This is not a "how to?" question. I am currently showing the most and least popular links on each page, and there's no technical problem involved.

First, a little explaination of what I'm trying to do:

What I was hoping someone could comment on is whether or not is it a USEFUL thing to do. My goal was to have a "sidebar" with fairly frequently changing links on each page. To do this without any intervention on my part I read through the forums and put the following sections in the "sidebar": Newest, Most Popular, Least Popular. You can see it via the link below to get a better idea:

http://churchsite.gatheringspot.com/links2/index.shtml

Obviously, the new links change as often as new links are added, but to keep the most popular links from becoming a self fulfilling prophesy I cheat a little. I don't count the hits that these links get from the sidebar. In that way these links are more likely to change over time instead of simply racking up a bigger and bigger lead over the other links.

I do count the hits to the Newest links and to the Least Popular links. I'm hoping to see the links in the Least Popular list change fairly often. The reason for counting the hits for the Newest links is to try to avoid the Newest links automatically going from Newest to Least Popular. One final "cheat" that I thought necessary is that Newest Links cannot also appear in the Least Popular list (otherwise the newest links would always appear there.

Now, the real question:

Is this a useful thing to do, or a waste of time? My goal was to make the homepage (and any other pages with the "sidebar") a little more dynamic. A secondary goal was to:

1) promote the newest links
2) promote the least popular links
3) highlight the most popular links for new visitors

My own initial feeling is that the "sidebar" was the way to do it, but now that it's done, I don't know if I like it because I have a lot of time invested in it, or if I like it because it's a good addition. So I thought I'd ask for feedback from other people who run Links2.0 sites.

If anyone else is doing similar things, I'd be interested in seeing your site (similar ideas, not similar content).

Lloyd Sommerer

www.gatheringspot.com

Search the Links 2.0 Customization Forum for Last Links SSI.

Check the Resource Center for a Modification that builds Non-Links pages...this Mod can be used to build another Cool page that you can then call via SSI or a global tag.

See above....


Regards,

Eliot Lee

Thanks for the reply, But I'm not interested in "How To" do those things (they're done already).

What I was trying to ask was more of a meta question. Do you (and anyone else who might be interested in thinking up a response) think that implementing them in the manner that I outlined is worthwhile? Will it accomplish the goals as written above? Are those even good goals to have? How have others accomplished those goals?

Those types of "meta" questions are what I was trying to get at. I realize that those are not typical questions here, but I thought people might have opinions on them none the less.

Lloyd Sommerer

Featuring less popular sites is beneficial, IMO. However, simply labeling them 'least popular' would deter me from viewing those sites as it implies the sites 'suck'.

Happy Coding,

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