StiffyMcSpliff

No, but it is VERY important to have your own custom content and lots of keywords in your side bars. I use multiple modules to help load up the keyword count to make each page pretty unique even without the content.

Plus I write a custom page at least once per week per site. I'm trying to minimize my domain count, so I'm down to 10 sites, soon to be 6 just because the amount of time each site is becoming.

For the first in this series, yes. Basically what I'm going to do here is show you how to build a huge portal site. My method is to get SEO and link trade traffic coming in, when its at a descent point, I start working on "community" features to build user loyality. That will be the second series of tutorials, though we laid the base for this in this installment.

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pvt.spanky

Cool. I'm already working on a number of sites like this in various mainstream niches. I will keep my eyes on this thread.

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pvt.spanky

Stiffy - Just wondering if there was any reason you would use Feed Gator over RSS Reader2:

http://extensions.joomla.org/compone...737/Itemid,35/

It seems that they both have their bugs. I've never used either, just curious...

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sheepish

Mr Spliff...where do you find your feeds? I was hoping to use affiliatewindow.com but unfortunately I can't seem to get the feeds to work. They have xml which I believe is different to rss and I've not been able to find a way of converting them.

If anyone has any ideas...

Cheers

M.

Nymph

I had posted a few sources for feeds in this thread awhile back

http://www.netpond.com/showthread.php?t=98500

sheepish

Thanks Nymph. What I'm after in my wettest dreams is an affiliate system that has rss feeds with your affiliate codes in. http://clickbank.rssfeedsgenerator.com/ is extremely interesting tho...and may go with that if I can't convert from xml to rss

Cheers!

fresh

very nice tut, thanks

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StiffyMcSpliff

Well, I've downloaded and used almost all 600 joomla mods/coms/bots so I could be wrong about this, but the purpose of this was to feed the content into the database structure.

RSS Reader2 just parses the feeds as they come in, and does not add that content to the database. I do use a module named "Slick RSS" to display podcasts/vidcast downloads on my site, and I believe RSS reader2 is the same.
Well, there is a big problem in the web world atm, and that is no set standard to build XML feeds... RSS feeds are a bit different.

RSS is a better way of feeding out content, but is limited to blogs and what not.

XML is a base standard for storing databases in plain text with unlimited expansion and quick to use. Thus most sponsors will use XML to send out product updates and what not.

The best way I found is to do the following...

Use feedgator to import stuff like blogs and news sites related to the product niche.

Then I make a custom module using mod_html (just search google) to display my sponsors XML reader, ensuring that the XML feed is displayed properly.

This too has a few draw backs in the way it may break your templates XHTML validity (which is extremely important these days).

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pvt.spanky

Cool, thanks for the clarification.

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StiffyMcSpliff

I just thought I would show an example of how well this method works.

I have a site in the conspiracy/ufo sector that I use as my test bed (the site is more of a hobbie than a really business proposition). Here is the difference when I applied the previously mentioned techniques to Joomla.

I've attached a jpg of my stats from the start of march till yesterday. The percentage represents the increase from the same range from January 1 till February 18 2007.

Attached Thumbnails

 

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sheepish

Stiffy - when you import posts using feedgator, can you view them with IE6 or firefox? For me it works fine when looking with IE7 but for other browsers - it doesn't exist. I've made an article myself and posted it - works fine in all browsers. Imported via feedgator - there's no sign of them...not even in the source with ie6 or ff - but ie7 is fine.

Any ideas?

M.

StiffyMcSpliff

I've never heard that problem before.

First things first, check your Feedgator setting and make sure that XHTML clean is set on (value of 1 in the database field). This will scrub your incoming code and help display it properly in Joom's.

Secondly, try switching your template between a few various ones and see if your template may be causing a problem.

If that fails... PM me, and we'll work out a way to get you helped

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sheepish

Ignore that - seems to be working now. Why? I wish I knew. I hate computers!

M.

sheepish

I give up - working on Joomla on saturday evenings is not good...

StiffyMcSpliff

Yes, your problem sounds to be that the RSS feeds had dates that were ahead of your current time zone.

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sheepish

Well...I sorted out my problem *cough*. Did you know, if you have articles that haven't been set to "published" they don't show up to normal surfers but if you're logged into the site as admin, they show up? I was logged in on my ie7 but when I tested with FF or IE6 I wasn't so they weren't appearing

Anyway...it's up and running now and I'm in the process of adding content (I have sorted a script so that I can import affiliate products with my affiliate link using feedgator which I'm happy about).

Stiffy - I'm interested about modules that I can add to joomla that will hopefully make it more dynamic i.e. reduce the possibility of duplicate content...have you any tips for what are good modules?

Cheers

M.

StiffyMcSpliff

I use 2 mods specifically for that...

SectionNav which makes a menu of all your current sections/categories and a Tag Cloud that scans your content and places the most popular keywords in a list.

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Nymph

Just wondering if there will be any more updates for this project?

pvt.spanky

I finally had some extra time to work on this project last night. After about 5 hours of fucking around, I got Feed Gator to work with much frustration. The problem was the com_feedgator_config file. You can install & uninstall feedgator all day, but the config file never leaves unless you manually go into myphpadmin and delete it. I basically fixed the problem on accident. Anyway, looking forward to filling my site with fresh feeds every day

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alpha_male

thanks for this great tutorial.

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