Article Directory Software - Article Friendly Script Review
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Why I Used Article Friendly For My Own Article Directory...
I used a paid content management system to create that directory, and it had its' problems. For one, the article submission procedure wasn't that good. Authors had to go through several pages, and it wasn't as intuitive as a one page submission. But more than that, I eventually decided I would go with a purpose built article directory software script. The features in these, even the free ones, were much more suited to my purposes.
I looked at the free article directory script by Article Dashboard. I've submitted to many of the article directories, and this is a very popular script, so I knew how it looked from an author's point of view.
It's a nice looking script, but it suffers a big problem in that it is not maintained. Because of this, security is a big problem. If you look through the forums and the search engines, you might find a lot of people complaining about their sites being hacked, and other problems.
Your article directory is part of your business. You really don't want it left to that, not with the time you'll be putting into maintaining and approving articles, and marketing it.
During my searches, I came across Jan Michaels' Article Friendly. You can see this article directory software in action at my site Article Health And Fitness. I've customized the colors of this, which just takes redoing some of the graphics and playing around with the CSS sheet. If you've customized a blog theme, you'll be fine with this.
Jan is very active with his script. It's been updated twice in the past year, and both times they were big upgrades, with a lot of features added.
Just as an example, there were 34 changes in the newest update. These include things like:
- Optimized sql queries (good for shared hosting environments!)
- Decreased server resource usage on front and backend significantly (ditto)
- Added mass email throttling option in admin (ditto again!)
- Added updated adsense code to show 5 ads in left nav
- Added ability of admin to set number of featured authors thru admin site settings
- Added ability of admin to turn on/off auto approval of article marketer and iSnare submitted articles
- Added Approve Unapproved articles by checklist to admin
- Added Delete Unapproved articles by checklist to admin
- Added Delete articles by keyword (great for niche sites getting lots of irrelevant articles)
- Added author spell checking on article submission page
- Added mod_rewrite code for "SEO Friendly" article & author pages (you won't see this on my article directory as I haven't upgraded my script yet)
- Added Dropdown list to search/edit categories
- Improved default page style and layout
- Added enhanced error handlers to email admin on database errors and show nice page to users
He has a forum, and listens to what people want in his script. Jan has helped me personally with problems I've had to do with my particular hosting at the time, and when I was trying to get the articles sent directly from Article Marketer. He's always replied promptly, and he's very friendly. The script is aptly named!
Bottom line - this directory software comes highly recommended if you want to create your own article directory. All the important features are there for authors, and there's some great features in the admin as well. The script is very reasonably priced, and you are entitled to upgrades.
You can find Jan's Article Friendly script here.
Instead Of An Article Directory, Try A Paid Membership Site
Of course, crating an article directory is not for everyone. It's an example of a free membership site, and you can make money from mailings to authors (though you should provide them with good content too, otherwise they'll just delete your mails pretty quickly), as well as adsense and affiliate sales.But perhaps you want to put your talents and interests to work in a more targeted way. In that case, creating a paid membership site, is a very lucrative option. It gets you away from the business to business market, and potentially into some very large consumer markets. The competition can be a lot less there, and it's a great way to hone your online business skills.
Fortunately, you can create a membership site pretty cheaply - using free software in fact. In the Easy Membership Toolkit there's a video series that shows you exactly how to install and configure Joomla and the necessary components so you can set up to 4 different membership levels if you want. This gives you a lot of flexibility.
There is definitely the potential to make more money more quickly with a paid membership site. You can check it out here.
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- Allen Allen May 18, 2008 @ 10:44 pm
- I enjoyed both articles on this page, why you purchased article friendly and talking about paid membership sites.
My reason for looking into an article directory is that I am launching an Article Marketing Membership site the end of May or beginning of June.
I like the looks of your Health Directory. You have pretty much made my mind up on purchasing this script for myself
Thank
Allen
http://www.profit-with-articles.com
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