hey there gang,

I'm in the middle of trying to import my links into a professional indexing product. I have over 50,000 links so far.

Any suggestions of a good product, I'm thinking seriously about using links but am wondering whether to go with 2 or SQL version.

I tried importing 20,000 links into links2 and then built the pages, it crashed my hosts server. Will this happen with LinksSQL?

Is there a way to build pages on the fly or build only changed pages?

Anyway, any opinions (great or small) would be great, I really appreciate it.

thanks and keep up that swingin beat...

links 2 can't even get over 15,000 links

it can barely live 5,000... you have to build through telnet..

jerry

seriously... the one I'm working on now has 11,000 links (2.5 megs) and 1150 categories. When I build them offline the static pages themselves come out to 25 megs. It took 50 minutes to build. I haven't got a clue how much I'd drain the server resources if I ever get it to build online (accross two servers) but I'd bet it's way too much. I want LinksSQL bad but I don't have that kind of money.

Go with LinksSQL, your users will thank you. Searching will be slow in Links 2.0.

------------------
Happy Trails!

Jimz
Netoo! Web Devlopment Dept.
Netoo! Internet Services Of America.

It also depends on the number of fields you intend on having in your database and also the size of the fields.

For instance, my Links directory has over 2,400 links with 400 Categories. The database size is 940K.

Go with SQL...

Regards,

------------------
Eliot Lee
Anthro TECH,L.L.C
www.anthrotech.com
----------------------

thanks gang, I appreciate the input.

Do we know if Links SQL will run as badly on a build session as Links 2.0 does, and does it build the lot each time or simply whats new?
I dont want to be booted off this host also

thanks

HI All,

I have the same questions and more. Here they are. If the answer to porklegs and mine are yes, I'm going for the SQL version. Really, it's the "not knowing" that's keeping me from going there right now.

So here they are in order of no particular importance.

1. I've made tons of mods to the non-sql version. I've made it so I can run multiple databases run of the same script by adding code that accepts db=database as was originally done in dbmanager. It works awesome. Can I modify SQL to do the same?

2. There's a mod in the links mods regarding the review.cgi that allows for posting of reviews as well as ratings. Can this be done with the SQL

3. I've integrated the authentication of dbman into links including the forgot your password stuff. Can this be done, is it even necessary

4. Here's a tricky one. Non sql doesn't allow me to say for example show me all of the entries where a particular field is not blank. Does SQL allow for this. I've seen this done with description=.+ (that was an example) The result should give me a page that shows all db entries where the description is not empty. This is extremely important.

5. I've modified links to give me a specificed html file on the fly. i.e. I can request a particular template in a hidden field in my form tags. Does SQL have the flexibility


You should be getting the idea that I have some pretty good perl skills but am lacking in the finer details. Ultimately what I'm wondering is if I see a mod in the nonsql links, can it be implemented in the SQL version, and how difficult or easy is it to modify how the SQL program functions when compared to the non-sql version. The non-sql version is extremely flexible for a perl programmer as I'm sure you all are aware. How is the SQL version?

I could probably think of another 10 - 15 examples of stuff that I need to be able to implement, but it all comes down to the same question. How flexible is it and how well will it perform in terms of using my servers resources.

Thanks. I look forward to hearing your comments.

Kyle
Webmaster
http://www.nmculturenet.org

Hi Kyle,

1. Mods made to Links 2.0 may not go over smoothly to Links SQL. That said though, they are very similiar, especially in how the admin works. You can do the same thing by passing in db=tablename to be able to add/modify/delete/search on any table.

2. There's nothing built into Links SQL for this, but it could ceartainly be done (and I think widgetz is working on a review mod for Links SQL).

3. I'm not sure what you mean by integrated authentication?

4. You can't do this easily from the admin, although you can enter in SQL queries from the browser so typing in:

SELECT * FROM Links WHERE DESCRIPTION = ""

would pull up links where description is blank.

SELECT * FROM Links WHERE NOT (Description = "")

would pull up links where description does not equal "".

5. I'm not sure what you mean here I'm afraid. I think if you are able to do this with Links 2.0, then doing it in Links SQL shouldn't be any problem.

There is an DBSQL object that can abstract away a lot of the SQL so you don't need to worry about the SQL needed to add/modify/delete/search/connect/etc.

Hope this helps,

Alex

Thanks Alex,

Regarding your numbers which I think accurately reflected my own.

3. I've integrated the authentication of dbman into links including the "forgot your password stuff". Can this be done, is it even necessary

Your response:
I'm not sure what you mean by integrated authentication?

I got this mod out of the dbman at
http://www.gossamer-threads.com/scripts/resources/DBMan/Modifications/
It's the jpdeni secure password lookup mod
and basically it allowed for multiple users to sign up and modify there own information such as password, email address and if they forgot their password, they could click the "forgot your password" link and they could request to have a new password sent to them after which they could change it. Anyway, I've found it really handy even if there's only one user. Essentially it's a mod that was pretty easily done in the dbman and pretty easily integrated into the links. But really the question is: CAN MODS be made as easily in the SQL version as they can in the non sql version.

I apologize for my lack of SQL knowledge. I get the sense that it takes some learning but I don't know how much or what kind.

5. I've modified dblinks to give me a specificed html file on the fly. i.e. I can request a particular template in a hidden field in my form tags. Does SQL have the flexibility

Your response:
I'm not sure what you mean here I'm afraid. I think if you are able to do this with Links 2.0, then doing it in Links SQL shouldn't be any problem.

Take a look at http://www.nmculturnet.org/artisans/index.html

I'm actually specifying the html template here instead of within the program. This really works great. If I had my choice of designing your programs, I would implement this. It allows a user to access the same information with a different template. In addition, I built in the ability to have a detail page (much like you did, however, I can specify it from within a form, instead of from within the progam, essentially, it allows me two levels of template generation. I didn't find the need YET to build in a third level of link.html template generation but I'm sure it could be done. If you're interested in this, let me know. I can give you greater detail, and of course, considering the amount of work you've done, I'd be thrilled to share it with you. Anyway, it's just another example of the flexibility that the nonsql version has and it's what I'm wondering if the SQL version has. Again, I don't fully understand the SQL stuff and my primary concern (PLEASE ADRESS THIS) is that I will lose flexibility with the SQL either because I don't understand it, or the interface(I'm grasping for words here) doesn't allow the kind of flexibility that the nonsql does. Am I making sense? (I'm speaking from both the search.cgi script as well as the admin.cgi script.

I hope you can address these questions. I get the feeling from a lot of the questions in the forum that others have the same concerns and questions that I have. I mean, how different is SQL from Nonsql. I think intermediate perl programmers such as myself, don't really understand and are a bit fearful of the differences between the two. Is this a question you can address in full? If not, can you advise us on where to go (and I don't mean hell)?

Thanks again, you all do great work.

I look forward to spending my hard earned/non renumerated dollars with you.


Kyle
Webmaster
http://www.nmculturenet.org

Darn,
I mistyped the page to look at for the templates on the fly mod.

Look at http://www.nmculturenet.org/artisans/index.html

When you get to the page. Don't type in a keyword, just select the following region
Northern New Mexico. (if you select either one of the other options, the search script will take forever to bring up anything)

Anyway, checkout the GET url in your browser, you'll see a html=artisans%2Flistartists.html in the location box, That should give you a much better idea of what I'm talking about. Note also about the detail page that when you click on a link that you get greater detail. Check out the link itself and you'll see what I mean about specifying a detail page (i.e. a second level of template generation)

Okay. I think I got it all right this time. I look forward to hearing from you.

ciao,
Kyle
webmaster
nmculturenet.org
mailto:klangan@nets.com

klangan,

I completely concur with all you are saying, My BIGGEST query is: will links SQL help me with my 50,000 links or is it just a glorified links 2.0 that will kill my server.

blah blah

 
The SQL version is very similiar in design to the flat file version using templates. If you are comfortable making mods to the flat file version, you'll find most of the mods are in the same place in the SQL version. i.e. if you want to change something about how the detailed pages are generated, it's still in nph-build.cgi.

Data access/retrival is even easier in the SQL version then in flat-file, as there is an easy to use OO module that let's you get to any of the data in the SQL database. You don't need to know any SQL for this.

I feel confident saying that if you are comfortable making mods in Links 2.0, making mods will be just as easy in Links SQL.

The one caveat is with use strict, it does force "better" programming, but can be disabled if you don't want it. See:

http://www.gossamer-threads.com/...um9/HTML/000320.html

for more info on the merrits of use strict.

As for the multi template feature, this is now standard in Links SQL. See:

http://www.gossamer-threads.com/...e.cgi?d=1&t=snap
http://www.gossamer-threads.com/...age.cgi?d=1&t=av
http://www.gossamer-threads.com/....cgi?d=1&t=yahoo

All done just by passing in what template set to use. Also, I think the mod you have done would be implemented almost in the exact same way in Links SQL.


Links SQL performs a lot better then Links 2.0 on large sets of links. Unless you are on a really overloaded server, Links SQL won't have any problems with 50,000 links. (Our website runs off a Pentium 233 with 256 mb of memory and the dmoz sample that has 40,000 some links runs just fine). This is not including all the other scripts on our site.

Hope this helps,

Alex

alex.. is there any way to make the nph-build.cgi and page.cgi subroutines somehow work on one file (.pm) or something.. it's annoying when i make a mod for nph-build.cgi i always forget page.cgi leaving it with unknown tags everywhere

i'm sure there is a way.. but you'd have to rename a lot of things in page.cgi

jerry