This is an awesome thread and exactly the kind of thing I was hoping to inspire, using joomla and dewnew phplinks to work together (or not).

With that, I am going to give you a critique on your use of...

QUOTE:

to take the simplest path possible, which is a Joomla external link menu item to my /links directory

I have to say that when I look at your homepage at http://www.bostonwebcrew.com/
the joomla template design (3 column - fixed width - horizontal top nav w/ header, etc), it looks very different from your link directory's layout... what I am saying is, you should attempt to customize the layout of your directory site at http://www.bostonwebcrew.com/links/directory/

if you review my site's layout at www.fattymattybrewing.com - I am also using a fixed width. You can find inside the directory file, the html tables to the links site layout.

When you click on your link directory from the sidebar nav on your homepage, you currently have the link directory opening in a new or additional browser window... this should be avoided in my opinion. Your navigation within 1 website (in my opinion) is more pleasing to the site's user(s) if you have a continuity of design - look and feel throughout all the sections of your website...With a similar look from your homepage to your link directory you could loose the opening a new window when the link directory is navigated to from the homepage's sidebar menu.

That's just my 10 cents, take it or leave it. I could be and probably am biased and wrong.

Cheers!

Even though the site is live it's not done. If you recheck it you'll find that my link directory is beginning to look like the rest of my site.

I removed the background, did some css mods, copied the footer nav over the header nav, added a link to the real home page, changed the behavior of the main site link directory to not open a separate window.

Thanks for the attention.

Just one note.. You'll want to link to your installation as if the directory file were an actual directory ..

eg; a href=./links/directory/

instead of just
a href=./links/

The index.php file in the installation directory simply does a 301 redirect to the actual script, and some search engine spiders, and their resulting rankings might be adversely affected.

Thank you, I updated my link directory link as advised. What's the difference between What's New, What's Cool and What's Popular?

Have you thought about a wiki? I realize you have more to do than babysit DNPL, but a wiki may help you develop a documentation outline, which you could turn into a book /ebook and make some money, especially if you can prove that DNPL enhances search engine visibility. With a wiki you may find a kind soul or two to put it all together.

Why is Fantastico using an older version of DNPL? Am I current with the recent 2.0 whatever download and the updates for captcha and blacklisting?

ezagent wrote:

QUOTE:
Thank you, I updated my link directory link as advised. What's the difference between What's New, What's Cool and What's Popular?

What's New causes the MySQL query to select entries newest first, so the most recent entries are at the top. "ordered by Entry Date DESC"

What's Cool sorts entries by clicks in. As persons submit sites, they are requested to link to your installations "in.php?ID=X", where X is their site ID. Clicks from their site to yours raises their rank on Whats Cool "ordered by Hits In DESC"

What's Popular works in the opposite direction. Outbound clicks go to "out.php?ID=X"
which compares the current user's IP to that last, if it is different, it increments the outbound click count for that entry. "ordered by Hits Out DESC"

If you only have a few entries, and none have no in or outbound clicks, then they will likely look identical.

QUOTE:

Have you thought about a wiki? I realize you have more to do than babysit DNPL, but a wiki may help you develop a documentation outline, which you could turn into a book /ebook and make some money, especially if you can prove that DNPL enhances search engine visibility. With a wiki you may find a kind soul or two to put it all together.

This has been suggested before, I'm just a humble self taught coder, not an author and I haven't learned Wiki syntax yet.

QUOTE:

Why is Fantastico using an older version of DNPL? Am I current with the recent 2.0 whatever download and the updates for captcha and blacklisting?

Fantastico contacted me some time ago alerting me they wee including the then current version 2.01SEF Possibly because few, if any hosts took the time to tailor the bundled .htaccess file to their server environments, it fell out of favor. I have not been contacted by them in regards to the 2.1 version.

2.0 with the add ons is pretty close to 2.1 I should also point out, I had initially hoped to completely rewrite the whole thing using current methodologies instead of the 1999 methods on which the script is based. But with finances being what they are, I'm tied up freelancing, or if I do have any free time, often the last thing I want to do is look at code. I go through phases though and that is not always the case.

> 2.0 with the add ons is pretty close to 2.1

What am I missing? Is there a manual upgrade path?