I need to thrash out a few ideas on this project which has (embarrassingly) been on the boil for a very long time.
About three years ago I discovered a locally produced online business directory website, which hadn’t been worked on in years. I thought the site had potential, so I contacted the owner, Ray and asked if he was looking for some help with the site.
The upshot of this was, in return for hosting another of Ray’s domain names I could take over the development of the directory, and keep whatever income I made from it.
The directory is localbiz.com.au and initially I converted the existing site to php/mysql with the listings sorted into Australian locations. I wasn’t really happy with this – most of the existing listings were old and didn’t even have websites, and I was filtering a huge number of new submissions which were just spam from overseas.
In addition to this, the concept of splitting the directory into locations seemed a little too ambitious – since I don’t have the resources to develop something along the lines of CitySearch or Yellow Pages. On the other hand, confining the location to a particular area was a little too restrictive for my liking (despite the name “localbiz” – how do you define “local” on the internet?).
I had a brainwave over the weekend to put the name issue aside, and concentrate on the type of business listing that I am truly interested in promoting – home and/or internet based businesses.
They must all be Australian of course, and the listings will be free in return for a reciprocal link – with the option of purchasing paid positioning (eg. banner ad). I want to keep it low cost, but at the same time maintain relevant listings. I don’t expect to make a great deal of money from it, but hopefully it will create networking opportunities and help boost search engine rankings.
I have the programming in place so it has all the functionality I want; I’ve started populating the database, so now it is down to the design of the site. I want it to be upbeat yet simple.
Off to consider some design concepts!
I ended up getting thousands of spam submissions with this script, and the management interface was very primitive so I switched to PHP Link Directory. Going very well. I have integrated a PayPal gateway – listers have the option of a reciprocal link or small payment and both options have been used. The spam has dropped right down, mostly due to the form captcha (random generation of letters/numbers which must be manually typed into form). The management interface is also much more powerful and the junk easy to delete.