Hello all, well my one week hiatus was a lot longer than anticipated Been trying to visit the forum each day to just to stay atop of messages - have to agree with pugdog, there's been a lot going on!

I would like to seriously begin working on developing LinksSQL for creating a regional directory - as I've indicated in posts a while back, I'm not a guru on any of this - new to Links, MySQL & Perl but, I'm willing to work my tail off to learn what I need to learn and I'm requesting that list members help me out and direct me.

The directory I'd like to build would be mine - it's not a site I'm being paid to develop and it's not one I'm looking to get rich on. I'd just like to build something of value to those interested in the area and if it happens to make a bit of money in the process, that'd be nice too!

I had started out by using the names of cities as categories, then adding subs such as Real Estate, Lodging, Dining, etc. To be totally honest, I had to ftp to the site to even remember pathnames which had been set-up! (It's been a while okay!) Guess I'm really trying to say - what I thought I had figured out on this has now alluded me and I'm looking for suggestions on how to get started.

Thanks for taking the time to read thru - know it is long-winded, wanted to explain where I'm at and what I've done. I had started on customizing the Yahoo templates - the html and layout won't be a problem for me, need to identify the best way for setting up a regional directory and whether I should continue as I've started or dump it to go a better direction. Thanks!

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Karen

Hi Karen,

I'm not sure I completely follow the question... My approach would be to start with a fairly small and defineable segment and grow from there. You could either start with one city and all its categories, or list "all" the cities (is this US or global?) and add one category at a time for each. I could see the scope of such a project quickly getting out of hand.

Dan

Hi Dan, the scope of the project is to create some automation and dynamic attributes which would eventually replace (enhance?) a current static website. The static site is a couple hundred pages - problem is, it's impossible to keep updated - even the calendar events is a major task!

The directory is statewide and is geographicaly divided into regions - there are 9 regions total.

Right now, it is a single-handed effort to maintain calendars, etc - using a combination of links/dbman, it is my hope to be able to give access to users for adding calendar events and other items of interest.

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Karen

Hi there, hope to understood you the right way - english is not my favorite language :-(

I have done a calender with links by ordering the entrees (links not necessary, but added some more fields for date, time, name, adress, telefon and so on) and changing the sort-order to hold the newest entree (highest ID or sort by field with date2 (not the date one) with different categories (e.g. sports, dancing and so on)

The problem i dont go on so far, is too change the thing, so people could see a real calender (test this to see what i mean

www.emmerich-husch.de/termine

Its my weekly plan (not really the whole one, only a test some days ago, when i started this planer for the first time) as produced by my lotus organizer.

Think there is a new template needed called date.htm to show all entrees for one month inside a cell of a table, linking the TITLE-Field to the Detail-field. Maybe as pop-up. (I have entered a field inside my links with popup, _new or _top and changed the add.htm for differnt cats.)

Think the following should be done:
Reading the links from a category and write them (TITLE, Link and ID) to an array month 1 ... 6 (or more) days from 1 to 31, testing the first and second letters from date 12-Nov-00(in US the second ones Nov/12/00), then writing out a table with cols x, then creating a new line.

Think this should be a snap for a programmer (sorry, not for me, i could only say it in words)

Robert



[This message has been edited by Robert (edited March 20, 2000).]

Hi Robert, thanks for the idea, it looks like you've got a great start for a monthly planner. It would probably be well suited for a business site or something like that.

For the calendar, I have actually been trying to get a grip on what's going on with DBMan - I think the long/short dbman mod with the relational mod would work very well since any given month could easily have well over 200 calendar events. (Relational so a particular area could be identified.) It would be rather hard to give a 200 word description of a rodeo event for example in a small viewing area.

Unfortunately, there really aren't many people working with DBMan SQL and I don't have the skill sets to do it on my own.

The other major problem I'm facing is that I hadn't previously used either DBMan nor Links, it seems most/many of the "mods" are for incorporating mods which users had in their standard perl scripts.

With no written documentation available, it is really hard to get a grasp on what to do to begin and/or what the actual results of mods are before attempting them.



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Karen

Greetings All! - Karen!

I have been using links2 for a while now. My idea was to build regional directory Christian Churches, Ministries and businesses in New Zealand. Currently running two versions of links - one for churches and ministries, the other for businesses. Reason different information required.

My conclusion after a long period of time is that what I am trying to do is have an online telephone book with hidden email and url fields broken down into regions of New Zealand.

Looking at our telecom online Yellowpages cemented this in my mind. The how is another story.

It really does need to be utilising a SQL database with a frontend such as LinksSQL. At the moment the price is out of my range, approximately $1000.00 NZDs.

I like you have never used a SQL Db before and am not a programmer so the learning curve would be quite steep but I guess if I can get hold of links2 I can get hold of the SQL side of things.

Another option I have looked at and still are considering is using asp with either access or a SQL DB.

Just my 2 cents worth. Good luck and be interested to see the end result.




[This message has been edited by Ian Conza (edited March 20, 2000).]

Guess I overlooked one important "sorting order" which was used in my static website -

It works well on the static pages yet I totally overlooked making this the first order of sorting for the Links pages.

Anyhow, I had overlooked putting the geographical areas into the Categories - my question is, which way would be more efficient to deal with it now?

1) Add the geographical areas as Categories, then go back through and add the the geo area Category to each of the additional categories I've entered (thereby making them subs).

2) Start from scratch, add the geographical areas then build the subcategories from there.

Is there anything I should be aware of with either method? I know that I'd have to telnet in to get rid of the Category folders already created because unless I actually delete each one, Links isn't going to remove the folder and files already built. Anything else?



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Karen



[This message has been edited by Karen (edited March 21, 2000).]

Sorry, it´s too late to understand your english thoughts for my little brain.
May you tell me more info about the things you would do.
I dont know that there is a db-man sql - version, happy to hear it; think i would test it soon. (till now i think that links could everything that Db-man could do)

For using the mods; most of them should be easy to do; if have any question, write it here or directly to me. Maybe i could help.

Robert