Niche Switch

It is rather important to choose the right directory script at the start. Deciding for another few months later can often mean a lot of problems (different path naming thus lost old indexed url’s, impossible or problematic conversion of the database, …) and wasted time.

Here are few basic guidelines:

Technical limitations - hosting platform:

Such a basic in choosing any script or software. Yet I have seen way too many people to complain they can’t get their script running, only to be found that, for example, their host only supports mysql 3 while script needs mysql 4. Check the requirements first!

Your goal:

Not every script is suitable for every goal.

Questions to ask:

Will your directory be paid, free, or reciprocal?
Do you want more of a directory script, or more of a link exchange script?
Do you want search engine friendly pages (though I suppose that shall be sound YES).
Will you rely on webmasters to submit on their own, or do you want to ad most of the sites on your own?
Will there be only one, or more editors, and with limited or full rights?
Will you have thousands of links, or just few? Large or small number of categories?
Will you need some ready-made templates?

Common problems to avoid:

- you want paid directory later on, yet the script doesn’t support paid listings

- pagination: some scripts have a problem with pagination, so that, if you have 300 links in one category, in best case they are all on one page (not goood - it is recommended to keep links on any page under 100), in worst case, only first few are visible and the rest is not, in certain cases, pagination is done so badly that search engines will never index that particular category after first “next” link (and sometimes not even that one)

- semi-finished scripts with non-existant support - might be fine if you are a code, but not recommended if your best webmastering achievement is installation of a simple script through the Fantastico on your webhosts cPanel.
- active helpful community and ongoing development is a plus

- licensing policy - if there is even the slightest possibility that you might want to run more than one directory in the future, with some scripts you will need a separate license for each url, while some have deeply discounted multi-licens or unlimited versions

- upgrade fees for future versions (especially if the current one doesn’t have all you need..)

Other notes:

Prominent PHPLD user reported having PHPLD installation run a directory with over 2 millions of categories, and that eSyndicat couldn’t handle that much.