All of the pages that your users will see are controlled by templates that you can modify at any time. The LinkX template syntax is based on the Smarty template engine, however I decided to write my own template compiler and caching system to improve on the performance of Smarty. The end result is a template system that has great flexibility, but also has an approximately 5x performance advantage over Smarty. If you have worked with Smarty template syntax in the past, you should have no problems working with the LinkX template system.

   

The end-user search engine included with LinkX allows your users to perform powerful boolean type searches of your links. The searches will include the site title, description, and keywords that were submitted with the link. Your users will be able to use + signs to require that a word appear in the search results, - signs to prevent words from appearing in the search results, quotes to search for exact phrases, and much more. This will allow your users to quickly locate the information they are looking for, and will give them a positive experience with your site, increasing the chance they will bookmark and return later.

In the search results that are displayed for the user, the search terms will be highlighted so they can easily see the portions of the link data that matched their search.

The LinkX control panel is where you will manage all of the software settings and data. Being our newest product, the LinkX control panel takes advantage of the power of modern web browsers and utilizes DOM and AJAX technologies to provide you with an efficient interface to manage the software. From the control panel you can manage all of the software settings, edit your categories, process newly submitted links, edit the software templates, send e-mail messages, and much more.

The control panel also supports two different types of accounts: administrators and editors. Administrator level accounts will have access to all of the software functions. Editor level accounts will only be allowed to access the functions you specify. So, for example, you could create an editor account that is only allowed to approve and edit links. This gives you the option to have many people working on your link directory at once, with the safety of restricting them only to the functions you want them to use.

The software's user defined database fields feature allows you to store any additional information about links and accounts that you like. There is no limit to the number of user defined database fields that you can have, so you can store any amount of extra data that you like. You will also be able to configure validators for your user defined fields so they can be checked to meet a specific format when they are submitted by end users.

For accounts you can configure user defined fields that the submitter must provide when they create their account, and they will also be able to edit that data when they modify their account in the future. For link submissions you can add extra fields to the link submission form if there is an extra bit of data you want to collect. Any of the additional fields that you configure can be displayed in your link directory pages next to the associated link!

Separating the links by their category is very important so your users can quickly find the type of content they are looking for. With LinkX you can have an unlimited number of categories each with an unlimited number of sub-categories. Your sub-categories can also be nested as deeply as you wish so you can create very specific sub-categories for your users to view and link submitters to select from. Every category that you define can also have a custom value for the meta description and keywords tags to improve their relevency in search engine results.

In addition to having unlimited categories, you can also place each link in an unlimited number of categories. If there is a link in your database that fits into more than one of your categories, it is not necessary to add that link to your database multiple times. You can simply configure that single link to appear all of the categories it fits in, and LinkX will take care of displaying it in all of those categories for you.

To help boost your search engine results, it is important that the URLs of your link directory be in a format that the popular search engines will index. Most search engines will not index URLs that have a query string (the end of a URL after a ? character), which are commonly used in PHP scripts. LinkX takes advantage of the mod_rewrite Apache server module to produce URLs that do not contain any query strings and can be easily indexed by all of the popular search engines.

When a user is browsing your link directory, the URLs they see in their browser will correspond with the names of the categories you have created. This type of URL will be much more pleasing to your users and will also help to increase your search engine rankings since the category names will appear directly in the URL.

Once you've got your link directory up and running, your main task will be to manage the links in your database. Users will be able to submit new links to your directory and edit their existing links that they had previously submitted. You can optionally require that all links be approved by an editor before being displayed, and also optionally require all edited links to be approved before the changes appear. This allows you to make sure there are no inappropriate sites added to your link directory.

The LinkX control panel allows you to quickly view and edit any link in the database at any time. If you need to modify the link URL, description, or any of the other link data it takes only a few clicks in the control panel to do that. The control panel also has "quick" functions which allow you to change many links at once. You can use a search and replace function to change a value in your link database on hundreds or thousands of links at a time.

You will also want to make sure the links in your database are following your rules, and LinkX offers plenty of features for that purpose. The control panel has an interface where you can specify blacklisted items which are not allowed to appear in the link data. The blacklist can check the site URL, HTML code on the linked page, words in the link title and description, and more. You will also have the ability to setup reciprocal link code which must (optionally) appear on the linked site.

Once of the most important link management features is the ability to re-check the links in your database after they have been submitted. All of the links are checked during submission to make sure they meet your rules, but it is possible that some users may change their pages after submission. This is where the LinkX scanner comes in. The link scanner can go through your database of links and check each one to make sure it is still in compliance with the rules you have set.

When you purchase LinkX you will have access to all future versions at no extra cost. This is one of the most important things you should consider when purchasing software. When you look at the purchase price of a program, you must also figure in the cost to upgrade when new versions are released. With LinkX, you don't have to do that. The price you pay now guarantees you access to all future versions.

You will also have free access to tech support for life, so you can be assured that any time you have an issue you will be able to get assistance. Tech support is handled through a forum interface, so you can easily search past messages to see if your issue is the same that someone else was experiencing. This way you can often times get an answer to your question within a matter of minutes!

LinkX will continue to be under active development for many years to come, and in fact at all times I maintain a list of ideas for new features that may be added. In addition to researching and developing new features myself, there is an active community of LinkX users who are submitting feature suggestions all the time.

I try to work closely with LinkX owners so I can understand the features they want most, and have setup a suggestions interface that will allow you to make suggestions at any time. You will also be able to view and rate other suggestions so the ones that are most in demand will be added sooner. It's a great way to get involved in the development process and to have your own ideas and features included in the software.