www.thehotnutcompany.com

Hi;
I submitted my site to the ODP about a month in:
http://dmoz.org/Shopping/Food/Produce/Nuts/Peanuts/
and I [and my client] was wondering about its status.
Any info/help would be greatly appreciated,
Thanks in advance
-Jonathan

Your site is currently waiting there with several others. However:

1. Your site does not work with Mozilla 1.3 (and, I suspect, a few other non-Microsoft browsers). This is because your internal links were constructed using backslashes ("\") instead of the standard slashes ("/"), which is what your server apparently understands. I was able to look at some of your pages by manually substituting slashes for the incorrect backslashes.

2. I didn't see any pricing information, and it seems as though your site is aimed at the wholsale trade (supplying to businesses) rather than retail (supplying to individuals). As the Shopping FAQ states, sites listed in the Shopping/ branch should have prices, and a method for consumers to order goods from their home. Sites that do not have prices, or are aimed at sales to businesses, are listed in other branches, such as Business/ . If this is the case for your site, a better location might be http://dmoz.org/Business/Food_and_Related_Products/Produce/Nuts/Peanuts/ . I didn't look carefully at your site, due to the problems I was having with the links, so I can't be certain that this is the best place.

I also use Mozilla and it does not work, tried with IE and it does. But if you only target IE, you lose customers, and editors may delay reviewing if they do not have IE installed. Also you seem to be in Business to Business sales, and that does not go in Shopping, and I have no idea from your site even which country you are in. You might want to consider this.

Thankyou very much for your feedback; I don't have a copy of mozilla on my machine and so was unaware of the problem.
Should I apply for a new listing in the other category once the site has been fixed?
Thanks again for your help

When the site is fixed, I'd report that here (in this thread) and ask for status. If the site has been deleted from the lists, you should resubmit. If it's still there, a senior editor might append a note.

Alternatively, you could request deletion of the suggestion now, and resubmit normally (to the new category) when the site is fixed. It's up to you. We would probably prefer the latter, but I don't see that the former is in violation of our guidelines....

I think I may have reached intermediate editor status, but even senior editors cannot speak for the owners. All opinions are my own, etc., etc....

I think I shall probably go with the latter course of action [im downloading mozilla ATM to check compatability];
If anyone is willing to delete the site from the submissions list could they please do so; I shall then re-submit having checked the site.
Yet again, thanks for helping out

Just to clarify, a site need not work with Mozilla or any other particular browser in order to be listed -- as long as it works with at least one of the browsers that the editor happens to check it with. I included that information for your own benefit, since you may be losing customers, since editors may not use the particular browser which allows your web page to work, and since the link coding on your pages is obviously wrong. And remember -- just because IE happens to allow people to view web pages with malformed links at the moment doesn't mean that it will do so forever...

I think you could fix the problem by moving your site to a Windows-based server (instead of Unix, Gnu-Linux, or Mac), or by just changing all of the backslashes in your links to the standard slashes (seems a bit easier to me...). Or you could leave things as they are, and hope for the best when customers or editors stop by your site. The choice is yours.

However, the comment that was important with regard to listing your site was that it does not appear to be relevant to that category. Fixing the links will have no bearing on this statement. To be listed in that category you would need:
1. to have prices.
2. to aim at the retail consumer, not businesses.

What was said above is true: if the editor's browser shows a site, it will probably be reviewed and listed without a question. If the editor's browser can't view a site, then the editor may delete it for being nonfunctional OR try with a different browser OR leave it for another editor. (I've probably done all the above at different times.) If you want to make sure an editor is using a browser you support, then you need to include something in the description -- our usual way is to include special requirements for viewing in brackets at the end of the description, something like: [requires the Infernal Exploder, version 5.213a-5.22x rev 40 or any version above 6.03; Flash version 6; monitor with 1035x832 pixel resolution; ActiveHex plugin; DSL or faster internet connection, and lots of luck to view] Of course, include only the ones that are necessary.

I will say another thing, and this IS a religious issue. By definition and by standard protocols, THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS A URL WITH AN EMBEDDED BACKSLASH, any more than there is such a thing as a square cirle.

Fix those. Get the slashes pointing the right way. It is not the browser that is broken! It is the cavity where the website developer's brain should have been installed.

An editor who realizes that the site works in one browser, and not another, may list it, but make a note of that in the description - e.g. [May not support all browsers]. There are no hard and fast rules on this, but suffice it to say, it won't make the description look good from a marketing point of view.

Thankyou everyone for your helpful comments;

Also you seem to be in Business to Business sales

Click to expand...

You are right about that; I have submitted my site to the wrong category. Could someone please delete the submission request from the category http://dmoz.org/Shopping/Food/Produce/Nuts/Peanuts/?
I have now changed the links around and checked compatability with Mozilla, and it works.
BTW; when I said 'the problem', I meant with my site not the Mozilla browser (since '/'s are the standard). And rest assured that not another backslash will find its way into one of my links. [My brain has been installed and seems to be working fine now!]
Thanks again for all your help; I have not been designing websites for a long time (hence the slashes). This was my first submission to the ODP, and I have been pleasantly surprised by the kindness of all of you.

Glad to hear that your site is now working with more browsers!

Your site is currently awaiting review in: http://dmoz.org/Business/Food_and_Related_Products/Produce/Nuts/Peanuts/

Please feel free to check the status in this thread after at least one calendar month.

Confusion about the chirality of slashes is understood (if highly deprecated). I grew up with GCOS and Unix, which have their catalogs/directories slashed like God intended. (And of course, those systems supported computer networks before almost anyone else) If I had spent more time on Multics (which early supported computer networks on all, um, 2 dozen of its happy customers), or been earlier exposed to the DOS abomination (both of which use the left slash), I might have had dylx ... lysde ... dyxles ... the same problem.

[pedantry] Ummm. Actually, hutcheson, although forward and back slashes are mirror images, they are not chiral, as they have too much symmetry. They are superimposable through a 180 degree in-plane rotation. [/pedantry]

Blttthp! and hmmph! It depends ALTOGETHER on the font being used.

Score one for marcel

Hi there
Just a quick query to ask how the site submission is going?
Thanks in advance for any information
-Jonathan

Hi there
Just a quick query to ask how the site submission is going?
Thanks in advance for any information
-Jonathan

Still waiting for review.

Hi there
Just a quick query to ask how the site submission is going?
Thanks in advance for any information
-Jonathan

Sorry, there's been no change in status: it's still awaiting review in [cat=Business/Food_and_Related_Products/Produce/Nuts/Peanuts]Business: Food and Related Products: Produce: Nuts: Peanuts[/cat]. If you don't see it listed sometime in the next six months, please feel free to return for a status update on or after 10 January.