Pretty much everything I've read so far has been great. The absense of args will be a given, and native. RSS/XML exports are also a given (with automata for ping-o-matic etc), the ad placement priority is also a given, as is adsense and coop support). It looks like nothing but the best will do here.. so I suppose some additional content (feeds) support will need to be considered as well. Keep the ideas coming folks ! I can smell innovation in this thread, and I'm not surprised.. with the obvious experience of DP members this is looking great ! Cheers, JL
Oh yes... when I search the directory, I really really really want the locations of the link results to be shown. This is how I find the right locations to submit some of my more oddball sites.
and also the cross reference will probably make the number of pages much larger .. which i think is good (?)
Exponentially - which is handy if you have decent sources of content - it certainly works for me ..and the locations of links when searching becomes 'really really really' important too Cheers, JL
Why is this a good idea? Obviously it's good to be flexible, but if a category is too deep, won't it dilute PageRank (damping factor)? Also, it's bad GUI design to have too many "drill downs" to get to something; people get bored/lost. Not knocking it - just curious why people would like to see it
And if a list of results is too long to fit on one page, don't just have one link to >> next page but do it like Google with links to all of the next pages (to help indexing and browsing). I would like to see space for actual content on each page like category description or place for a relevant-ish feed. Just a page with links is crap in terms of link value. Although it's nicer for end user experience perhaps. I also like how MSN's bcentral directory allows another few links to dee pages within/alongside your linstings.
Oh... and it should have an import feature for competitive upgrades from the directories we are all currently using.
Also... it should have the ability to define moderators for specific categories and groups of categories -- so that we can team up and eventually replace the imbecils at DMOZ as the largest human edited directory on the web. And hey... we could do that more quickly if the script could import from the over 300 existing web directories -- across the Internet via wget. <evil grin> Wow... normalizing that data would be a hurculean task.
I hate to say it, but i think we've already exhausted hercules. Importing/Upgrading.. now that IS evil.. and quite a thought ! I also agree with the pagination idea. I think allowing space for additional content will be a given.. (it's going to be templated using SMARTY, so it shouldnt be problem). Keep em coming Cheers, JL
That is a necessity, content is very important, so multiple templates will be needed per category & subcategory. For the Pagination: Having the ability to use the category title and page number (as an option to turn on & off per category and subcategory -as names may get too long) for small keyword boosts e.g.: business 1 | business 2... ...better yet, would be pulling the last topic out of the category name: business/b2b/consulting would allow for consulting 1 | consulting 2 (and not: business/b2b/consulting 1 | business/b2b/consulting 2).
Yes, this is a practice I myself use.. subcat names as internal links (I do try to keep all anchors/URLs distinct as well) so a switch option is a good idea. As for templating, multiple templates will be possible (ie selectable per category) but one of my (very common) practices is modifying the DOM on the fly. Whether it's moving full blocks around, injecting some additional markup, or completely substituting per category, I'll look at templating from both aesthetic and counter-duplication standpoints.. see what I can do there Cheers, JL
Optional word filtering would be good, to weed out the inappropriate submissions. People have mentioned cross-referencing, I think if you can do this well it's the difference between a good directory and a really great one.