Making my own DMOZ

[PGNET]

I'm interested in making my own dmoz page from the ground up. I have no programming experience whatsoever but I'm very experienced with HTML. I use dreamweaver for 1 of my site I started. but now I also want to make a directory similar to dmoz.

 

would it be possible to make a site similar to dmoz just with regular html (making each category & sub category page by page)? or is it simply impossible to make something of that scale? Thanks.

[ettore]

Making each category and subcategory page by page with static pages and filling them with sites ? Oh, my...

 

ODP has nearly 4 million listed sites in some 460,000 categories. Let's see... if you're fast in coding & copypasting you could build up say 50 pages day, which gives us [counting... counting...] just 25 years.

 

You'd better want to give a look at the Use of ODP Data category, and in particular at the many fetching or RDF parsing/managing tools in the Upload Tools subcategory <img src="/images/icons/wink.gif" alt="" />

[hutcheson]

Agree, you can't get here from there. First you need to get some programming experience. That'll only take you three or four years.

 

From there it's not a big problem: I'd say a week to build static HTML pages from the database, plus time to design the static pages, plus time to deal with partitioning. (admittedly, that's with like 20 years programming experience; YMMV.)

 

As a rule of thumb, I figure:

-- less than 10 pages: hack it with whatever tool you like (text editor, notepad, even FontPlague)

-- 10 - 100 pages: Intelligent template-based tool may be adequate (e.g., Dreamweaver)

-- more than 100 pages: database or XML approach is indicated. (Dreamweaver remains a fine way to build template pages.)

-- more than 1000 pages: database and partitioning are both strongly indicated.

 

You may have noticed that dmoz.org has over 3 HUNDRED THOUSAND pages...and some of our recent problems, I understand, are due to inadequate partitioning.

[PGNET]

I knew it is quite a task. but I'm always curious and want to try. maybe go a little at a time. I use dreamweaver 4.0, and it is working ok so far. I foresee problems if I ever get too many categories and listing.

 

do you guys recommend any websites, or books that explain database programming in a way that inexperienced programmers can understand?

[apeuro]

Here's what I strongly suggest. Download an application called phpDev - it's an absolutely fantastic application that will install an Apache server,PHP, and MySQL on your computer. It will also install an application called PHP MyAdmin which is an incredibly intuitive web-based interface for MySQL with which you can create databases.

 

Then I suggest you download a trial of Dreamweaver MX. Dreamweaver MX will allow you to create basic database driven pages using PHP and MySQL, without you ever having to know either PHP or MySQL. Then what I suggest you do is start reading the online documentation available for both PHP and MySQL. Look at the code Dreamweaver produces so you start understanding how PHP and MySQL work.

 

Believe me I picked up MySQL and PHP in a matter of weeks, only using online resources. I'm not a guru, far from it, but I'm at a point where I could start working on database driven directory.

[giz]

I was going to say "I assume that phpDev is for linux boxes, is there anything equivalent available for Windows?"

 

Then I followed your link, and was surprised to see that phpDev is designed for Windows boxes. Thanks for the link.

 

I want to play about with database generated sites, just to know that I can. Might come in handy later. Thanks!

[Guest RISTMO]

I just checked for that program mentioned above--phpdev4, and it's not available for download at that url. Does anyone know where I can get it?

 

Thanks,

Rick

[pvgool]

You must have mist the links. Don't know how as they are very vlearly available. phpdev4

 

There are downloads for Windows NT/2K/XP and 95/98/ME

[Guest Dajuroka]

Don't give up but be realistic. I have done 5000 URLs at http://www.dajuroka.com but then and only then really understood the size of the internet... it is really huge and like the universe expanding at light speed (and that's just in english). I started with Access and passive pages exported into Frontpage and still persist (its like collecting stamps) but when I started to look at the ODP I realised that my categories were inadequate and even if successful the upload cost and storage would break the bank. I am looking at all sorts of options - get involved with the ODP for my collecting fix, recatagorise along ODP lines (but still looking at Library of Congres and Dewey), focus on the areas that interest me or my kids, learning XML and Semantic Web stuff, and on it goes.

Aint computers grand! Meanwhile I get fatter and fatter as this addiction to the net gets worse and worse. Good luck - what's your web site! :o

[Guest asinah]

PGNET,

I would highly suggest you to use Linux and not Windows. The reason why is clear. If your site doesn't attract traffic it is fine but if you run static pages and googlebot visits your pages AND crawls them, you could face a big problem on the server performance. Forget about running a virtual server for a few dollars a months.

 

They will kick you of the system in not time once SE's crawls 2000-3000 pages every day.

 

I have used the ODP feeds for years and have some knowledge on this.

 

Any way good luck.

[giz]

Thanks for the PHPdev link. I downloaded it and got it all working in under 20 minutes. It works well. Now begins the long job of learning and understanding it all.