No, it's not a bug. There are 3 unique contests in the Contest category and one of them is in both the Contests-Writing subcategory and the Contests-Online Games subcategory. Currently, if you look at the Sweepstakes category, there are 69 unique links. Adding up the number of links in each of the Sweepstakes subcategories, you get 98 links, yet there are only 69 unique links. The number of links in each category represents the number of unique links in that category.
The way links v2 counted links in multiple categories before installing the mod, it would show 4 links instead of 3 in the Contest category and the number of links in the subcategories would be correct at 3 and 1 as they are with the mod. Links v2 totaled the links in each category by adding 1 to every category and subcategory each link was listed under. So instead of correctly showing 3 unique links in the [i}Contests[/i] category, Links v2 would show 4.
Why is that bad? Say I have (in my case) a sweepstakes giving away a car, cash, and a vacation and you can enter it daily. On my site, that sweepstakes would be listed in the Vehicles, Vehicles-Daily, Cash, Cash-Daily, Vacations, and Vacations-Daily subcategories of the Sweepstakes category. Links v2 without the complete mod will count that one sweepstakes (link) like this:
Sweepstakes-Vehicles = add 1
Sweepstakes = add 1
Sweepstakes-Vehicles-Daily = add 1
Sweepstakes-Vehicles = add 1
Sweepstakes = add 1
Sweepstakes-Cash = add 1
Sweepstakes = add 1
Sweepstakes-Cash-Daily = add 1
Sweepstakes-Cash = add 1
Sweepstakes = add 1
Sweepstakes-Vacations = add 1
Sweepstakes = add 1
Sweepstakes-Vacations-Daily = add 1
Sweepstakes-Vacations = add 1
Sweepstakes = add 1
That one sweepstakes (link) would increase the number of links in Sweepstakes-Vehicles, Sweepstakes-Cash, and Sweepstakes-Vacations by 2 and the number of links in the category Sweepstakes by 6. I would have 196 links listed in the category Sweepstakes when in fact there are only 69 uniques and the number of links in each of the prize subcategories would be exactly double what they are now. If the grand total on the home page was figured the same way, it would show I have 200 links, when I actually only have 71 unique links in the database. I hope you can see why this isn't a good idea.
I have a feeling that Alex wanted to implement multiple categories into Links v2 and was going to as soon as he fixed the counting mechanism as he already had a lot of the code already in Links v2. And I'm not at all knocking Alex, he's done an amazing job with Links, especially v2. Not only did he add many, many features and make Links faster and more efficient, but he also made it easier to do modifications by streamlining the code (look how easy it is to add fields to the links or category database in v2 compared to v1.1). It's simply a
matter of Alex finding the time to implement all the features he wants to add. And with so many people pestering him about the release of the final, nonexistent bugs, and modifications and additional feature
requests for the BETA, it's a wonder he got as much done as he did. During that same time, Alex had to continue to provide support for 3 rather large and complex scripts, answer the 80 emails he gets per day and transfer this web site to another host. I can't even imagine what Alex goes through and I work online 14-16 hours a day, everyday with rare exceptions.
In fact, before I get off of my soapbox, I'd like to take this opportunity to thank Alex for all of his hard work on a great program. He puts himself through a lot of extra trouble by keeping his source code so openly available, which we all benefit from in several ways, the very least of which is the many open and free modifications to an already excellent program and the opportunity to truly try Links before you buy it. Which brings up an important point, if you are using Links for commercial purposes, pay the man his $$$, he absolutely has earned every penny. Alex, this cheers for you...
Cheers
Brent
[This message has been edited by loopy (edited February 16, 1999).]
[This message has been edited by loopy (edited February 16, 1999).]
