I've looked through the forum and the resource section and haven't seen this dealt with, though perhaps I just missed it somehow: is there a way to make Links NOT require specific fields to be filled in before adding a link?

My reason for asking is that I am currently in the middle of converting a medium-large resource directory from static HTML pages to Links for a client, and not all the listings have all the same contact information. The majority do have mailing addresses, phone numbers, e-mail addresses and web addresses, and I've used a modification I found here to add extra fields as needed, but there are some that are missing one or the other of these -- usually the web or e-mail address. And in some cases it's not just that they were left out of the directory, it's that the agency in question actually doesn't HAVE a site.

So while I realize it's a bit bizarre to want to make a URL link optional in a program called Links, I'm not sure what else to do. Contact Name and Contact E-mail would also be nice to make optional.

Does anyone know if this is possible and if so how? I'm not a Perl whiz by any means, but I'm not afraid of editing code either.

I never have bothered to do this, but I think you need to edit the bit in links.def saying;

'Contact Email' => [8, 'alpha', 40, 75, 1, '', '.+@.+\..+'],


to

'Contact Email' => [8, 'alpha', 40, 75, 0, '', '.+@.+\..+'],


Like I said, I'm not sure, but I think that should work. If it doesn't then maybe someone with a bit more experience of doing this kind of stuff would like to help out

Andy

webmaster@ace-installer.com
http://www.ace-installer.com

This was answered about 2 days ago which you would have know if you had done a search. Plus it has been answered about 100 other times.

http://www.gossamer-threads.com/perl/forum/showflat.pl?Cat=&Board=L2Disc&Number=143231&page=0&view=collapsed&sb=5

Installations:http://www.wiredon.net/gt/
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I did search, and got precisely zero results. I also looked through both the Links 2.0 discussions and Links Customization forums as far back as January and did not spot any subject headers that referred to required fields.

I appreciate that it is frustrating to see people ask questions that have been asked before, but given the fact that for any given question there are numerous different ways to phrase it, and that search engines can't know what you mean, only what you literally type, it is entirely possible for someone to search the forums without hitting on the specific way that a previous poster phrased a question.

Admittedly I probably spent less time searching this time than I did the last dozen times I had to search this forum for something, because I've spent so many hours searching this forum in the past week and a half, not to mention troubleshooting the script, that I was hitting burnout state. But I did search, both via the search engine and by looking through the indexes.

Every other time that I've been desperate for an answer on something and practically on the point of tearing my hair out, I've held back from posting here because it's the most hostile environment on the net outside of alt.flame. This time, I guess I just got a little too desperate. It happens. My apologies.

Anyway, thank you both for your replies. I will now proceed to make the required fields non-required and hopefully this time everything will work, I will not discover some strange new configuration anomaly on the part of the web host this damn site is with, my client will finally be content and I can get this site done and over with... <sigh>

I agree with you, every question there is has been already asked and answered. If these people that complain about people asking the same question again would not have anything to do if every one took their advice, all the answers are here but they are very hard to find. Also the new people are not experienced with the forum set up. I have followed some of the links where they have told people where the links to the answers and I followed these links and still could not find the answer. I think the problem is like you say the search is a machine and does not think. If you don't set your search up just right it is hard to find the answer. I also think the old forum search results were better.

hi every time a try a search i end up getting results saying "this question has been asked try a search" if someone was to ask a common question like "how do i install templates" and someone answered "search for templates" then the chances are that searching for templated will lead you to loads of pages with people saying "this has been covered try searching for templates". it's a vicious circle.

anyways stay cool.

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