Last update: 6/9/01; 19:44:25.
Thoughts and ideas as they occur to me.
Wednesday, January 3, 2001
New directories and classifieds have been added. (01/03/2001 14:52 EST) It seems like it's been years in development, but it's only been about three weeks -- with some time taken off for spending with family over the holidays.
About a month ago, Dave Winer of UserLand Software developed a new type of directory. While it's new and only has a few thousand links, it will grow. It's similar to Yahoo! or the Open Directory Project in that real people maintain parts of the directory and decide which sites get entered (and which don't). It's different, because there is no top-level to this directory.
Anyone who wants to pick a topic and create a directory is free to do so. If they choose, they can submit their directory to Dave's SuperOpenDirectory for linkage, or they can, as I've chosen to do, list his directories as a subset of our own. When you pass from a directory I maintain to one he, or anyone else, maintains, the only thing that you'll probably notice changing is the editor's name at the bottom of each page. There may be big changes, because each of us is free to change the look of our directory, and I'll be customizing mine in the near future.
For instance, if you click on my Regional directory link, and then drill down through United States of America to Hawaii, you'll enter a directory maintained by someone I've never met other than through email. However, if you didn't know that, all you'd see is a seamless transition from my directory to his. If you follow the breadcrumbs back up the hierarchy, you'll pass transparently from his directory back to mine. Cool!
My directory actually lives at http://johndilbeck.editthispage.com/directory/135 and is served dynamically from a database there. Since that's a free site for helping to test and demonstrate UserLand's software line (Frontier, Manila, Radio UserLand, and others), they don't allow robots to index those sites. So, since I believe a directory must be indexed and listed on the major search engines and directories, I'm maintaining a duplicate -- in a somewhat different presentation, but containing the same information -- on JohnDilbeck.com. It took a little programming and several manual steps, but it's working, and it lives at http://johndilbeck.com/directory/index.html. That version of the directory will be submitted to the various search engines and directories on a periodic basis and I'll be working to make sure I place high in the search results.
I'm picking two main topics that I intend to develop well. I want to have a good list of artists and crafters, as well as arts and crafts resources, and I intend to have the definitive directory for western North Carolina, especially Cherokee and Clay County.
Other sections of my directory will contain a variety of things in which I'm interested, and I have wide-ranging interests. I've been working on my directory for about two weeks now, and feel like I've got a good start. You can easily go to my directory from any page on JohnDilbeck.com by clicking the JD's Directory link at the top of the page, or from any page on John Dilbeck's Ramblings by clicking on the directory in the column on the far right.
While working on the directory, I noticed how easy it would be to create classified ads using the same method. So, I started developing some local (and not-so-local) classifieds. (I'd been intending to develop this service, but using a different method. I think this will be a superior way to accomplish the goal.) Then, I realized that I'd like to do it in a very different way, so I took what I had developed and morphed it into a completely different presentation. Now, I'm moving into the third manifestation of this and I'll be building a database of classified ads that I'll be maintaining. That should take a couple of weeks to get running properly.
You can access these classifieds by clicking on the JD's Classifieds at the top of any page on my site at JohnDilbeck.com.
There's a lot of work to keep these links current, in both the directoies and the classifieds. Some will be done by programs I'm developing, but most requires intensive, though only periodic, manual efforts -- all done by me. These two parts of the sites have to pay their own way, and hopefully earn a small profit. So, like everything that takes a person's time, you have to pay to play. I think I've kept the costs reasonable.
While lots will be changing behind the scenes in how I maintain all of these links, you'll probably notice only small changes when you visit the site. It'll be like a duck swimming: cool, calm and collected above the surface and paddling like crazy below.
I hope you find these new additions to my site to be useful.
** JD ** 3:34:41 PM
© Copyright 2001 John L. Dilbeck, jd@johndilbeck.com.