A recent post here on dp just brought to light more examples of issues with a renew mod previously released by a member we rarely see here on dp anymore. Many probably remember the issue I had with this mod a few months ago with it sending out repeated renewal notices. Some received literally tens of notices which of course was not my intention at all. The intent was to send two reminders as expiration drew close to give proper notification of a listing requiring its annual review. At the time I sent a pm to maker of that mod but there was no response. Because of that Rob went in and shut the mod down in several places to prevent notifications from going out. Over the past couple months a new renewal mod has been designed and I am very happy to say AD is the first to have it. One simple word describes it and that is AWESOME! It absolutely blows away the other one in both features and function. Rob has spent the better part of the last two days installing and testing this feature and the best thing is that we know Rob supports his work and is not going anywhere. I say this because when submitting to AD it is important to use a good email address to avoid an annual listing expiring without receiving a notification. The fact this mod was designed, coded, installed and tested by Rob should let everyone rest easy.
Thanks Bruce. It was definitely an uphill battle, but in the end, I was pleased at how it came out, and to know you were 2wice as pleased definitely made that battle all worthwhile! I really like the admin aspect of it, and obviously I know you do too (phpld script & code is so outdated and cumbersome. *ugh* )
I think I just devised the ULTIMATE SpamGuard EVER for the script. I DARE people to spam this directory!!!
Whats different to the one I had you install? I need to know some features before I buy Also Bruce can you tell us how this renewal mod works, its advantages etc?
The main and huge difference is you will never see the spam. Not even in the admin. There is no need to configure anything. It's being tested on authority directory for the time being, and I will most likely install in on aviva, dirjournal and a few others. The submission has to be legit, or else it will never be seen, period! oh la la Can't wait for the first batch to process!
Good stuff. Can we still add bad words like viagra to the filter though? I may get it on FD as it gets spammed a lot.
It was really pretty funny as Rob and I were chatting when he figured out that spam guard. It was like Christmas came early seeing how happy he was. I think I will let Rob cover the features as I would hate to accidentally leave one out. Plus though I did speak with Rob about mentioning the renew mod here I did not really ask if I could itemize the list of features. What I really wanted to do is let everyone know that the renewal process on AD is better than ever for annual listings to alleviate some worries for them.
Shame phpLD doesn't do this by default. They should have taken care of this stuff before implementing recurring link periods. I guess thats phpLD for you....
I was pretty rushed for time this morning as I had a couple appointments to make. Back now though so I can tell you a little more about it. Rob can feel free to jump in if I miss something and I probably will. First you can see everything from admin as is typical with Rob - see the list of upcoming renewals and also the list of expired listings. Here is an example. A notification is sent out prior to the renewal date - I chose to send one out 30 days and 7 days prior to the renewal date. The renewal is done so that you don't lose any days for renewing early. In other words if you renew on Dec 15, 2008 and your expiration day is Dec 31st 2008 - your new expiration day is pushed to Dec 31st 2009. Since all listings on AD get reviewed at least annually - Renewals go through a new review as they should. Upon remittance of the annual review the listing is que'd for review within admin clearly identified as renewals in the approve listings area. Thumbnails of the listed site are on all the admin screens If a listing is not renewed in time it goes off into the expired area. Listings that are expired can be renewed at any time after expiration - If it expired a week ago you can still renew the listing and it will be qued for review. Though to be honest I have not decided yet how long I will leave those expired listings in the directory prior to deletion as I like to keep it clean. It may be a month and if not renewed they get deleted but not sure on that yet. It is set up so that payment of the review fee is verified prior to queing the listing for review. On the details page of annual listings you can see the number of days remaining. When renewing you have the option to upgrade to featured or one time fee options. See -> Example Every listing has its own unique/individual renew url with some kind of encryption mixed in there which honestly Rob would need to explain. And there are probably some more that I am not thinking of right now.
Now as far as the Spam Guard one which was one of those epiphany moments towards the end. Yesterday I probably got about 10 or so unpaid/spam submits which I am sure Rob saw showing up as he worked in there. Since then not a single one has shown up in the que. Knowing how it works I don't think I will ever see a spam submission again.
The renewal mod seems to be thoroughly thought out and I'm interested in implementing it. I don't really get much spam since installing reCaptcha but would be concerned about not seeing the links marked as spam as the mod could be erroneously removing non-spam and I wouldn't know.
Hey Bruce, I've gone ahead and made some small aesthetic modifications as well as some major coding changes. change on focus text highlighting for deep links added the date added added the new expiration date for the listing adjusted widths add some AJAX price handling. When selecting options the price shwing auto adjusts recoded and overhauled the entire renew section which handles the renewals. That's all I can think of at the moment. If there are more, I will let you know. Although well planned, there was room for betterment, so I took it upon myself and recoded quite a bit of stuff, and now the MOD is even better than before. I just can't see it getting any better now, as everything is implemented in it. As far as the SpamGuard, believe me, there will be no confusion with regards to spam vs good submissions. It is 100% failproof. If it is in fact a legit submission, it will be seen. If not, it won't be seen unless you look it up on the section it has for it in the admin. The great thing about it is you will never see the spam in the approve section, ever.