I am preparing a list of major webmaster forums for directory owners. I think that this list will be useful for many directory owners to network with each other, share their knowledge and also promote their directories.

1. DigitalPoint’s Directories Section : This is by far the most active forum for web directory owners and truly a tightly bonded community.

2. PhpLD Forum : Home of the official PhpLD script also very active led by the script owner David.

3. Info Vile Silencer Forums : Famous for it’s directory lists, It is also one of the most active forums for web directory owners.

4. V7N Forums : Another quality forum for directory owners.

5. Directory-Owners Forum : The forum is active, but I personally like the directory articles on this forum.

6. IGuides Forums : Nice forum led by Asim.

7. UK Webmaster World : Fast growing Directory Forum.

8. Talk Directories : Nice web directory forum led originally by Mikey (not now).

9. Directory Junction : Looks new but looks to be active.

Please post your comment and let me know If I have missed listing any directory forums, so that I can update the list.

Popularity: 6% [?]

Dev-X is a really cool free PhpLD template released for v3.3 released in 3 variations (Purple, Blue and Black) with the features listed below.

1. Adsense ready Or easy placement of advertisements
2. Custom category icons (up to 25 main categories)
3. Featured advertisements displayed on the homepage
4. Categories display in sidebar.
5. Logo PSD provided with the theme.

Personally I love the use of CSS on this theme for the upper navigational menu.

Since the theme uses custom category icons, make sure you go through the read me file provided along with the theme. A no category icon version is also available along with the theme.

Demo : Blue Dev-X theme | Download the theme

Popularity: 5% [?]

Many Web directories are spammed with hundred of unwanted links, and deleting these links manually links is just not possible. An interesting discussion took place on Digital Point forums to mass delete all the spam links from the phpMyAdmin to save time and keeping the directory clean.

1. The following command deletes all the pending links when run from the phpMyAdmin

DELETE FROM `PLD_LINK` WHERE `STATUS`=1

2. The following command is used to delete listings when spammed from specific TLD’s like .ru , .ua, .by etc

DELETE FROM `PLD_LINK` WHERE `URL` LIKE ‘%sblog.cz%’

The % operator in the above command is used to detect any character and will delete any record in the links table where the url contains the characters sblog.cz - regardless as to what characters come before or after it.

Caution : Please before you try to run these commands from the phpMyAdmin take a full database backup so you can always switch back in case any thing goes wrong.

Also to keep spam submissions low, consider Spam Guard mod from Rob.

Popularity: 15% [?]

Alexa rankings are best way to determine (guess) traffic to a blog/website. The lower you’re Alexa, the more popular your website is in terms of traffic and website popularity. Some days back Alexa updated it’s algorithm to provide more accurate rankings by using improved methodologies to rank websites for all countries than gathering the page views data with Alexa toolbar installed on user’s computer. It seems that Alexa is tracking sites very well now.

The new Alexa traffic update is creating a lot of buzz among bloggers and directory owners with many money making blogs like Shoe Money, John Chow and ProBlogger falling high on the alexa rankings. Directory owners are also hit with the Alexa Update.

Analysis of Alexa Update on some random web directories.

1. Zorg Directory Alexa rankings dropped from 120K to 91K.
2. Web-Directories.ws Alexa rankings dropped from 48K to 83K.
3. Gii.in Alexa rankings dropped from 66K to 45K.

Alexa trying to improve it’s tracking has left us with mixed feelings with some directories moving up and some going down. But what is good that at least now Alexa rankings seems to be more accurate and now toolbar dependent.

Post your comments on whether your directory moved up or down after the Alexa update and I will update the list.

Popularity: 88% [?]

PageRank Updater is a windows based application for Php Link Directory Script to update the page rank of all the links in the database. The PageRank Updater application has been very popular with web directory owners and creator GeraldM has just made the source code of this application public.

The application has been written in Delphi and will require some commercial components to compile the source. Download the source code from the Url below.

http://www.phplinkdirectory.com/articlescript/PageRank_Updater_Application_is_Back.php

Let’s hope that some one works on the code and come up with some more cool updates.

Popularity: 17% [?]