What Directory / Classified Technology are you using
What Directory / Classified Technology are you using
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BarnatosGhost

Original Poster:

34,068 posts

282 months

Thursday 20th January 2011
quotequote all
I've a favour/question to ask the PH tech-lords!

I'm designing a website involving the creation of a directory of local businesses. This could be up to 5,000 records in the medium term. The structure of what I want to create is similar to the PH classifieds, with a searchable listing containing a limited amount of information and an image, with a more detailed dedicated page for each listing lurking behind it.

The content needs to be viewable by, but must not be modifiable by, the general public.

Could you give me a quick run-though of how you've done it please?

Many thanks in advance.

RacingPete

9,197 posts

233 months

Thursday 20th January 2011
quotequote all
Quite a big answer to the question.

We have custom built the software, so don't use anything off the shelf, and we are in the process of re-writing the back end to make it more scalable.

The current classifieds use old classic ASP talking to a mySQL database, with the business logic in classes on ASP. Though if I was doing it from scratch again I would separate out the front end to a search technology (e.g. SOLR) and let that handle all the classified queries.

Our new build is far more complicated than that, and I am not going into it here, but we are building to cope with half billion pages a month and so has a lot of systems that are not necessary for a small scale solution.

Hope that helps.

BarnatosGhost

Original Poster:

34,068 posts

282 months

Thursday 20th January 2011
quotequote all
Great, thanks very much for that.
I'm considering using php and filemaker to display through an iframe. Does that sound like a sensible course of action?


RacingPete

9,197 posts

233 months

Thursday 20th January 2011
quotequote all
PHP is good, I don't know FileMaker that well so can't comment on it.

Though if I was looking at off the shelf for ease and time I would probably look at plugins for Wordpress (http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/another-wordpress-classifieds-plugin/) or use proper CMS software like Drupal (though I am not sure it has a decent classified module yet)