You can see a good example of this personal project I am scoping out here:
INSTRUMENTS OF THE WORLD
http://odin.prohosting.com/~zava/instruments/library/

I am hoping to spend my free time building this site, but want to make sure I am proceeding in the most efficient manner before blasting off here.

1) NEW TEMPLATE: To add instruments to the archive, I simply open up an existing instrument index.html file and modify it to include the new information. The result is I will have as many index.html files as there are instruments in the world when I complete this site (years down the road). Wouldn't it be better to create an html form and an html template where all these instruments can be stored in a database??

2) ALT-CATEGORIES: I am using the alt.categories MOD to allow the users to browse instruments by TYPE and GEOGRAPHY. This seems to work great. I just need to manually edit the index.html everytime I build since I want all the alt GEOGRAPHY categories to stay tied to the graphic on the home page.

Any expertise is greatly appreciated, as this is and will always remain a bannerless non-profit site! The more time I can spend on building the content and less on maintaining html the better for every musician and instrument lover in the world!!

PS: The banner on the site now is only temporary so I can test it for free.

Thanks!

Jason North (aka ZAVA)
Instruments of the World!

VOLUNTEERS: Accepting volunteers to help build the content!! If you know someone who is (1) on the web and has expertise in, for instance, Middle Eastern drums, OR (2) any college students seeking education in world instrument history please consider referring them to ZAVA@bigfoot.com!

What about creating a category for the instruments and adding links in them?

Not quite sure what you are asking...

Regards,

Eliot Lee

What about creating a category for the instruments and adding links in them?
--------------------

I've done this. Take a look at the site by following the URL.

http://odin.prohosting.com/~zava/instruments/library/

I have created categories for different TYPES of instruments and ALTernate categories for GEOGRAPHIC regions in the world that these instruments originated in. When you go to the site you will see that you can browse by TYPE which lists all the categories of types of instruments.. or by GEOGRAPHIC location of the instruments origin by click on the map of the world.

DEMO
So to demonstrate, go the website, click on STRINGED instruments (which is a category) and select the HARP (which is an index.html file I created by hand).

BUILDING INDEX FILE BY HAND
So, I am building this site to host 1000 instruments. I want to add a LUTE. Every time I want to add a new instrument to the site, I must open up the index.html file for HARP (for instance, to use it as a template) then change name from HARP to the new instrument name (LUTE in this case), add the new information for the LUTE (such as history, date of origin, etc) and then store this index.html file in a directory titled LUTE (or whatever the name of the new instrument is).

LINKING VIA ADMIN
I will THEN go into the LINKS ADMIN and add the link from the STRINGED instrument category to the HARP index.html file. So I am using this LINKS script to link to existing files I have created.

THE PROBLEM
NOW-- the problem is, instead of having to manually create all these index.html files, I would like to use the LINKS ADMIN to enter in a new instrument using the HARP index.html page as an example template. So that all the information about the instrument is saved in a database, and then the script creates all the index.html files for me when I build. Perhaps the LINKS SQL does this?

For instance, when you click BUILD ALL, the LINKS script queries the database file to determine what the categories are and uses the HOME.HTML template to build the index.html file for the site.

I'm sorry if I've made this sound all convoluted.. it's really quite straightforward. I will be happy to further clarify if needed.

Thanks in advance for any help you may provide.

Jason North

That is what Links does...it will build categories and then add links in them...Have you tried all the features of Links yet? Doesn't seem like it.

Regards,

Eliot Lee

Ahhh.. no I have been working with Links 2.0 for 4 weeks now and understand it quite intimately. Perhaps you don't understand what I am asking. I'll gladly put it another way and I want to remind you I appreciate you even listening to me and offering your advise!! I wish you were in the Bay Area, I'd atleast buy you a beer!

ANOTHER WAY TO LOOK AT IT
So, you know in the LINKS ADMIN when you click on ADD LINK and you get this nice HTML form that allows you enter values for the following names: ID, Title, URL, Date, Category, AltCategory, Description, Contact Name, Contact Email, Hits, isNew, isPopular, Rating, Votes, and ReceiveMail?

I would like to install a MOD (which probably doesn't exist) which allows me to add an option in the ADMIN next to ADD LINK, which says ADD INSTRUMENT. And when I click it, it gives me a form similiar to the ADD LINK form, but instead it lets me enter in values for the following names: Instrument Name, Origin, Date, Materials, Maker, Description, Audio Samples, Artists, History, etc..

And then when I click SAVE INSTRUMENT (like SAVE LINK) add the bottom of the form it will save this information in the database. And when I click BUILD ALL it will create all these instrument html pages for me and use a template from the template directory.

FOR DISCUSSION SAKES
The technology is there to do this. The script is already creating all of these category directories and creating the index.html files that exist in each of them:

http://odin.prohosting.com/~zava/instruments/library/Stringed/index.html

For example, I didn't create the above index.html file. The script did when I pressed BUILD ALL based on the categories I setup in the ADMIN, right??

Thanks for your patience and forthcoming help! The world of instrument lovers is thanking you in advance, becuase there is not a website like this on the web yet, and I plan on making it happen for free on a non-profit bannerless site.. with the generous help of others, of course!

Jason North

Use the Modify Confirm Mod located in the Links 2.0 Discussion Forum that can be ported to the add.cgi and will allow you to have multiple forms to add data into your database.

BTW: 4 weeks? I have been working with Links for three years...

Regards,

Eliot Lee

Ahh close, but no cigar.

FINANCIAL SUMMARY PAGE EXAMPLE
A GREAT example is when you go to YAHOO and you type in a public company like "MERANT" and press search and it comes back with the company name and you click on it and it gives you a "financial summary page" at which point you can THEN click off to the Merant Home Page. It's this intermediate "financial summary page" webpage that I want to add before linking off to the page requested by the user.

SUBLINKS?
Another way to put it is, I want subLINKS. Categories, Links, and then SUBLINKS. So when you click on the "STRING INSTRUMENTS" category and then the "HARP" link it will take you to a "HARP SUMMARY" SUBLINK page.

In other words, I won't be using LINKS to actually build a search engine LINKS website.. it is more of a database driven template site which links into itself!

I'm starting think LINKS was never intended for this, although it can work.

Any discussions about this that you may have time for would be appreciated.

3 years experience with LINKS?! Do you own the company yet?! Rock on dude!

Jason North

Have you considered using the DETAILED view feature?

Happy Coding,

--Drew
http://www.FindingHim.com

Ah, HA! This smells GREAT! In this case, I would ONLY like to link to the Details page from the original link, and I would like the DETAILS page to be BUILT based on a template. Can this easily be done?

1) Details MOD
http://www.findinghim.com/links_mods/detail_cat/

2) I also found some scripts on your page which I assume you are talking about:
http://www.findinghim.com/links_mods/

Thanks for the pointer!

Jason

There is a built-in 'static' details option already. I have created to mods to this: info.cgi, which creates these pages 'dynamicly', and 'details in category' (something like that), which builds the static pages in the subcategory the link is in, rather than the default 'Detailed' directory.

I'm not 100% clear on what you need specificly in terms of of any modifications to the Details feature...

Happy Coding,

--Drew
http://www.FindingHim.com