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    • Directory

    Posted by wevital posts: 8 ☆ ☆

    I think tiki should have power to show dead links in admin area so that admin can easily remove such links. I checked tiki's directory and came to know that most of the tiki sites are now dead link and nothing much. So having such feature might make a directory much active with useful active links.

    what is my website worth

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    Posted by Gary Cunningham-Lee posts: 4664 ☆ ☆ ☆ Japan

    Actually the directory is on the endangered list of Tiki features. For one thing, the trend in Tiki's development has been to try to do more things with a common core of code rather than to try to maintain specialized features and their unique code. That is, the idea would be to do a sites directory with wiki pages and categories rather than having a standalone directory feature. (Similarly for FAQs and maybe other "minor features". ) Then if any feature detail is missing, it could be added to the wiki/categories code and shared by other features of the package. I don't know if "identify dead external links" could be easily coded, but clearly that would be useful for wiki pages and other parts of Tiki, so it's something to keep in mind.

    Part of decision about this has been the decline in the general popularity and use of website directories, replaced by search and social networking recommendations, etc. And in the case of the directory at this site, it seems its negatives have outweighed the positives, in terms of maintenance time and suspected use of the directory by script kiddies to find Tiki sites to vandalize.

    So the upshot is Tiki's directory feature won't be getting any improvements, and actually will be removed at some point (maybe by Tiki 15), but hopefully its functions will be replicable.

    -- Gary 


    Posted by Rick Sapir / Tiki for Smarties posts: 3665 ☆ ☆ ☆ United States

    I agree with Gary... If you want to create a "directory," I'd look at using Trackers instead.  They're much more flexible and you have much better control over the output display. If you're using Pretty Trackers, you could easily add a "Report Broken Link" button.

     

    HTH,

    - Rick  |  My Tiki Blog |  My Tiki UserPage

    Why be a dummy? Get smarty! TikiForSmarties.com
    Tiki for Smarties, your source for the best (and only) Tiki books, guides, and tutorials.

     


    Posted by WizarDave posts: 2695 ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆ United States

    I like the idea of having a directory.
    Perhaps as stated above, not necessarily a standalone function.
    I'm thinking more along the idea of being able to have a "more info off site" area on most wiki pages.

    I've been using Tiki for a few years now and am ready to start looking under the hood to figure out how things work. Kind of ashamed I haven't before now... 🙄

    Never having used a tracker...
    Could 1 directory tracker be set up?

    • Including a field used to point to the page where the row should be displayed?

    (I'm using the term row since trackers are compared to an Access file...)

      • And then on pages where you want them displayed... Display directory tracker where wikipage = ThisPage

    Or would trackers have to be setup for each page where you wanted to use them?

    Thinking out loud.

    • Each external link could have a "score" field. People could thumbs up (+1) or thumbs down (-1)
      • That way the links could be sorted by popularity instead of alphabetically.
    • I think I would like to maybe track clicks on these external links, also.
      • Perhaps that would add +10 to the score.


    TIA for the discussion...

    Posted by Rick Sapir / Tiki for Smarties posts: 3665 ☆ ☆ ☆ United States

    Could 1 directory tracker be set up?

    • Including a field used to point to the page where the row should be displayed?


    You would create a single tracker to record all the information. Then you would create a single page to display the information. But you can use the TRACKERLIST plugin (and a Pretty Tracker Template) to display unique information for each tracker, if you wanted a per-tracker page.

    Each external link could have a "score" field. People could thumbs up (+1) or thumbs down (-1)

    I believe there are several different RATING type tracker fields.

    I think I would like to maybe track clicks on these external links, also.

    Not sure about that one.


    HTH,

    - Rick | My Tiki Blog | My Tiki UserPage

    Why be a dummy? Get smarty! TikiForSmarties.com
    Tiki for Smarties, your source for the best (and only) Tiki books, guides, and tutorials.

    Posted by WizarDave posts: 2695 ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆ United States

    I threw together a proof of concept last night of using trackers for external links.

    • I liked the alpha coding results enough to include it on all 5500+ pages of my site. Made it a custom module and added it to pagebottom.

    You can see it in action here... http://jabi.com/About+Tiki+-+Trackers
    A Journal of my project... http://jabi.com/Project%3A+External+Links+Using+A+Tracker

    Known problems:

    • You can only enter one site, then have to reload the page to enter another.
      • I think I can have it load a page (which should allow to reload this page) when it's done. I think I read something about that, but cannot find the info again...
    • Will need a way to admin: edit, delete, etc.
    • Would like to automatically insert Page Name into the form. I know I read about doing that on one of the doc pages here, but cannot find it again...
    • I included a check box for 'Link is bad' in the tracker, but can't yet check it.
    • Pagination is not working on the TrackerList
    • No categories, sub-categories, yet. Will likely add this so I can have a "Directory"...