Introducing...

GIDWebHosts™ - Meta PPC Web Hosting Directory.

This is a mini-site, a 10 day project that I was fooling around with recently. It was NOT meant to be published as a feature off this new site but at the end of my little experiment, I thought to myself, "Why not?"...

Anyway, a little background about this mini-site for those of you who are curious:

• Script is written in PHP using a MySQL database with InnoDB tables (my first script using InnoDB tables... <-- fantastic stuff).
• The script itself is very small, just grabbing the XML feeds off 2 or 3 providers, processing the results, sorting by "Bids" and then saving the results into the appropriate database tables (caching purposes only) before displaying them onto the "List" pages.
• The template used to present the layout is a custom PHP template script I wrote recently - another experiment that turned out quite well, if I must say so myself.
• As with all other sites I develop, the URLs are modified using Apache's mod-rewrite to make the pages easier to remember for regular web surfers - and then there's the search-engine friendly factor as an added bonus.

I want to add that I actually had SO much fun developing this little script; which means - I spent 95% of the time, fine-tuning the actual script rather than concentrating on the overall look and layout of the site. Besides, it uses not 1 but up to 3 third party XML feeds, so I figured I'd have to keep the layout light so that page load times can be kept as short as possible.

You'll note that the "Search" option is disabled and not working yet; this is my next 'project'...

If you manage a web hosting related site; and would like to exchange links, just send me a PM with your offer.

As usual; comments, questions and suggestions are welcome.

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J de Silva
Learning Journal | GIDForums™ | GIDNetwork™ | GIDWebhosts™ | GIDSearch™

I declare the site OPEN on March 11th 2004

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J de Silva
Learning Journal | GIDForums™ | GIDNetwork™ | GIDWebhosts™ | GIDSearch™

Today I inserted some code on GIDWebHosts™ that will show the last 5 threads off Web Hosting related threads and discussions here.

The threads displayed there are currently pulled off the following forums:

• Web Hosting Forum
• Apache Web Server Forum
• Free Web Hosts Forum
• Web Host Review Forum
• Web Hosting Ads & Offers
• GIDWebHosts™ Forum

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J de Silva
Learning Journal | GIDForums™ | GIDNetwork™ | GIDWebhosts™ | GIDSearch™

Looks good. Any reason for using the /list-xml sub-directory instead of the root?

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Web Hosting Tips | Career Advice

No particular reason except that this was not meant to be part of this site (gidwebhosts).

I just created the mini-site first to test the script, at the same time to show propective PPC Search Engine operators how the REAL search site is going to look like. Which was a really GOOD idea because in just 2 days I have received 2 new contracts with MAJOR players in the field. I'll make the announcement in the MODRoom soon since I have not actually signed the deals yet...

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J de Silva
Learning Journal | GIDForums™ | GIDNetwork™ | GIDWebhosts™ | GIDSearch™

I think it looks great! Only suggestion is that I believe it should look similar to the GIDBlue theme here. It would just look better. Brown looks ok, but not "great".

If you want me to make the template the way I think it should look with colors and stuff let me know.

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Mr. Bob's Web Design - Tirelessly looking for ways to enhance the customer base of your business.

Hey Bobby, maybe I shall take you up on this offer... can you grab the CSS file and see what you can come up with? If you can just concentrate on the colours leaving everything else in place until I finish tweaking the rest of the script?

By the way, it's not brown!!! It's some shitty green and beige

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J de Silva
Learning Journal | GIDForums™ | GIDNetwork™ | GIDWebhosts™ | GIDSearch™

By the way, it's not brown!!! It's some shitty green and beige
- lol ok. Let me see what I can do with the brown template you are using.

If you send me the actual template files with the code in it, I might be able to make it easier for you.

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Mr. Bob's Web Design - Tirelessly looking for ways to enhance the customer base of your business.

[REMOVED LINK]

I need to take a break from it, so I can think about some more ideas. But that is just a start.

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Mr. Bob's Web Design - Tirelessly looking for ways to enhance the customer base of your business.

Ok, so much for the break. I think I am just about done with it. There seems to be an alignment issue that I am not sure how to fix it.

Anyways, comments? Suggestions?