By taherk on

I have been using Drupal last 1 year plus & its surprizing that for such a popular CMS there is no stable version of Links directory.

Almost all major CMS have a module for Links & mostly part of core.

I used weblinks first but then I upgraded to 4.7 and had to switch to CVS version of Links module. All my sites have weblinks and I like to build link directories on my sites.

With upgrade to 4.7.2 links module doesnt work.

In any case what we need is something like "PHP Links directory"

Has anyone ever integrated the above with drupal? If now I believe this project is worth considering ?

What do you have to say.?

⋅ Categories: Drupal 4.7.x

Comments

stevenpatz’s picture

stevenpatz
he/him
commented

If 4.6 works for ya.

taherk’s picture

taherk commented

If my site had only links then I wouldnt have upgraded, but to avail the new features of 4.7 I had to.

My point is that Links directory is an essential component of any CMS . Flexinode and other options just dont work as well

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heine’s picture

heine commented

My point is that Links directory is an essential component of any CMS

No it isn't; certainly not for Drupal core. Contrib, aye, would be nice to have a module there. It seems that the Links package is the way to go for 4.7.

You say it's broken on 4.7.2? Then please file (or add to) an issue; only then will the developers know of the problem. If you find the pace of development too slow, you may want to throw some money at it.

--
The Manual | Troubleshooting FAQ | Tips for posting | Make Backups! | Consider creating a Test site.

bonobo’s picture

bonobo commented

You have a few options --

1. CCK
2. janode module
3. we'll be releasing a links module (called userlink) for 4.7 in a day or two -- we're putting finishing touches on it now --

FWIW, I also see this a something handled nicely by a contrib module, not in core.

Cheers,

Bill

-------
http://www.funnymonkey.com
Tools for Teachers

-------
http://www.funnymonkey.com

bomarmonk’s picture

bomarmonk commented

I have the links module working with 4.7.2.. Imagine pairing the links module with the views module, and I would guess you could have about any style links directory that you want.

taherk’s picture

taherk commented

Can you show me your site's example in case you are using diff views.

I get errors Fatal error: Call to undefined function: links_normalize_url() in /home/..../modules/links1/links_weblink.module on line 437

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bomarmonk’s picture

bomarmonk commented

I am running this in XAMPP and my local computer. I will update this thread when I have my upgrade on the live server. So farm, no problem with links, although the hosted server may treat things a bit differently.

taherk’s picture

taherk commented

Thanks Bill

That seems to be good news.

Janode is just Like flexinode I tried it. It cannot tracks # of visits etc. CCK I guess will have same issue, moreover it is still not released.

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AjK’s picture

AjK commented

Please note, the CVS version does track click throughs by using inward redirection. It's an option in the admin settings and they are recorded in the watchdog logs.

If you require further details of click throughs just put a feature request on what you want.

It's about to get a revamp regarding it's "fetch test" (to add in admin fine tuning of what constitues a broken link) and also "links exchange" management (where you agree to mutually link with another site, janode will ensure the other site continues to link back, otherwise it's dropped).

These new features should be along in a week or so. If there's any other features you would like to see, get a feature request in :)

best regards
--AjK

echoz’s picture

echoz commented

"we'll be releasing a links module (called userlink) for 4.7 in a day or two"

Great! Respecting that you are not announcing this yet, if it works for you, I would love to hear what features make it different than Janode. I'm just about to install a module like this, + would wait if your's is a better match for my needs (for which Janode seems just right).

-----------------------
http://echozone.com

bonobo’s picture

bonobo commented

The userlink module allows users to save and share links. To access the full potential of the userlink module, we recommend using the functionality offered by freetagging, and the contributed module tagadelic (http://drupal.org/project/tagadelic).

Userlinks are fully themeable, and the module comes with a css file that defines the necessary values to theme your links. To use the css file, paste it into your existing theme, and modify it as needed.

Userlink comes with a series of userlink-related blocks: view all links, view all link categories, view popular link categories, recent links, my links, my link categories, and the link menu. There is some overlap here, but it provides the end user with more choices. Enable the ones you want, and ignore the rest.

-------

I'm doing a last round of testing on it. I'll post here when it's ready to go.

Cheers,

Bill

-------
http://www.funnymonkey.com
Tools for Teachers

-------
http://www.funnymonkey.com

lias’s picture

lias commented

Oh Bill, I think you are swell : )

This module couldn't come at a better time.
lsabug

taherk’s picture

taherk commented

I cannot find the module, can someone post the link>?

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bonobo’s picture

bonobo commented

Here's the link:

http://www.funnymonkey.com/share-bookmarks

As we say in the announcement, we'll be checking it into CVS soon, but we wanted to get this out.

Cheers,

Bill

-------
http://www.funnymonkey.com
Tools for Teachers

-------
http://www.funnymonkey.com

shoq’s picture

shoq commented

Didn't see one on funnymonkey site.

Can you post here?

bonobo’s picture

bonobo commented

The best way to get a sense of what the module does is to set it up and use it on a 4.7 test site -- the link I provided above brings you to a page where you can download the module.

Cheers,

Bill

-------
http://www.funnymonkey.com
Tools for Teachers

-------
http://www.funnymonkey.com

ngstigator’s picture

ngstigator commented

Here is a Views include file for the userlink module that allows use of the URL field in a table.

http://drupal.org/node/70222

Chris

bonobo’s picture

bonobo commented

Hello, Chris,

I'll check this out later today -- Thanks!

Cheers,

Bill

-------
http://www.funnymonkey.com
Tools for Teachers

-------
http://www.funnymonkey.com

ngstigator’s picture

ngstigator commented

Not intuitive so it bears repeating: When adding Views module includes, clear your Drupal cache table regularly. Time wasted that I'll never see again.

Cheers, Bill. You did the hard part. Great module!

Chris

bonobo’s picture

bonobo commented

In the interest of full disclosure -- Marc did hard part -- I just get to talk about it :)

-------
http://www.funnymonkey.com
Tools for Teachers

-------
http://www.funnymonkey.com

ngstigator’s picture

ngstigator commented

Bill,
I ran into some problems with using userlink with Organic Groups, and we traced it down to userlink queries not using JOINs, which causes an error when combined with other queries that do (e.g. og's queries). I have a version using joins that fixes this problem, but I don't seem to be able to attach files here.

Do you guys have CVS access yet so I can post patches?

Chris

bonobo’s picture

bonobo commented

Hello, Chris,

We have cvs access, but we haven't checked it in yet -- if you email me either the patches or the complete version of the module, I'll check it out and update the web site with the newer version --

My email is bill (at) funnymonkey (dot) com

Thanks,

Bill

-------
http://www.funnymonkey.com
Tools for Teachers

-------
http://www.funnymonkey.com

ngstigator’s picture

ngstigator commented

Joined version of userlink sent via email.

Chris

sacxtra’s picture

sacxtra commented

I got drupal 4.7.x (by itself) and MyThreads (by itself) for my links solution.
"MyThreads" is a yahoo styled search engine.

Currently I have I forwarded http://(DRUPAL BASE)/links to http://(MyThreadsURL)/ .
Which is a nice way to feed all my links off into another (Firefox Tab)
Downside is single window browsers will leave drupal totally. (This ain't killing me though)

However

I was wondering if somehow when someone searches drupal if it couldn't append
http://mthreadsURL/mode=search&search=%1
to the results of the drupal.module's output?

This would kick butt for me. As I have quite some time invested in "MyThreads."

Testing some preliminary stuff:
I forwarded (DRUPAL BASE)/drupal/links to /mythreads URL
Which is a nice way to feed all my drupal links off into another (Firefox Tab)

This is fine, but not the solution.

Further testing

For the forwarding i get
http://xxxx.xxx/links?mode=search&search=test
comes up with link results (from MyThreads) perfectly!
(ex. Testament is listed as a band)
# Testament - http://www.testamentlegions.com/ Testament ( Added: 2004-12-31, Hits: 20, )
So from this I can see it's possible to do!
(Yeah you can probably search/scrape this to find my site[s], it's a real output.)

We have learned all the string variables needed to return results from this test.

Question is where exactly to start hacking drupal's search.module to insert our new strings and (I guess there'l be a .css format issue which i don't care about at the moment. Drupal and MyThreads - Totally different layouts)

I was looking at

Return a query with the given module-specific search option inserted in.
e.g. 'type:book'.

in search.module as a potential place to hook this up (I don't use BOOKS)

anyway..

I don't get it I am missing something. I just want to display output of MyThreads (appended to Drupal's) display output.
So you hit your little search field in the top right of your drupal site and it
PRINT $Drupalscrap + $MyThreadscrap

if anyone grasps what I am talking about, I'd love to hear ANY ideas.

note: MyThreads are on a different database and totally different url (that Drupal Base) also
I won't abandon MyThreads. It's too FAST!!! And I have too much time invested in it. Perhaps Drupal could learn from the four tables that MyThreads uses. Either way this ain't killing me, but I would LOVE to see this working.

taherk’s picture

taherk commented

Hi Sacxtra

In third party Link scripts I prefer php links directory. http://www.phplinkdirectory.com/ as it has a lot of features and widely used.

The downsides of using third party scripts are

1. Themeing is lost
2. Cannot maintain one search ( like you have mentioned)
3. Links cannot be blended with Taxonomy. ( Maybe issue for some)

I am not sure on the search module hack, maybe someone else can respond.

If we can find a way to display Third party scripts in "Content area" of Drupal than it would be great too...
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bomarmonk’s picture

bomarmonk commented

I will get rid of the read-more links and change the behavior so that the node titles link directly to the external site. Overall though, I think the links package will prove to be a good way to create links directories-- depending on your needs, of course.

See the following page for an example:

http://www.alpinecountyca.com/local_links

andrewfn’s picture

andrewfn commented

I just looked at http://www.alpinecountyca.com/local_links and it has several things that I have been trying to do. Is it your custom theme, or is it available from somewhere?
I particularly like the theming of the calendar.

alexandermeindl’s picture

alexandermeindl commented

Hi,

I also want to get rid of the read-more on title click with janode. I tried to add the following in janode_view(), but it didn't work:

$node->path = $node->http_link;

Why is it not working? (sorry, I'm new with drupal)

Ciao...

s0me0ne’s picture

s0me0ne commented

I cant find this userlink thing that was mentioned

if anyone starts to make a link module LinksDB is a good starting point, it just needs more features
http://drupal.org/project/linksdb

taherk’s picture

taherk commented

LinksDb is good if you have few links on your site....it cannot track the link visits and users cannot rate...

This discussion is for those who want to create Links directory... something like Yahoo directory or similar, where you have lot of categories and under each category you have hundreds of links.

Linkspackage is a good solution but it is been in development forever.

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eaton’s picture

eaton commented

...Is production-ready.

The only missing feature is the bulk-editing interface for links. It also has excellent integration with the Views module, allowing you to build custom link directories and theme them.

--
Eaton's blog | VotingAPI discussion

--
Eaton — Partner at Autogram

bonobo’s picture

bonobo commented

Here it is.

Cheers,

Bill

-------
http://www.funnymonkey.com
Tools for Teachers

-------
http://www.funnymonkey.com

Lost in Space’s picture

Lost in Space commented

Userlink is Great. I have been playing around with userlink in 4.7.2 and like the way it works. I could not find a way to make where a user summited link has to be approved before it is published or a default way to make links not promote to the front page. One thing I know I need it to do though is open the links in a new browser page, leaving the page the link was clicked on still open and at the same place. This should be simple to change but I can not find where in the code to add a target=" __blank" or something like that. I only did a few links but plan on a lot more once I figure out the open in blank page. I also plan to see what views and userlink can do together once I get all my links entered.

You can see a few links here http://whatonmars.com/?q=userlink/all



Thanks for UserLink!

taherk’s picture

taherk commented

Got a questions about userlink -- Can you rate or put commments? Can you track most visited links ? If not then LinksDB and Userlink are similar and lightweight links modules
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bonobo’s picture

bonobo commented

for Lost In Space and taherk --

First, LIS, I'm glad that userlink is working out and doing (most of) what you need -- re approval/promote to front page -- navigate to http://yoursite.com/admin/settings/content-types/userlink -- you can set the userlinks to go into a moderation queue, and change the option for them to be promoted to the front page -- re opening in a new window, at minimum this would require changing the code, and the best solution would be to allow this as an option in the admin settings -- unfortunately, we don't have the time at present to make either of these changes -- sorry.

taherk -- comments can be enabled at the settings page as well: http://yoursite.com/admin/settings/content-types/userlink -- voting can be managed through any one of the voting modules in contrib (although I haven't tried this myself). It doesn't track click-throughs, and that is not a priority on our road map. We're always open to patches, though.

Cheers,

Bill

-------
http://www.funnymonkey.com
Tools for Teachers

-------
http://www.funnymonkey.com

taherk’s picture

taherk commented

Thanks a lot bill, Sorry if it sounded unpleasant :)
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bonobo’s picture

bonobo commented

and thanks for the clarification.

Cheers,

Bill

-------
http://www.funnymonkey.com
Tools for Teachers

-------
http://www.funnymonkey.com

Lost in Space’s picture

Lost in Space commented

Thanks for the info. No need to be sorry, I was just hoping that I could add something small to the code somewhere to make a new window open. I never expected you to re-write it :)
Changing this:

// If the url is longer than X characters, just display the first X...
$url = userlink_trim_url($node->url);

if ($teaser) {
$node->teaser = "

url\">$url

" . $node->teaser;
}
else {
$node->body = "

url\">$url

" . $node->body;
}
}

/**
* Implementation of hook_link().
*/
function userlink_link($type, $node = 0, $main = 0) {

To This:

// If the url is longer than X characters, just display the first X...
$url = userlink_trim_url($node->url);

if ($teaser) {
$node->teaser = "

url\"target=_blank>$url

" . $node->teaser;
}
else {
$node->body = "

url\"target=_blank>$url

" . $node->body;
}
}

/**
* Implementation of hook_link().
*/
function userlink_link($type, $node = 0, $main = 0) {

seems to work...
Thanks

bonobo’s picture

bonobo commented

It's in cvs, and the cvs version works in 4.7.

http://drupal.org/project/userlink

Cheers,

Bill

-------
http://www.funnymonkey.com
Tools for Teachers

-------
http://www.funnymonkey.com

parisp’s picture

parisp commented

I have modified (Hacked) the UserLink module and turned it into a link directory module
I am not an experienced drupal developer but wanted a directory badly for my website and i modified this module to act like i wanted.

The working version of the module i made up can be found in http://www.unitedworx.com/resources

if the developer of user links aproves this and others are interested on it i could post it on the forum and we could all work on it and make it a proper working link directory/resources module.

had fun with it ;)

lias’s picture

lias commented

it would be terrific if you could post your changes.
Thanks!
Lsabug

marqpdx’s picture

marqpdx commented

I'd love to see your directory code. Drupal needs this feature very badly. Used to have it with Directory module. Should be in HEAD.
thanks!
m

mactoph’s picture

mactoph commented

I should have posted this here in the first place. I went through the threads above as well as a couple others and I think this is a list of all the modules related to this discussion- please add any that I missed.

Janode
"This is a node type that allows you to create a library of http:// links to other resources on the Internet."

LinksDB
"Small module to allow you to maintain a simple categorised database of external site links."

Links Package
"The Links Package is a multi-module set for managing URL links in a master directory, and attaching them in various ways to your content pages"

userlink
"The userlink module allows users to save and share links (bookmarks, URLs)"

Anyone have a clear understanding of the strengths of the different modules?

taherk’s picture

taherk commented

This is a good post, there is one thing which may help a lot of people which is the directory type view of all the categories... if you want to build link directory using drupal with huge categories, the directory view is most preferable

Links package is very close , if that can be enhance to give directory view, it would be greatTTT.

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bluedun’s picture

bluedun commented

Have you tried the LinksDB module? I think it does what you're trying to do.

chrstphprz

smartcard’s picture

smartcard commented

I have searched many days on the net and this site looking for a decent Link Directory, unfortunately not found. Please recommend a solution to maintain a link directory that can work with Drupal