacky formatting, or in the wrong category. You need to manually check this stuff.

As for search, I use the paid search feature from Google. That saves a load on my database, and a headache for me.

I wouldn't worry about adding extra features at this stage. Just get the thing online and start accepting submissions. Trust me, it will become _very_ obvious what you need to add...

I would work more on making your site graphically appealing and user friendly. If graphic design isn't your thing, pay someone else to come up with a nice simple design for you and an easy to follow submission process. This will pay dividends, rather than features no one really needs. What they need is their link added to your page. That's the only feature they care about.

For instance idea 13 is really not necessary. No one really cares where they are in the queue, unless the submission is for Dmoz. Just send em an email when it is finished (be it accepted or rejected) and they will be happy. In fact, it would really annoy me if a directory sent me an email every 15 minutes. "Your submission has progressed in the queue. It is now third in line."

> absolutely no requirement for reciprocal links.

Erm, good luck getting PageRank then. I haven't had a problem for reciprocal links and I would recommend that you have a fast link option. I've found that a good deal of people are willing to give a link for faster consideration.

They win, because they get an approval from me in a matter of hours saying their site has been approved, and I win because that link helps me to improve the reach of the directory (and it is sort of payment for spending 5 minutes looking at their site and rewriting their attempt at a description and title).

You need to give people a reason to fire up notepad, add your link, connect via FTP and upload. Give them this reason, and make it damn easy for them to link to you.

Good luck with the directory, it sounds great. What's the name going to be?

 

I'm looking at the google search as a possible alternative - spidering sites is expensive on bandwidth.
It's unlikely you'd ever get an email about queue position - the code is such that you'd need to be in the queue for a min of 5 days in order to get an email. We're not sure what sort of load the bot can handle atm, but t should be well in excess of 1000 sites per day, so the email situation is more of a fall back incase something goes wrong. I mean if we limit the bot to 1000 per day, it'd need 6000 sites in the queue before you got an email (that'd be a tad ambitious on our part).

Yes, all out bound links are static anchors.

Reciprocal links aren't a great idea (imho), many people will link to the directory on their own. If the software works correctly, getting inbound links won't be a problem. Since the submission process is automated, having a link back wouldn't speed up the submission. If people find the diectory useful, they'll link to it.

The directory is a general directory (no specific niche).

As to selling the code, hmmm it would need a bit of prettying up first. We may do this at somepoint (perhaps) but you need to see the directory first . It's more likely that we'd offer the code under the GPL.


I'll be announcing the site in here before anywhere else, and special offers (on premium listings) will only be available to DP members.

 

Wow, you are definietyl aiming high aren't you? I've just built a directory myself and it pretty much runs on a similar model apart from 4,5,6 and the automated queue emails (as my submissions are approved instantaneously).

I do have to somewhat agree with Tsection re the recip links. It might be tougher getting a decent PR, but that's just my opinion.

The rest looks great. Sounds like a nice directory. Good luck with the project!

 

No point aiming low
The directory has to be easy for people to submit sites - we're working on a way to allow multiple site submissions (for you SEO's with many many sites).
There are plenty of ways to get links without requiring recips.
And I think this morning I might have negotiated a way around the spidering bandwidth problem, and it is/could be a big problem. One of my sites took up over 20MB of bandwidth being spidered (three times) if the directory grows (Even to a couple of hundred sites) then spidering will take up a lot of bandwidth.
Hopefully I've just negotiated a open transfer connection - at times the available bandwidth might drop as low as 256K at others as high as 10M but since it's only going to be used by the spiders so I don't really care about the speed.