PHPLD Directory Script

Description and Review For PHPLD Script

This script is a great starting script for any directory owner, it’s simple to use and easy to install and get the hang of it, the free version 2.1.2 is good for kick starting your directory, but it lacks lots of features which the latest paid version of phpld has. Most important of those features is ability for end users to register an account and have editors for your directory. Users have options to edit the Meta tags for their sites, thus helping in terms of search engine optimization. Not only that, it offers them ease of selecting the right category, with the AJAX based category selection method. From administrator viewpoint, the admin side is pretty strong and has lots of features, like mass approval, deletion and suspension of links with just one single click. The free version lacks this feature however. Other great administrator side features which the free version lacks are:

• Ability to add multiple categories in single go.
• Easily Move or Rename Categories.
• Link validator in admin panel will mark links with reciprocal link pages expired
• Articles Module allows articles to be added into categories.
• And the most important feature that I really liked is ” Improved search capabilities from within admin ” , basically now you can search for a link and its category using the search feature, the free version does not have the feature.

Overall it’s a really wonderful script and thee paid version of the same is quite cheap $25 per domain. You can use it without need for any other modifications done to it. But another great aspect of this script is that it has lots of supporters, both on-site and off-site (3rd party), lots of mods available for even improving your directory further, like deeplink mod, alternate payments mods, no submission to top category modifications and many more. The list is quite big to be frank, hence will not try to cloud the topic.

This script apart from being solid has few issues associated with it too like any script. One of the greatest drawbacks is the template system itself, with every upgrade of the script; you will be forced to edit your custom template if you have any according to the latest released version. It’s a painful task if you are a rookie at coding or have no experience at all. Another thing is that if you have any modifications done to the template or extra mods installed, you would have to re-install those mods again after the upgrade and most tend to break. Few users have also reported few bugs associated with the script. The RSS is supposedly not seo friendly and can result in putting your pages into supplemental results on Google.

But looking at the price of the script and its overall performance, I would say it’s worth buying. I would rate it 4/5, but it can use more features, and if all the mods that get released be incorporated by default it will do wonders for this script. Also having a lifetime, unlimited license fee would be great business strategy, but that’s their choice. Most script I have seen comes with some sort of unlimited license fee, but this script lacks that.

So try it out if you want to jump start a directory, it has lots of free and premium templates available too, thus giving you more variety.

Here are some of the dates and project stages :

Late 2002 - phpLD version in private use on a few sites, not yet using smarty. You can see/download version 1 of phpLD.
Mid 2004 - phpLD version released and used on a number of customer sites
January 2005 - phplinkdirectory.com started and version 2 released
February 2006 - Version 3 released
July 2007 - phpLD News and phpLD Photo released