A new kind of link exchange

Posted: Sun Aug 27, 2006 9:27 pm

I wasn't a big fan of the link exchange blocks and mods out there so...I made my own. It's still very beta but works and looks nice. It nicely displays your friends 88x31 buttons all at once and has mouse over effects that show the description of their site in a window above the buttons. It also come complete with a submission form for folks to send you their sites info so you can easily add more buttons. There are javascript checks to make sure they filled out the form completely and correctly and even stops them in their tracks if they have javascript disabled. One last feature is a CAPTCHA system to stop bots from submitting info and filling up your mailbox. It installs in just a few minutes and adding your friends buttons just takes a minute or two as well.

You can see it in action at my site. The link is called Friends of FZ in the Main Menu.

Although I made it to replace my nuke link exchange block I wanted to make this useful for all kinds of sites so I do have a worry about security issues. So I would love input from anyone who tries this out and knows about security to give me some feedback on any exploits that may exist.

Thanks!

You can download it here: [ Only registered users can see links on this board! Get registered or login! ]

Sells PC To Pay For Divorce Joined: Posts: 5661

very nice... Wink

but a few things....most people care about search engine friendly things and results...
the link exchange you made degrades that to zero.
its not recognized on your page and therefor has no value in linking. Crying or Very sad

i mean ,the original nuke link exchange block has all images rotating in a marqee.

Site Admin Joined: Jun 04, 2004 Posts: 6432

hitwalker is right. A popup can also be blocked by most browsers. You might also want to have a module page that displays the same content - which would address both issues.

Posted: Mon Aug 28, 2006 1:11 pm

Thanks for the tip! I didn't think about it being SEO friendly. I assumed that since it is an HTML page right in the root with hard coded links that the bots would find them. Having a module option is fairly easy tho and will also get it into the Nuke code for added security. I'll definitely include that in the next version.

Thanks again for the advice...that's exactly what I'm looking for! Smile

Posted: Mon Aug 28, 2006 1:46 pm

Quote:

I assumed that since it is an HTML page right in the root with hard coded links

I can understand the thought..
But if you look at your index source and do a text search for some words of your link exchange you will see it doesnt find anything..
thats because the link page isnt part of the core files,its just an active link in your menu.
the only thing that can be recognized in your source is <a href="links/tfzle.html

Posted: Mon Aug 28, 2006 2:04 pm

Isn't it acting the same as any module then? Like the forums module...post content doesn't show up on the index source. The bots have to find the forums. I'm probably mistaken but it seems making this into a module won't do anything different for the SEO than it already does. But I see your point that for a bot to find a link in this script is a proverbial needle. Hmmm....almost makes the whole thing a waste without getting the links into the source LOL

Posted: Mon Aug 28, 2006 2:20 pm

no..
content does show...

for example...
look at [ Only registered users can see links on this board! Get registered or login! ]
they use the link exchange block(from thai nuke) with doesnt exist anymore... Sad

Anyway...look at the source....
because they keep track of clicks it gets an id.
and the links have title tags as well,spiders will follow the links it all represents...(although there are many)

if you look here... [ Only registered users can see links on this board! Get registered or login! ]

same story..

if you look at mine... [ Only registered users can see links on this board! Get registered or login! ]

it does show the full and real link to code-authors..
im sure guardian will appreciate...

Posted: Mon Aug 28, 2006 2:57 pm

What I'm asking is out of those 3 links you gave me, only the block will actually show links in the index source since it's a block and can show up on any page you want...am I wrong? It seems to me that for a spider to index links at nuke scripts and your site they would have to find that page since those are just live links as well to the page that does have the friends links.

One other question...the one at nukescripts is db driven right? I thought about doing that to add a counter but I am worried about security since there is no code to stop SQL injections yet. I wanted to get this much of it right first. This is just my 3rd "module" and the first of it's kind so making this has been a huge learning experience for me.

BTW..thank you so much for the time you've spent explaining this to me

Posted: Sat Sep 02, 2006 11:41 pm

One other question about the SEO concern...yes..popups can be blocked by most browsers and they wish to be blocked...that's why blockers are so popular...but this is a wanted popup and folks know they want this to popup and will allow this popup....it's different than a spontaneous popup caused by advertisers and many browsers will also recognize this. And...I'm quite certain that spiders do not block popups the same way we do so I don't think a spider clicking that link will have negative results. This is just an educated guess so please correct me if I'm wrong.