OK, I know most of these questions have no hard and fast rules, I am just asking them to get a general idea of what the population thinks. Plus there haven't been any decent community discussion threads in a long time. How many root categories do you think is a good number? (Ballpark it, if you gave a reason for why you chose how many for your directory that would be awesome) Name the top five most important root categories, in your opinion Name the top 5 subcategories, in your opinion What do you think about screenshots of websites on the category pages? If it didn't take a lot of time and you knew how, would you code your own directory? Do you like directories with minimal graphics, and lots of text, or lots of shiny web 2.0 images and less text? What do you think is an acceptable minimal number of categories? If there was one thing (and if time and money were not an object) you could change about your directory, what would you change?
rushing out, would like to add another Q. 9. What do you think about PR Value of websites on the category/ listing pages? (it is against G TOS, DMoz dont have it aviva dont have it!, end clients (browsing) , will probably not know or care for it!) M.
Honestly, I don't care what dMoz or Aviva do, personally I think aviva is little above trash. It's over hyped. Pagerank shouldn't be a ranking factor IMO
Open number and as many as i need will be added ( only catagories with content will be added, there will be no blanks To me and my view only the important catagories are / will be decided by the user and this will vary from one person to the next, a counter on catagory clicks will show how others feel are the most important / viewed as above Depends on the overall layout, some look great others look tacky or pooly thought out we are totaly hand building but i have paid people to do it as its not my area of knowledge as above with screen shots, its the application of this that makes or breaks it. as above as many as needed but no empty ones There is the $100 question as it is the path we are taking, i can't discuss all things we are doing right now nor will most be seen when we first launch, but i can say we are way left field to anything seen so far, not only in presentation but back end as well. What we can say so far is a few things Directory = General Listing = free Featured Listing = free / paid Featured listing ( business level) = free / Paid Featured listing ( Corporate level) = free / Paid premium = paid + Bid MK2 Nothing real exiting there, but i can promise a lot of surprises as we move forward, in reality after 12 months of planning and now building i would be lying if i said i was not a little scared with what we are about to do, i see 2 outcomes, one is we have some things right and all will be well and worst case we have it all wrong and it will be a flopper. i suppose whenever you break into uncharted waters you run the risk of that shipwreak, we will know soon enough.
Enough to please every user that came. I would give 25 as a limit - not too much, not too few. I would say internet, shopping, business, regional, recreation although we could debate that forever - as the web directory category brings extra revenue, but more end users may prefer entertainment. Unless they are main categories : real estate, directories, blogs, forums, not sure on the last, could be anything. They show such little i'm not sure if it matters any more. Can fill space and add something extra tho. As im a programmer yeah I would. As mentioned throughout DP, i often say design is important. I prefer to stare at alive or aviva than dmoz. More visually appealing If you too few and end user would be happy. It would just look like you are in it for the revenue. 20 top level categories and 15 in each of those makes 300. Thats the bare minimum IMO I would change lots. I would be a rival to yahoo and wikipedia.
My answers for each, sorry for any Dont Knows, just honest answers. 1. No specific number. 2. Dont see any as more important. 3. Same as number 2. 4. Im not sure. 5. Depends if there was any significant benefit from doing so. 6. Somewhere in the middle regarding this. 7. I see no acceptable minimum but whatever is neccessary for the directory, may be a lot less if a niche. 8. At first thought and currently, the design, a nice template layed out just how i want.