IndexU Support

When you ask for help, make sure someone can help you.

This is the biggest issues in support EVER. Yes the word ever is capitolized for a reason, because it’s true. Time and time again we get emails or posts on the message board that are so vague there’s nothing we can do. I’ve seen posts like

“It doesn’t work”

“It didn’t install”

“There’s no categories”

“There an error, why?”

I’m serious, and unfortunately, so are the users. Any support tech needs to troubleshoot an issue. And the first place you start is the product name. On the forum we only hope that users post in the right forum, but on the help desk we have no idea what product a user is talking about.

The second thing a support tech needs to know is the error. The EXACT error you are receiving right down to the period at the end of the line.

The last thing a support tech needs is the ability to fix the issue themselves if the user cannot do it. So if you decided you’d try and install the software on your home computer then the odds are you can forget having a support tech fix it for you.

When a user tells a support tech that they have their script running on XAMPP (or similar) we already know that the odds of the user having messed up the PHP, MySQL or apache config is tremendously high. Never mind the fact that the user probably bound the daemons to 127.0.0.1 (localhost) so it’s not viewable by anyone but him.

But it gets worse, because I’ve even had users tell me, and yell at me, that anyone can connect to their server because it has an IP address. If they can see it then anyone else should too.

XAMPP is great for someone who knows what they’re doing, but if you don’t have a clue, then please just get a hosting package and pay a few dollars a month to make your life, and supports life, a lot easier.

What are you selling?

Don’t tell me nothing, because you’re lying when you say that. Each and every website out there that is trying to make more than one cent in income per year is selling something.

No it doesn’t need to be an actual product, or even a virtual product.

What most directories try to sell is their content and exposure. By selling yourself as the best place to find what a users needs you will hopefully gain their trust so that they bookmark you and come back as often as possible.

Essentially you’re trying to sell yourself.

There are a few tips about selling which apply to any situation. And some of the main ones are;
Look appropriate
Be knowledgeable
Have a good product

To look appropriate you need to customize your website. Not just change the text or add an image, but really customize it. Spend a few hours changing the site and if you’re not able to do it yourself then hire someone to do it.

You must be knowledgeable. If you talk about things you don’t have a clue about then users are going to find out quickly that they know more than you. You have to educate yourself on the topic at hand and you should know as much as you possibly can.

Having a good product in this case will mean that what you have is well written, and backed up with content. Lots and lots of content. In the case of a directory you’re looking at having listings. You need to make sure you have more listings than the next site and you need to make sure those listings are all valid. This means constant checks and rechecks to ensure your site is up to date.

I hear from a lot of websites that “directories are dead”. If so, then why are they still popular and why do they make money?

The answer is simple, because directories using a script like IndexU are versatile and can be based on any subject or product.

Lets face it, the average directory has a few thousand general links and a few hundred or even thousand categories. These types of directories are everywhere on the internet, and they’re the examples people use when they state that directories are dead.

The facts are simple, if you want a general link you’re going to go to Google or Yahoo or MSN and search. However if you want specialized links then you’re going to find that a directory becomes highly useful.

For example I have a specialized directory that has just over 300 links. This is more links on this topic than Google, Yahoo and DMOZ put together have in their directories. It gets good targeted traffic and does well with advertising.

But IndexU can be used for so much more than just links. Some of the great directories I’ve seen don’t even include links. There is a coupon directory, a recipe directory, several product directories and with the new RSS feed tool it will be possible to populate a directory from any RSS feed you can find.

Of course a good directory means more than just using a stock template, but I’ve covered that in the past.

So are directories dead? The answer, if you have any imagination at all, is no.

This should be simple and basic knowledge, but today’s article is why you should customize your site.

On the Nicecoder website a statement says “Over 3000 Nicecoder Happy Customers”, there’s actually more than that but that’s not the point. The point is that with that many sites running IndexU, how many sites do you think all look the same?

One hundred? Five hundred? My best guess, and yes this is only a guess, is that there’s probably 1000 IndexU sites that all look the same out there. Now saying that, I’m sure some (hundreds?) of them have been shut down by their owners due to lack of interest or lack of knowledge.

Yes IndexU comes with six free templates. So lets assume 1000 sites are running Kosmos, that leaves 2000 running the other five templates. Well that means 400 sites are running portaldex, 400 running worlddex and so on.

But wait, that’s 3000 customers, not 3000 sites. Many users have multiple licenses, in fact I know one user who runs over 500 sites. Yes 500, you heard that right.

Now the numbers get astronomical. How many licenses are out there? 10,0000? That could mean 3-4000 users are running Kosmos!

How do you think users are going to act and react when they go looking at a few dozen sites and find that half of them all look the same? They sure aren’t going to stick around are they?

Yes IndexU is a complicated script. But that doesn’t mean it’s impossible to deal with. If you have a decent knowledge of HTML you can make IndexU look any way you want it to look.

How much does it cost to get a complete custom skin made for IndexU? It can cost as little as a few hundred dollars. This is pocket change compared to what a good looking, unique site with excellent content can make in a few months.

Of course some users will ask about paid templates. These are an excellent way to customize your site while maintaining a somewhat unique look. Since a lot of users do not want to pay for a premium template, and the pool of available templates is quite extensive, there is a great chance that a premium template will look unique to a user because not a lot users use them.

Honestly there is no replacement for a unique template, and there never will be. Perhaps you could buy a premium template and modify it. This gives you a good starting point and may mean less time overall in getting your final product.

So get off your butt, and start customizing IndexU today.

In a few of the articles I’ve written already, I pointed out that it’s very easy to make a database using only URL’s and IndexU’s Fetch Meta feature. One of the biggest issues however is a lack of title, description and keyword meta tags.

So why is it that so many websites do not have proper title, description and keyword meta tags? They really aren’t necessary, and search engines no longer care if they exist because they will create their listings from content. But some search engines and IndexU’s Fetch Meta feature relies on these tags.

The title, description and meta tags can actually help you out. They help search engines to classify your site, they help directories sort your site, and they help major directories like DMOZ, Google and Yahoo sort your site as well.

You could very well be penalizing your site by not adding proper meta tags. Below are examples of these tags;

<title>the title of your website, without any html tags</title>
<meta name=”description” content=”a description of your website” />
<meta name=”keywords” content=”keywords and phrases, seperated, by, commas” />

They’re not hard to do, but I assume it is lack of knowledge that makes users not add them. If you are using IndexU you can edit the keywords and description tags on index.html and the title tag is edited from page_titles.php

So do your site a favour, add some meta tags today. You might find that you get indexed more often because of it.

Backups can save your life. Sounds scary does it? But it’s true. Think about it for a minute and come back and read that again.

How can backups save your life? Lets take the example of a hospital that has your records on file. Now lets assume you were allergic to latex. You get admitted to the hospital for appendicitis and tell them of your allergy. While a surgery room is being prepped for you the computers crash and there is no data backup. By this time the admitting staff cannot find you to make your file again.

A nurse comes in to prep you for surgery and she starts to clean the area where you are going to have the incision. But she’s wearing latex gloves. Do you get the picture?

Yes it’s a fantastic scenario that should never happen (which is why they still use paper files and bracelets to identify allergies). But that’s not the point. The point is that backups are necessary and need to be done as often as possible.

Yes backing up your website manually sucks. It takes time and effort and requires you to remember to run the backup.

You could have a backup server that runs automated backups for you. I have one, but of course there’s the cost and maintenance of the server. Just because it’s a backup server doesn’t mean it doesn’t have to be updated.

So you’re looking for a cheaper solution.

Welcome to NiceBackup. NiceBackup works on the windows desktop and will download backups from any cPanel based server that you have.

So what if your server goes down and you want to move hosts? You have a backup.
What if your host decides not to pay their bills and the server gets shut down? You have a backup.
What if your host got taken away from the FBI or secret service? You have a backup.

All of the above scenario’s have happened. And some of them recently. Search on WebHostingTalk for the following horror stories regarding web hosts

- AlphaRed is a very large host who was down for over a week due to billing/legal issues. You can read some information about this host on Google News as well.
- Qoozz.com offered daily backups on their website. Their server crashed more than two weeks ago and backups for most clients were not available.
- Zone.net offered backups on their website. One of their servers crashed and due to issues, it took almost a week for some users to get backups. Some users were not able to get recent backups at all.
- SellWhm/grabyourhosting/RalphC closed up one host and denied service to his users, started another one and it crashed and was unable to provide backups and then attempted to start another host which was thankfully shut down due to bad publicity.
- ctn1.net just closed up shop and didn’t notify users.

These are real horror stories that could happen at any host. And if you wanted your data from any of them you would be out of luck. Your site would be gone and you would be left with nothing. It would be even worse if you ran a dynamic website like IndexU because any changes that were made online without a backup would be lost.

And a simple little program that runs in the system called NiceBackup could have saved you and your website.

This may sound more like ranting than an article, but honestly it’s the truth, and as a website owner you deserve to know “Why webhosting sucks”.

Time and time again I see issues that are tracked down to being a server issue. And most of the time it’s the same “big” hosts that causes these issues. Just because a host is big and has made a name for themselves doesn’t mean they are a good host.

Many hosts have very stong security to prevent things like scripts abusing their servers. Unfortunately this security is usually poorly implimented and causes issues with scripts or functions. Some hosts make you log into a control panel to enable features that should simply work without having to do anything.

And lets not get started on “unlimited”. There is no such thing. Any host trying to sell you unlimited is simply lying to you and should never be trusted. If “unlimited” was real then why do you not have unlimited hard drive space on your own computer? It’s crap. The fact is, they say they have no limit but read the fine print, there is a definite limit to what you can do with that account. Most of them limit the CPU usage, many of them limit the type of files you can upload, and all of them just want your money.

What happens when you go over the limit on unlimited? You get cancelled immediately, no refund, no backup data, do not pass go, do not collect $200.

How do you know which host is going to be good? Unfortunately you can’t know that before hand unless you have an endoresement. There are only two compaines that I would endorese for hosting IndexU. One would be Frank (c-4.us) and the other would be mine. The trick here, is that I don’t want just any customer that can find my URL and sign up.

There are a few types of webhosting clients
1) Users who know nothing
2) Users who know a lot but admit when they are stuck
3) Users who think they know everything

And number three is why I dislike the hosting business. There are far too many people out there that think they can do anything because they saw it somewhere else or they read about it on some website. And I’m here to tell them that they are wrong. Most of them don’t listen, but I can’t control that.

Thankfully these users don’t often sign up with companies like mine. They go sign up with the big hosts and get their accounts terminated rather quickly. Then they go on webhosting forums and bash the companies they abused.

Which customers do I like the best? Actually I like the ones who know nothing the most. They are most often teachable and willing to learn. Sure group two is willing to learn as well, but they are not usually teachable and they learn by mistake. Well a mistake on a server can mean a serious problem.

Lets take a look back a few fears ago when I hired a “programmer”. You’ll see why I put programmer in quotes in a minute. I asked for a simple script that would connect to usenet, retrieve data, store the data in a temporary database, sort the data, then place it in a final database table. It turns out this programmer couldn’t get php/mysql/apache running on his computer (no idea why, I didn’t even bother to ask) so I set up a login for him to work on a live domain on one of my servers.

A few days later I suddenly get a barrage of emails telling me that usage is sky high and services are failing. I login via SSH and run TOP only to see a script in this “programmers” directory has spiked CPU usage so high that it took me 3 minutes to log in via SSH.

I terminated the process and then terminated the programmer. It’s a good thing I was at my computer when I got the emails as this wasn’t a development server, this was a production server with 80+ domains on it. If I was out or away I may not have seen it for hours which means that customer sites and my own sites would have been down.

Now you can see why VPS hosting is so popular now, in a VPS the above would never have happened.

Like I said, it’s going to sound more like a rant than an article. But your website deserves a solid, stable host that supports everything that IndexU or any other Nicecoder product requires. It’s your business that is on the line, so act like it really matters and investigate your host as much as possible.

Since so many people ask where to find specific text to change in IndexU I thought I would let users know how I do it and what software I use.

Get the program at http://inforapid.com/html/searchreplace.htm (it is freeware)

The program I use is called InfoRapid Search & Replace. While you don’t need to use the search AND replace feature, you can use the search easily to find what you need.

On the Search tab, the first box is “Search For”. Here you can enter a word or phrase and InfoRapid S&R will search for it.

The second box is “In Files”, simply have an asterisk there (*) and it will search all files for you.

The third box is “In Directories”. Simply browse to the folder you want to search in. This program will search every file in that directory for the string you want. To the right of this make sure that “With Subdirectories” is checked.

The last box is “Search Method”. I prefer to leave it at “Exact Phrase Matching” as I am typically searching for something very specific.

Then click Start to get your search going. The program is quick and will show you every file that the word or phrase you searched for has been found in. Of course if you searched for “My” you would get a lot of results. But searching for “My Favorites” will get you two results.

This program has saved me hundreds, if not thousands of hours over the years searching folders for files with specific words or phrases.

Hope this helps others out.

Below is an article I wrote for IndexuSupport.com, so far it’s article 4 in the series. I posted all 4 tonight and you can read them on my site for free.

Many users often ask me how they can get a database for their website. There are numerous answers to this question.

1) You can buy databases from multiple sources. Some of them good, a lot of them bad. Remember to ask questions and get a sample before you buy.
2) You can use a DMOZ slice. This is a really good way to go, in fact it’s how a lot of my larger sites started. If you don’t want to buy the DMOZ Extractor you can buy slices for as low as $5.00 from me.
3) You can scrape it!

First lets get this out of the way. Scraping a database off the net is probably as close as you can come to stealing. Scraping involves processing one or more sites through a few programs that will save and extract the data that you want.

There are millions of web sites on the internet, all with a lot of links, content and data. What kind of database you want will depend on where you go look for your data.

For this example lets just assume you have a CD-ROM with the Yellow Pages on it in HTML format. And for simplicity lets assume that there are 27 pages (a-z plus numbered companies). Yes they would be large pages, but that’s not the point.

The first thing you would do is copy those pages to your hard drive so they can be processed faster. The read time off a CD-Rom is not as fast as your hard drive. Similarly if you were trying to scrape webpages you would want to copy them to your hard drive as well.

For copying a website to your hard drive you would probably use a program like Offline Explorer. There are three versions, Offline Explorer, Offline Explorer Pro and Offline Explorer Enterprise. At the minimum you want the Pro version, it’s costs around $90 and is essential in your data mining/scraping endeavour.

So you have the web pages on your hard drive in a specific directory. Now you want to suck the data out of it. For our purpose we only want the URL’s but you can mine any data you want.

For the actual data mining you need a program called TextPipe. TextPipe comes in three versions, TextPipe Lite, TextPipe Standard and TextPipe Pro. At a minimum you need TextPipe Standard and it costs $199.

I won’t get into how to work TextPipe here, but will say that once you start up TextPipe you simply add some filters, point it to a directory, file or set of files and click go. From there TextPipe does all the work and mines the data from the pages. It will output the data where you tell it to.

TextPipe Standard can strip HTML tags for you, which saves you a TON of time messing around with the saved data. What you are left with is simply a list of URL’s.

With a list of URL’s you can then import them into IndexU, and use the Fetch Meta function of IndexU to download the title, description and keywords of all the URL’s in the database.

But don’t get me wrong, TextPipe can do a lot more than just URL’s. It can save almost any formatted data off of a webpage including addresses, phone numbers, descriptions and much much more. I just used URL’s as an example.

Sure I made it all sound simple, and once you’re familiar with how these programs work and how the filters work with TextPipe there is really no end to the kinds of databases that you can create.

In all seriousness, if you have a single website running IndexU then this method is not for you. You’re looking at a cost of around $300 US just for the software, and then add your time and the learning curve required and it’s not worth the effort. However you could pay someone to do the scraping/data mining for you. It may sound expensive, but it sure saves learning how to write filters!

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If you are interested in any data mining please let me know and I can try and get you a quote. I would need the following information

1) The approximate number of pages to mine and URL’s
2) The topic you are after for your database (I may have URL suggestions)
3) The exact data you want from each page
4) What format you want the data in (completed database, raw)
5) Your expected time frame

Please understand that data mining is a service that I am offering personally, not Nicecoder.

Why should I upgrade?

It’s a big question, that has been asked probably hundreds of times on the forum here.

With the changes we have made to the script for version 1.21, we plan on making minimal changes to the themes for each successive version. This means that from v1.21 onwards, all you should need to upgrade are the .php files.

Previously upgrading IndexU was a nightmare, and when I started with the company that was one thing which I told everyone that I would look into and do my best to change. And now it’s happened.

Yes there may need to be some changes in the templates, but when there are changes to the templates we will let you know exactly where they are and what the change is.

We do not consider the /admin/ and /admin_tpl/ directory as “changeproof”, but very few users actually modify the admin panel. In fact right now it is the admin panel that is growing and changing the most with new functions and features being added.

In the future, you will find that during an upgrade the /themes/ directory will not need to be overwritten just because there is a new version. This allows users to upgrade to the latest version with the newest features while maintaining their sites overall look and appeal.

Upgrade to IndexU Deluxe 1.21 today, I promise that it will only get better from here.