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ToolBox Plug-in For Links

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ToolBox Plug-in For Links


TOOL BOX PLUG-IN
for Links SQL






I have started work on a new plug-in "ToolBox.pm" for links. The types of features already going into this include: (could change though)

  • Reports: Break down of everthing, too much to list here, but like a breakdown of your links, grouping the number hits on them, ownership, reviews.
  • Repair: Functions to help keep you directory in order. No knowledge of SQL or programming required. Search and replace on your Titles and Descriptions for categories and links. Remove unwanted characters. Add certain keywords or phrases to a group of links with a click of a button. Access to existing links repair functions witout typing command lines to invoke them.
  • Spider the title's and descriptions for links with missing one's!
  • And much, much more.
What do you think?



http://www.iuni.com/...tware/web/index.html
Links Plugins

Last edited by:

Ian: Jun 13, 2002, 11:08 AM
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Re: [Ian] ToolBox Plug-in For Links In reply to
>>What do you think?<<

I think you should start a marketing company judging by the stylish introduction to that post Smile
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Re: [Paul] ToolBox Plug-in For Links In reply to
Argh what happened to the font?

Edit: Ugh how weird...all posts turned into the font in your first post for a while then.

What will the repair do?

I have that stats plugin sitting on my pc too..hehe

Last edited by:

Paul: Jun 13, 2002, 11:15 AM
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Re: [Paul] ToolBox Plug-in For Links In reply to
Hi Paul.... funny things kept happening to my first post (with the font)... yes it was weird.

I know you have the stats plug-in... but I thought of not re-doing anything that you have done as much as I can. I will try to produce different reports than the ones in there (where possible).

For example I just was putting this one in:

Hits Breakdown:

#Hits.....................#Links
0-5.......................2310
5-9.......................7249
10-19...................6123
20-49...................1232
and so on


As for the repair: I am thinking of an easy interface (no SQL knowldge required) to run complex SQL functions for cleaning up the categories and links. An example of this would be "Remove all '&' and replace with 'and' in Category Titles (something I asked you how to do way back when). It will also do things like "Force-Repair" for fixing category counts (which you have to run via the command line at the moment - repair table does not do this). I am still thinking about exactly what I am going to put into this though.


http://www.iuni.com/...tware/web/index.html
Links Plugins

Last edited by:

Ian: Jun 13, 2002, 11:26 AM
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Re: [Paul] ToolBox Plug-in For Links In reply to
Quote:
I think you should start a marketing company judging by the stylish introduction to that post Smile
Thanks Paul. I guess it is kind of attention grabbing! But since you can't edit a post after 1 hour, it may as well be a goodie.


http://www.iuni.com/...tware/web/index.html
Links Plugins
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ToolBox Plug-in For Links [PICTURE] In reply to
I am looking at the spider interface first. This is not a replacement for GT's Links Spider, far from it. It is a tool, to keep your titles and descriptions up-to-date, easily from withing Links.

First draft can be viewed in the attached picture.


http://www.iuni.com/...tware/web/index.html
Links Plugins
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STATISTICS/REPORTS MOCKUP In reply to

PREVIEW - STATISTICS/REPORTS

You can preview an ongoing mock-up of the statistics/report page for this plug-in at:

http://www.iuni.com/...lBox/statistics.html

Comments welcome.



Note: this is not intended to be a full blown stats plug-in. This is just the stats/reporting part of this plug-in, and will be enhanced with the aim of complimenting the other functions as well as providing necessary information for proper usage of the included tools.






http://www.iuni.com/...tware/web/index.html
Links Plugins

Last edited by:

Ian: Jun 13, 2002, 9:20 PM
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Update In reply to
UPDATE:

Statistics functions almost complete. There are two seperate statistics reports available, a basic (for quick results on the essential numbers), and and advanced report. The advanced report is similar to the report produced in the post above this one (see associated link the the mock-up). The advanced report is so comprehensive it takes a little time to generate the stats, so you would select this one maybe once or twice a day for a complete run-down on how things are going.

I am continuing work on the other menu items, including the spider and repair functions.



http://www.iuni.com/...tware/web/index.html
Links Plugins
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PREVIEW - SPIDER SINGLE LINK In reply to

SPIDER LINK INTERFACE PREVIEW



This is a preview picture of the current layout of one of the spider's interfaces. On this particular screen, you have just spidered a link based on its id, and are deciding to make the changes to your database with the new title and description.

As always, things change as I go along, hopefully for the better. So what is in the first version may be different.


http://www.iuni.com/...tware/web/index.html
Links Plugins
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Re: [Ian] PREVIEW - SPIDER SINGLE LINK In reply to
Hey Ian,



If you keep going you are going to have to add some zeros to the price tag on this one! Cool



Got any idea of a price point yet?

It is looking pretty cool!
Quote Reply
Re: [Teambldr] PREVIEW - SPIDER SINGLE LINK In reply to
Hi Brian, thanks for the feedback!

No, I wont be adding zeros to this oneWink. Definatley under $70... I havn't decided yet... depends on how much more I stick into it... actually, I am only about 50% done I think. I have so many ideas for great tools! But I will probably release version one, and then just keep adding to it, like I am doing with Editor Monitor.


http://www.iuni.com/...tware/web/index.html
Links Plugins
Quote Reply
Re: [Ian] PREVIEW - SPIDER SINGLE LINK In reply to

UPDATED PREVIEW ON SINGLE LINK SPIDER

Here you can see the spider actually in use on my own web site. It works great, and I am already putting it to use!!




http://www.iuni.com/...tware/web/index.html
Links Plugins
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Re: [Ian] PREVIEW - SPIDER SINGLE LINK In reply to
Character counts added to the spidered link display. I am thinking I will come back and add more options to the spidering tool once version 1 has been released. I am now going to move onto some of the other tools.

[done] Basic/Quick Stats
[done] Advanced Reports/Stats
[done] Spider single link for Title and Description

[underway] Search and Replace on Tables
[underway] Repair - Various Repair Functions


Edit: I have added a some automatic sensing to the spider... like missing trailing slahses are tried when a search in the database fails, as well as adding http:// when missing etc. This yeilds much better results!


http://www.iuni.com/...tware/web/index.html
Links Plugins

Last edited by:

Ian: Jun 15, 2002, 2:34 PM
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Re: [Ian] PREVIEW - SPIDER SINGLE LINK In reply to
Ok, so I wasn't done the spider... I just keep adding to it!

Now, if you spider (based on a web address), the plug-in will look for the address in you directory, and if it does not find an exact match it will suggest similar links to try. Example: if I try to spider http://www.iuni.com and there is not an exact match, the plug-in suggests:




3 Similar Matches Found:
  • http://www.iuni.com/
  • http://www.iuni.com/forum/
  • http://www.iuni.com/fp/jerry



Tool Box Plug-in : Spider Link


http://www.iuni.com/...tware/web/index.html
Links Plugins

Last edited by:

Ian: Jun 15, 2002, 8:07 PM
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CUSTOM TAGS for TOOL BOX In reply to
I am thinking that in the same vain as the Editor Monitor plug-in, I am going to create a load of custom tags for use on any of your Links template files, right out of this plug-in.

This will help fill the gap for a lot of the information you like to show to your users, which currently you have to create a global for.

Example of a custom tag: <%Plugins::ToolBox::LatestLinks('10')%>. You place this into your html, and it will give yout the last 10 links added to your database. You set the number and it returns the list accordingly.

There are so many possibilities in the information you could put into your pages, and everyone wants different things on their sites. So hopfully I can create enough of a spread of different information, that anyone could enhance their directory with them.

I will have a look through the forum for things that people seem to be wanting, and choose those which are appropriate for this type of plug-in. Suggestions are welcome.

More to come...


http://www.iuni.com/...tware/web/index.html
Links Plugins
Quote Reply
Re: [Ian] PREVIEW - SPIDER SINGLE LINK In reply to
Regarding the above post.... I have taken this one step further so that you are given a list of LIKE matches, and you can re-spider any of the suggestions right from the list - 1 click! In this example, I tried an "address spider" for http://www.gossam, which of course is not in my directory... so I am presested with something similar to this (can't show exact formating etc on here):

Address http://www.gossam does not exist in your database

Return





3 Similar Matches Found:


Address: http://www.gossamer-threads.com/forum [SPIDER]

Address: http://www.gossamer-threads.com/.../links-sql/index.htm [SPIDER]

Address: http://www.gossamer-threads.com/scripts/links/index.htm [SPIDER]




Tool Box Plug-in : Spider Link


http://www.iuni.com/...tware/web/index.html
Links Plugins

Last edited by:

Ian: Jun 16, 2002, 4:19 PM
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Re: [Ian] PREVIEW - SPIDER SINGLE LINK In reply to

Repair Preview

I will be adding more features to the repair after version 1. But you can get the idea of the type of repair functions that will be going into ToolBox.

The HTML/Tag stripper is not basic by any means. Here are just some examples of what it will rip out of your descriptions and/or titles in one click of a button:

<!-- --> <? ?> \s ="

Scripts which start: (TITLE, SCRIPT, APPLET, OBJECT, STYLE)

One of these characters: [!/A-Za-z]

Various quote combinations

And more

I've tried it out with all kinds of dirty tricks... not much gets past it!




http://www.iuni.com/...tware/web/index.html
Links Plugins
Quote Reply
Re: [Ian] PREVIEW - SPIDER SINGLE LINK In reply to
>>
I've tried it out with all kinds of dirty tricks... not much gets past it!
<<

I'm not sure what code you are using but to nuke all html"ish" tags you can do:

s/<[^>]+>//g;
Quote Reply
Re: [Paul] PREVIEW - SPIDER SINGLE LINK In reply to
Thanks Paul... pm incomming.


http://www.iuni.com/...tware/web/index.html
Links Plugins
Quote Reply
Re: [Ian] PREVIEW - SPIDER SINGLE LINK In reply to
Wow, Nice work.

Just a quick suggestion to make sure you have a what I call 'double check' on the serious repair stuff. This is basically the "Are you sure you want to do this" type question in case some fat fingered people (like me at times) hit the yes accidentally.

Howard J. Brubaker
Wizcom, Ltd
Quote Reply
Re: [wizcom] PREVIEW - SPIDER SINGLE LINK In reply to
Hi,

Thanks for the comments.

Yes. Anything that is this serious should have the "double check". I am currently working on a "X records will be modified" BEFORE it actually does the changes.

Wink


http://www.iuni.com/...tware/web/index.html
Links Plugins
Quote Reply
Re: [Ian] PREVIEW - SPIDER SINGLE LINK In reply to

COMMENTS

Anyone who may be interested in this plug-in (no obligations or anything), I would llike some feedback on what you might want in this type of thing.

Please Private Message me or leave a message here.

I am keen to get version 1 out, and then continue to add features, like the ever growing Editor Monitor. Toolbox is already saving me time on my own website, as well as telling me things I did not know before, and I am sure you will find some of its functions quite useful on your site.

Thanks!

EDIT: There will be $5 discount on ToolBox for exisiting owners of my Editor Monitor Plug-inWink




http://www.iuni.com/...tware/web/index.html
Links Plugins

Last edited by:

Ian: Jun 18, 2002, 9:11 AM
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Re: [Ian] PREVIEW - SPIDER SINGLE LINK In reply to

TOOL BOX INSTALLATION REQUIREMENTS

ToolBox, when released will require:

  • Links SQL version 2.1.0 (FULL) or later. A beta version of Links 2.1.0 will cause errors.



http://www.iuni.com/...tware/web/index.html
Links Plugins
Quote Reply
Re: [Ian] PREVIEW - SPIDER SINGLE LINK In reply to

Version 1.0.0 for ToolBox is just around the corner, a day or two hopefully!





http://www.iuni.com/...tware/web/index.html
Links Plugins
Quote Reply
Re: [Ian] PREVIEW - SPIDER SINGLE LINK In reply to

I am going to delay the release of ToolBox for a bit longer,

while I complete work on some other urgent projects.





http://www.iuni.com/...tware/web/index.html
Links Plugins
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