GARS Link Directory questions - can it go yellow? :-)

[Raze]

I am looking for a yellow pages type directory that integrates with VB.

The directory as it is seems pretty neat from what I've seen, but I was wondering if the following would be possible:

• Custom fields - so I could have Country, Area, Telephone number, Description. All to show up on the category display page.
  
• Multiple Categories - can I have around 300? Or will there be a performance hit? I could narrow it down to around 6 if it were possible to list by one of the custom fields (so it acts like a category). So for example if a custom field was toy shops and another was paint shops I could list all results for each one (hard link to the results page if need be).
  
• Have two tiers of results - free listings and paid for lisitings. Where paid for lisitings are always shown above free lisitings.
  
• Tie-in with usergroups. To make the above possible. So we can set it up so that paid for links show above 'free' links. And use the subscription feature in vB to revert people back to 'free' listings if they don't take out another years subscribtion. (Could this be as simple to check whether the person who posted the link is in usergroup A and if so it shows that persons link above the free lisitings, then it checks all other links that have not been posted by someone in that usergroup and shows them afterwards).
  
• Could we mod re-write categories for seo?
  
• Last but not least - is it possible to sort results in categories randomly, making it fairer on advertisers (the way yell.com works).

It seems as tho you are 90% of the way there - if the above was added you would pretty much become the first Yellow Pages type directory for vB and you would clean up - there are a lot of people who are crying out for this, just look at how many directory scripts are sold eleswhere

I have it all mapped out in my head, so if you need further help please let me know. Or if you don't want to make it a product for release, would you consider doing it as a one off job (paid).

Thanks for reading.

[nexia]

- two tiers can be possible if you provide a usergroup (paid subscriptions) that have the "make threads stickies" enabled.. so when they post a new entry they can make it sticky, so on top of others.

SEO is not related to GARS, but to the whole forum.. so if you forum is SEOed, yes it will work...

[The Geek]

You could have those custom fields show up in the forumdisplay page with some slight template tweaking, but you could only filter on one.

I suppose you could have that many categories (a category is a forum) but I am not sure on the preformance hit. I suppose it wouldnt be much different than having a forum with 300 sub forums

As Nexia said, you could allow paid members to sticky their entries however you would need some sort of cron job to unsticky entries made by people who had no longer subscribed

vbSEO will rewrite GARS

I suppose you could order randomly, but not by default. You would either need to tweak GARS, or create a simple plug in.

HTHs!

[Raze]

Thanks for the info.

Not really what I wanted to hear but I have an idea that might work good enough

Another question - Is it possible to disable all the side blocks?

Also, if I buy the unbranded version first can I pay the extra and remove branding at a later stage?

Cheers.

[The Geek]

Yes on both counts

[Raze]

Great thanks

Does the system automatically get a snapshot of the website?

Also, what if someone didn't have a website, if left blank will it just list the details without the link? (hope so)

[The Geek]

It takes an automatic snap shot of the URL and if it cant take a snapshot then there is a default image that is used which you could change accordingly

[Raze]

Great

How about if the person submitting details in the directory doesn't actually have a link? Will it still go through ok? (some of my users may just be submitting name/telephone/address details).

[The Geek]

By default, the custom field created and used with the directory does require a valid URL but that is easily changable. I cant recall if the snap module wont save unless there is a valid URL, but thats an easy file edit if so.