All subcategories show up on each main category page after build.

I am moving Links from Hypermart to pair.com and find I cannot use Build All (stops before building all Detailed pages). I tried Staggered Auto but this does not build pages properly, so I use Staggered manually. This works fine but all sub-categories are now listed in the main category pages, not drill-down like before. I have some 1,500 links in the database, organised into 12 main categories and then sub-categories.

How to get a proper Build?

Looks like a time-out issue, as discussed before in this forum and other support forums...

Try using telnet to execute the nph-build.cgi script.

Also the structure of your directory (1,500 links in 12 categories) lends itself to time-outs. Try re-structuring your directory to have MORE links per MORE sub-categories, this will reduce the number of more.html pages to be built.

In addition, use the info.cgi MOD listed in the Resources section of this site to dynamically show detailed pages rather than continually building static detailed pages.

-----this is definitely a recording-----

Please search the forums more carefully next time.

Regards,

Eliot Lee

I have tried using telnet but get an error message after starting to run nph-build.cgi (gets as far as "gathering category information").

I like the detailed pages as they are "spider food" for the search engines.

I am moving from Hypermart to pair.com as later I want to use LinksSQL. Would using this overcome build problems?

Not necessarily...the build process will run a bit faster, but I believe that the structure of your site is problematic. And with regards to static versus dynamic pages, they are parsed almost the same by most bots, at least the most popular ones like Google...that will parse cgi scripts into its directory.

Although you would need to enable robots to "visit" your cgi-bin directory, which is something that you may not want to do.

Regards,

Eliot Lee

I opened links.cfg and set build detailed = 0.
Then when I build all from the browser it takes 20 seconds and the categories display properly.

So it seems the problem lies with the building of detailed pages.

Short of changing links.cfg everytime I want a complete build, are there any suggestions?

Not really...and since it seems it is a DETAILED page building problem...you could consider using my previous advice of using the dynamic version of detailed pages.

And you probably have tons of custom fields in your LINKS.DEF/LINKS.DB that is causing your build process to time out.

Regards,

Eliot Lee

No custom fields in links.def/links.db.
I appreciate the suggestion re: dynamic detailed pages but prefer static built pages. (I have had problems on Hypermart with "cgi process over limit".)
Without detailed pages database builds OK.
So is there any way to build detailed pages separately?

That won't really solve the problem...

Anyway, You could copy all the BUILD DETAILED PAGE and also the top section codes in the nph-build.cgi script and put them in another script called something like nph-build-detailed.cgi.

Then you can re-build your directory using the BUILD script and then use the DETAILED BUILD script to build the detailed pages separately.

Yet, this all seems to point to a time-out issue with your server, which doesn't seem to be much of an improvement than Hypermart. I guess you get what you "pay" for....

What you should really do is the following:

1) Ask your new hosting company to increase your time-out rate, which is usually set to a low number of seconds (like 30 or 60), and seems that you need at least 300 or 360 seconds.

2) Switch to, yet, another hosting company that provides better service.

hehe!

Regards,

Eliot Lee

Thanks, Eliot, for your advice.
1) The time-out at pair.com is set at 30 seconds according to their documentation
2) I have looked at web hosting companies mentioned in previous threads for some ideas
In conclusion, I am seeking a better hosting company.