Very clear to me. The St Martin example was just my take on it. Some people may want to stay near Orient Beach and they have no earthly idea that Orient Beach is technically on the French side of Saint Martin therefore Marigot, Orient Beach or Grand Case , St Martin, French West Indies, but often listed as Phillisburg, Sint Maarten, Netherland Antillies.

Official address:
Baie Orientale 97150 St.Martin French West Indies

Here is what I mean - A different type of directory - One example of many you can find:
http://www.aroomandabed.com/country/an.shtml

A typical hotel directory has 40,000 + entries.

I realize that this is going to rely on the webmaster keeping it straight, but I just want to keep our eyes open as to traps in thought for a worlwide product.

Just get me in the neighborhood!

Thanks,

Bingo! We were on the same page. Sorry I didn't quite clue in on what you were writing.

My site focuses on "Lancaster County, Pennsylvania". Problem is, the county covers a large land mass that is segmented up into theoretical (fuzzy) "areas" or "regions". For instance, there are a lot of Outlet malls here and they all have a "Lancaster City" postal address. Problem is, they're actually no-where near Lancaster City itself. I guess the Lancaster City postal address conferred upon them simply makes it easier on the postal service to deliver mail. For everyone else, it can be an extremely confusing misnomer. Call any merchant in the outlets and they'd say "We're in the Strasburg Area of Lancaster County." They'd never say, "We're in Lancaster City". Other businesses in-and-around the area (restaurants, b&b's, attractions, etc.) that actually have a Strasburg postal address could associate themselves with the "Strasburg Area" region. This creates a less "legalistic" separation of content and certainly a more friendly method of grouping listings together.

Providing merchants with a way to assign themselves to an administrator defined "area" or "region" or "territory" would be a massive improvement to the xDirectory.

Just curious... do you understand what I'm suggesting with regard limiting the directory based on the "area" selected. The look-and-feel of the directory would remain the same. All the categories and sub-categories would look the same.... there would just be fewer listings.

What do you say, Martijn? Want to tackle this?

A couple of other suggestions for features...
- Back-end statistics reporting feature showing the number of reads and the number of click-throughs.
- Capability to automagically generate a weekly or monthly email to the listing customer showing them how many times their ad was viewed and how many times someone clicked through to their web site.

On that monthly email subject - It would be nice to have access to all those xdirectory emails as part of a newsletter module to be able to email merchants about what is going on with the site etc...

A great way to generate traffic and awareness on the site with people who have a vested interest in it.

My site's newbb forum and AMS modules rank very well with some keywords on Google, Yahoo and MSN. I would like to tell everyone who has listed in xDirectory that little tidbit and how to use it to thier advantage. I would send info on how to write short articles, use forum posts and signature lines and give suggestions on how to write their Business description rich with keywords.

I currently send out a couple a week, but it would be nice to have a way to email everyone at once.

Quote:


when you say selling the business model.. do you mean he's selling the module?


i am very interested as well.

Selling a business franchise - a local web directory business - not the module.

http://www.cityguide123.com/

That is quite a list indeed . Since these features would require multiple changes on the existing database tables and a few new tables, I think it would be better to make it a new module, re-using some of the current xDirectory features.

I was thinking of implementing an optional SEO feature as well, making it possible to include the category name in the url.

The feature request of a globally usable locations schema seems to be desired by more than a few. I will look into that. For some only a small number of single level locations is required or even just one location, while others need to set up thousands of locations with different levels (countries, provinces, counties, regions etc.). I should make it as flexible as possible then.

Due to the considerable time it will take to implement all requested features, I think I should divide this project into multiple stages, releasing several update versions.

Most essential for users who would like to use it commercially will be the E-Commerce option and the locations management functionality, so that would be a good start. This can be included in the first version together with some easy to implement features such as multiple categories assignment and alphabetical listings. A more detailed list will follow depending on your feedback.

Another reason why I would like to create a new module is that I plan to use dev.xoops.org as a platform for this. If more people would be willing to help on module development, this will be easier to manage. Besides, more people will be able to find their way to this module.

Any suggestions for a name?

Martijn

Martijn, I'm thrilled to see that you're interested in spearheading this task. As for a name... maybe...

"xList" -- XOOPS Listings
"xYPages" -- XOOPS Yellow Pages
"xBizList" -- XOOPS Business Listing

Just some random thoughts.

Hi Video,

Thanks for the suggestions. I would like to give it a unique name, nothing that you can find on google already.
I would like to name the project:

efqDirectory

On the development site (to be opened) you will see why I chose efq as a prefix

Now, I think we should take the discussion about the new module to another thread, since the new module will not be xDirectory.

I summarized a list of feature requests we have right now in the new topic efqDirectory

I can't get this module, anyone knows a mirror to download?