Shopping Directories

Shopping for the Cheapest Deals on the Web

Shopping on the Web has become easier to do over the past years. As more online stores open up every week, competition gets fierce. This causes merchants to resort to more competitive pricing. Whatever product you are looking for, there is usually hundreds to thousands of options of where to buy online. The great number of shoppers online has also spurred something called shopping directories, which let you search through different stores to find the product you need without having to visit multiple stores. While shopping online, you can also read multiple unbiased reviews from multiple consumers who have bought and used the products.

Convienence and Availability

Every week, a bunch of new online stores open. This makes shopping online easier than ever. The Internet has become a virtually endless resource for shoppers to find exactly what they need conveniently in the comfort of their own homes. More and more shoppers are deciding to buy online as opposed to going to the store. Many find this more convienent than having to drive to a store. It is also easier to browse different products between online stores for the best prices. Finding the product you're looking for requires almost no effort. Sometimes the product finds you, through advertisements.

Cheaper Prices

Every week, fierce competitors lower prices on products, or resort to other tactics like promoting and marketing, and a wide range of other strategies to keep customers coming to their store. This makes it better for you, the shopper. Shoppers are also more likely to find better deals at online stores because they do not have to worry about having a physical shop and all the costs that come with it. This helps give online stores the ability to offer better prices yet still keep a reasonable profit margin.

Shopping Directories make Online Shopping even more Efficient

Shopping directories have become a popular resource, as they let shoppers browse through multiple store products all from one site. This cuts down on even more time spent shopping through various stores by letting shoppers 1) search through multiple stores for an item and 2) search for multiple types of items from multiple stores. This makes online shopping much more efficient whether you are looking for only 1 type of item or multiple items from different categories. This is an advantage to the shoppers and online stores because it centralizes the process of shopping to make it easier for shoppers to find sellers that meet their needs, as well as helps sellers reach buyers outside of their site.

Find out more about a product before you decide to buy

There is just a massive resource of reviews for all types of products online. You can read multiple reviews from other consumers who have bought a product to help aide you in deciding which product, brand, and/or variation of the product you wish to buy. Some online stores even give shoppers the ability to write reviews about a product after they have bought it to help inform future shoppers. This can help immensely when trying to choose the perfect product to fit your needs, as you see what other people have to say about their experiences with a product, as well as quality and value.

Online Shopping has been a growing trend for years

Over the past years, internet shopping has been growing at an incredible rate. We always hear about how much Internet Retail sales figures are multiplying every year. That is because online shopping has so many advantages and great deals that more and more people realize it and opt to buy certain products online where they see fit. With more online stores opening every week, more shopppers deciding to make purchases online, the competitive pricing between online stores, and vast resources to help people better shop like Shopping Directories and product reviews, its no wonder more and more people are making more purchases online.

Interactive Digital Directories

Why digital directories?

Directories aim to provide a source of comprehensive information for businesses, public services and organisations. Digital directories are an ideal solution for those organisations that require members listings and information to remain current.

Through the integration of rich digital media, directories provide the opportunity to relay a powerful message and ensure that your readers can receive and send information to network and interact.

Digital directories also allow you to increase your readership with effortless global distribution and reach new readers with a 50% lower cost per acquisition compared to your printed directories. Through the use of live email and web addresses enables direct instant access to each company listed within the directory.

Why EBS digital media?

• You maintain full control with in-house production, using our simple online, on-demand publishing application. Or alternatively, the EBS Bureau Service will do it for you!
• The EBS Digital Rights Management system allows for the protection of subscription to directories. Upload subscription lists and administer access rules.
• Using an extract from the directory, you can build an invaluable opt-in email database of interested customers, with our email collection facility.
• Fully search engine optimized for greater exposure. e.g. Customers on Google can search and find specific items within the directory.
• All-inclusive price per page, including hosting and live web and email address links made live at no extra cost.
• Unique razor sharp vector text and infinite zoom allows easy reading of smaller fonts and an accessible text-only version is available, that integrates with screen readers for the blind and partially sighted.
• Full statistics package to measure effectiveness, such as pages viewed and links clicked.
• Contextual archive search which allows users to search past and present directories, with all search results highlighted for easy location.

Blog directory

A blog directory is a taxonomic hierarchical listing of blogs. There are many blog directories in existence, and often the blog directory is associated with a social networking or community site. Often blogs will include themselves in a blog directory when they are starting out to try to gain traffic: either via search engine rankings or traffic from the blog directory.

Types of blog directories

Blog directories can be classified in many different ways, including: cost of adding a blog and method of maintaining

The cost of adding falls into three categories:

1. Paid submission directories
2. Free submission directories with link back requirements
3. Free submission directories with no link back requirements
4. Select inclusion directories that do not accept submissions

The method of editing or maintaining a directory has the following categories:

1. No editing performed (theoretically possible)
2. Staff edited
3. Community edited

An additional element that differentiates one blog directory from another is the presence of or lack of social networking and community elements (such as discussion forums, friend lists, etc.)

Article Directory

Thoughts on Article Directory Oddities


If you publish articles to promote your site, you have probably noticed the directories evolve. Some things are just odd, but others are not good developments.

Thoughts on Article Directory Oddities

Every major article directory seems to have a life of its own. They can be an excellent platform for publishing articles to promote your site and then make some change or take some action that makes you groan. Here are some oddities you may or may not know on the directories.

Article City is one of the older directories on the web. It is an old school article submission site that really produces links. There are, however, a couple of odd things about it. First, the categories you can submit under are very limited, which can be frustrating. More bizarre, however, is the fact the entire site comes to a halt during the summer. From roughly June through August, nobody appears to be working. No new articles are published on the site. Then in September, the site comes alive again. Odd, but true.

Ezine Articles is undisputedly the biggest article directory on the web. It is rated as the 552nd most popular site on the web by Alexa. Alexa is admittedly an inaccurate tool, but it is still an impressive ranking. Ezine Articles had a tremendous format, but suddenly decided to change it in early 2006. It added all types of features. Some I like such as the multiple author byline possibilities, but others are a waste. Overall, I can’t decide if I like it or not, but one thing that definitely is a negative is the internal submission area is slow and sometimes freezes up. Still, this is the number one directory if you are going to use articles to pump your site. In fact, you can find this article there. Hopefully!

Article Alley – may you rest in peace. Once upon a time, this was my favorite article directory. It was simple, clean and generated links like mad. The site hasn’t really changed much, but it must have been sold to a new owner. The site is extremely slow when it comes to loading pages and often times out. Submitted articles are more often than not disregarded and just sit in limbo. You might think my articles just stink, but I am actually one of the top authors on the site by views and number of articles published. I no longer submit to Article Alley, a sad day indeed.

Another site that has fallen apart is Isnare. In truth, the site is fine and runs just the way it used to. The issues has to do with profit. The owners of Isnare figured out they could make more money offering an article submission service than they could with the directory site. They now seem to spend most of their time on that. I have a sneaking suspicion there is one poor soul sitting their approving articles. Since they get thousands a day, not much gets published. Currently, they seem to be two to three months behind. Much like Article Alley, I no longer submit to Isnare.

At the end of the day, everyone has a favorite article submission site. As long as they are producing for you, who can complain? Still, I will miss Article Alley.

Designing Your Website's Directory

Designing Your Website's Directory Structure

Any kid, and their grandmother too, can make a webpage. There are many "wysiwyg" webpage design applications that let you create a webpage as easy as typing text. But only a few people can create a WEBSITE. The stumbling block is knowing how to link webpages together to form a website. I have seen many websites that consist of a single webpage - about a mile long!

The first problem is that websites are contained in virtual directories. You know that your webpages can be found at yourdomain.com, but the actual path to yourdomain.com on the web server may be known only by the system administrator. And the system administrator can move your website to a different folder, or even a different computer, without changing its virtual address.

The second problem is that most people don't know how to write a relative link. Relative links have the advantage that you don't need to know the path to the webpage that you want to link to, you only need to know where it is "relative" to the webpage containing the link.

Designing Your Directory Structure

The first step to implementing a website is to design the directory structure. Let's design a directory structure for a simple download website. The website consists primarily of articles and digital material that visitors can download. You could just dump everything at the top level of the website. Good luck maintaining that website!

To keep the files organized, you need to create sub-directories (folders) on the website. Even though the website consists only of articles and digital downloads, you need five sub-directories, as described below.

• articles
• downloads
• general
• common
• cgi-bin

You understand what the "articles" and "downloads" sub-directories are for, but what are the other three sub-directories for? It's standard practice to provide certain features on your website, as listed below.

• About
• Contact
• FAQ
• Privacy Policy
• Search
• Sitemap
• User Agreement

Each of these features requires a webpage. Instead of dumping the webpages at the top level of the website, or mixing them in with articles or downloads, let's put them together in a folder named "general" (I'm sure you can think of a better name).

All of your webpages use certain things in common, for example, your logo graphic. If your web server provides SSI (Server Side Includes) all your webpages can share a common header file and a common footer file. You might also define all your website's styles in a common style sheet. Let's put all of these files in a folder named "common".

Your contact page might use an email form. If your server provides server-side scripts, you would place the email form script in a folder named "cgi-bin". Cgi-bin stands for "Common Gateway Interface - Binary". Few people use CGI any more, and those that do don't use binary files, but the folder name has stuck as a traditional place to store scripts. Almost all websites come with a preconfigured cgi-bin folder, and the website may be configured so that the cgi-bin folder is the only folder with rights to run scripts.

I would also recommend that you create certain sub-directories for some of the above mentioned directories. Most web pages contain images. You could dump all the images in the same folder with the webpages, but when you get more than about 50 files in a folder, it becomes difficult to maintain. You should create an "images" sub-directory in the articles, downloads, and general directories. The downloads directory should also have a "files" sub-directory to store the downloads.

This arangement of directories and sub-directories will provide good file organization for the example website. Understanding my reasoning for this directory structure should help you to design a directory structure for the website you have in mind.

Default Page Configuration

Every website has at least one default webpage configured (also called the "home" page). The default webpage is the webpage that is returned when the user enters or clicks on a link containing only the domain name, without a specific file name. On a Unix or Linux web server, the default webpage will usually be "index.htm". On a Windows web server (IIS), the default page will usually be "default.asp".

The website administrator, or if your webhost provides the required "control panel" feature, you can actually configure any page to be the default page. If your web server has more than one default page configured, I would recommend removing all but the default page that you intend to use.

Now, let's assume that all of your webpages need to link to an image file named "logo.gif" stored in the "common" folder. The relative link on your default webpage would be as shown below.

"common/logo.gif"

The website file manager interprets this as "look in the folder named common for the file named logo.gif".

However, the link on any webpage contained in one of the sub-directories would be as shown below.

"../common/logo.gif"

The website file manager interprets this as "go up one level, then look down in the folder named common for the file named logo.gif".

This difference in the link may not be a problem unless you use SSI or ASP (Active Server Pages) to build your webpages from a common header file and a common footer file. Then you need a different link in the common file depending upon whether the page linked to the common file is the default webpage (where you would use common/filename) or a webpage contained in a sub-directory (where you would use ../common/filename). There are several ways to solve this problem.

1. If your website has a server-side scripting engine like ASP or PHP and you know how to program, you could implement code that selects the proper link.

2. You could use the complete path, including the domain name, on all pages. This will cause problems if you ever have to move your website to a different web host (Until all the dns servers across the planet have been updated).

3. You could put your home page in a sub-directory, for example "common", and make your default page into a re-direct to your home page. Then you would use "../common/filename" for all links. The following meta tag, placed the head section of your default webpage, will immediately redirect the users browser to your real home page.

meta http-equiv="refresh" content="0,url= "http://yourdomain.com/common/homepage.htm"

In this article, I showed you how to design a directory structure for your website and how to create relative links to link all your webpages together to form a website. Website visitors don't like to do a lot of scrolling, so try to keep your webpages to only two or three screens high. Please, no more websites that consist of only one mile long webpage!

Permission is granted for the below article to forward, reprint, distribute, use for ezine, newsletter, website, offer as free bonus or part of a product for sale as long as no changes are made and the byline, copyright, and the resource box below is included.

ZIP Code Directory

Avoid wasted postage and ensure timely receipt of all your outbound mail and overnight deliveries.

The National Information Data Center (NIDC) has published the National ZIP Code® Directory for over 30 years. Now, it’s the only hard-copy ZIP Code® directory available. Using data licensed directly from the USPS, our two-volume set features the most complete, up-to-date ZIP information available. You can look up U.S. streets in large cities and post offices by ZIP Code®, 3-Digit Service Area, and even national area code listings for the special price of $79.95/set.

The 2-volume 2009 ZIP Code® Directory set includes:

* More than 45,000 updated ZIP Codes®, covering 125 million addresses, licensed directly from the United States Postal Service.

* Easy-to-reference ZIP Code® look-up. You can search by city, state, and street to avoid additional
mail and overnight charges.

* Completely updated U.S. Telephone Listing. You will save time and money on directory assistance fees with this easy-to-use guide.

Now includes newly updated easy to read individual 3-Digit U.S State Maps. The 8.5 x 11 map located after the each state information page shows every 3-digit ZIP Code® in the area.

Just Added! Official US Census Bureau State and County Demographic and Economic Profiles. Now you can get quick, easy access to facts about people, business, and geography for the states that you do business in and how it compares to the overall US population.

Directory Assistance

The PresbyKirk Library belongs to the age of instant communications and cyberspace. To some it seemed like the telephone was challenge enough. However, even then everyone maintained his or her own personal book of address and phone numbers in addition to the one issued by the telephone company. Well, modern communications have not entirely solved that one for us. Now we need to remember not only addresses and telephone numbers, but cell phone numbers, e-mail addresses and the URL for our favourite web sites as well. Admittedly, the various technology devices in our world help us to store and retrieve all this information. But if your life is like most other people's you spend a considerable amount of time just hunting for all this various address information.

The PresbyKirk Library proposes to help you with at least some parts of this task. We have gathered together a collection of Internet directories to help you locate telephone numbers, postal address information (including postal codes), and those ever changing e-mail addresses. We even try to indicate the strengths and limitations of the various directories listed. While we cannot guarantee you success in your searches we can at least offer some tools that may help.

Internet Directories
Canada 411. A directory of Canadian telephone numbers.
Who Where? A good place to locate telephone, e-mail & address information.
Reverse Phone Directory. Locate a name and address from a telephone number.
Telephone Directories on the Web. Access to various international telephone directories.
Switchboard The Internet Directory.
Canada Post Information about postal codes and current postal rates too.

PresbyKirk's own "Yellow Pages for Christian Organizations"

In addition to the above collection of Internet Directories we have compiled for you our own select list of web site addresses (URLs) for a number of local and national Christian organizations. We call this our "Yellow Pages for Christian Organizations" and although it has never been published anywhere but here we have designed a neat cover for our Directory. We have tried whenever possible to provide the address for the Canadian web site of the organization concerned.

Alpha Canada
Anglican Book Centre, Toronto
Anglican Journal
APCE Association of Presbyterian Church Educators
The Back to God Hour A ministry of the Christian Reformed Church
Camp Kintail Camp operated by the Synod of Southwestern Ontario of the PCC
Campus Crusade For Christ
Canadian Association for Pastoral Practice and Education (CAPPE)
Canadian Bible Society
Canadian Council of Churches
Canadian Foodgrains Bank
Canadian Scientific and Christian Affiliation
Canadian Evangelical Theological Association
Canadian Theological Society
Child Evangelism Fellowship of Canada
Chosen People Ministries
Compassion Society A program in Burlington, Ontario.
Christian Blind Mission International
Christian Children's Fund of Canada
Christian Copyright Licensing International
Christian Labour Association of Canada
Christian Week
Church Growth Resources, Inc.
Citizens for Public Justice
Crieff Hills Community (PCC conference facility)
The Elder's Institute A program of St. Andrew's Hall
Evangel Hall
Evangelical Fellowship of Canada
The Free Methodist Church in Canada
Galcom International
The Gideon Society
Habitat For Humanity
Institute for Christian Studies, Toronto
International Bible Society
Interserve Canada
Inter-Varsity Christian Fellowship of Canada
Jews for Jesus
John Milton Society for the Blind
Moveable Feast Resources Glen Soderholm's ministry to encourage vibrant worship.
Knox College, Toronto.
The Leprosy Mission Canada
Living Rock Ministries Hamilton, Ontario
McMaster Divinity College
Mennonite Central Committee
Mission Aviation Fellowship of Canada
Mothers Who Care
National Presbyterian Museum of the Presbyterian Church in Canada
Navigators of Canada
Ontario Pioneer Camp (IVCF)
Pioneer Clubs of Canada
Presbyterian College, Montreal
Prison Fellowship Canada
Project Ploughshares
Promise Keepers
Reachout Ministries Dr. Larry Brice
Redeemer University College, Hamilton, Ont.
The Reformed Theology Source
Regent College, Vancouver.
Renewal Fellowship Within the Presbyterian Church in Canada
St. Andrew's Hall, Vancouver, B.C.
The Scott Mission
Student Christian Movement Canada
Trinity Western University
Tyndale College and Seminary
The United Church Observer
Urbana Student Mission Convention (IVCF)
Vancouver School of Theology
Vision TV
Walk Thru the Bible Canada
Wesley Urban Ministries
Women's Inter-Church Council of Canada Sponsors of the World Day of Prayer
World Vision
Wycliffe Bible Translators

Directory Models

You will encounter three directory models:

• Free Inclusion- Here you submit your site and it is added to the directory, either automatically or manually.
• Paid Inclusion-Here you need to pay and then submit your site and it is added to the directory, either automatically or manually. Some directories (Yahoo in particular) don’t guarantee inclusion even though you have paid. Therefore always check the terms and conditions.
• Reciprocal Links- These directories will let you have a free listing but you must also link back to them.

Local Directories

I believe that these will eventually replace the local yellow pages that have ruled the telephone world over the last 20 years or so. There will however be many more directories , some will be stand alone and others will provided as part of local Portal sites.

These directories will become very important for local businesses as more and more people use the Internet for locating local businesses and services.

Niche Directories

These don’t exist in the offline world (at least not for the general public). They are organised around a theme (e.g. Golfing) rather than a place. They are particularly important for websites/businesses that have a wide geographical appeal but focus on an identifiable market niche.

Finding Directories

You can find directories by searching at Google/Yahoo but the search query tends to be a little on the complex side. Here is a search query for UK/Shropshire directories and the results.

+”shropshire” +”uk” +directory +search +(submit OR sponsor OR categories OR “add a site” OR “add URL” OR listing)

Hospitals Directory

earch through our database of worldwide hospitals (currently 14,000 entries). Search by combination of country, alphabetical letter or keyword.
Note: If your hospital is missing from our database, or if your hospital address or contact details have changed from those that we have listed

Our comprehensive hospitals directory, lets you find a hospital anywhere in the world, very quickly and easily.

We currently have in excess of 14,000 hospitals, making it one of the worlds largest and best places to find the hospital you are searching for.

To help you find the hospital you are looking for, you can refine your search by selecting the country in which the hospital is located. You can then search either by hospital name, city/town or state/county. These search facilities are particularly useful if you are not 100% sure of the hospital details you are searching for.

The hospital details displayed in the search results include:
- Hospital Name
- Hospital Address
- Hospital Telephone Number
- Website Address
- Email Address
- Description

French Directory

The Executive Directory (French: Directoire exécutif) was a body of 5 single-male Directors that held executive power in France following the Convention and preceding the Consulate. The period of this regime (November 2, 1795 until November 10, 1799) commonly known as the Directory (or Directoire) era, constitutes the second to last stage of the French Revolution.

The directory system of government was also used in several French-dominated regions of Italy; see Directory (political).

Constitution of Year III

Under the French Constitution of 1795, qualified property holders elected 750 legislators, who divided themselves into the Council of 500 and the Council of Ancients. The bicameral legislature had a term of three years, with one-third of the members renewed every year. The Ancients held a suspensory veto, but possessed no initiative in legislation.

The constitution specified the executive as consisting of five directors, chosen by the Ancients out of a list sent to them by the Five Hundred. One director faced retirement each year. Ministers for the various departments of State aided the directors. These ministers did not form a council or cabinet and had no general powers of government.

The system made provision for the stringent control of all local authorities by the central government. Since the new constitution sought to create a separation of powers, the directors had no voice in legislation or taxation, nor could directors or ministers sit in either house. The law guaranteed freedom of religion, freedom of the press, and freedom of labour, but forbade armed assemblies and even public meetings of political societies. Only individuals or public authorities could tender petitions.

From the beginning, however, circumstances restricted the free play of the constitution. The Convention had acquired so much unpopularity that, if its members had retired into private life, they would have courted danger and risked the undoing of their work. Therefore a decree required that two-thirds of the first legislature must come from among the members of the Convention.

When the constitution went before the primary assemblies, most electors held aloof, 1,050,000 voting for and only 5,000 voting against it. On 23 September it officially became law. Then all the parties which resented the limit upon freedom of election combined in Paris to rise in revolt. The government entrusted its defense to Barras, but on 13 Vendémiaire (5 October 1795) the young General Napoléon Bonaparte quelled ill-equipped and ill-led Parisian insurgents with a few thousand regular troops and well-placed artillery. Further resistance seemed impossible. The Convention dissolved itself on 26 October 1795.

After the selection of the Council of the Ancients by lot, it remained to name the directors. For its own security the Left resolved that all five must be old members of the Convention and regicides. The Ancients chose Rewbell, Barras, La Révellière Lépeaux, Carnot and Le Tourneur.

Rewbell was an able, although unscrupulous, man of action; Barras a dissolute and shameless adventurer; La Révellière Lépeaux, the chief of a new sect, the Theophilanthropists, was therefore a bitter foe to other religions, especially the Roman Catholic Church. Severe integrity and memorable public services raised Carnot far above his colleagues, but he was not a statesman and was hampered by his past. Le Tourneur, a harmless insignificant person, admired and followed Carnot.

The division in the legislature was reproduced in the Directory. Rewbell, Barras and La Révellière Lépeaux had a full measure of the Jacobin spirit; Carnot and Le Tourneur favoured a more temperate policy.

Unpopularity of the Directory

With the establishment of the Directory, the Revolution might seem closed. The nation only desired rest and the healing of its many wounds. Those who wished to restore Louis XVIII of France and the Ancien Régime and those who would have renewed the Reign of Terror were insignificant in number. The possibility of foreign interference had vanished with the failure of the First Coalition. Nevertheless, the four years of the Directory were a time of chronic disquiet and the late atrocities had made goodwill between parties impossible. The same instinct of self-preservation which had led the members of the Convention to claim so large a part in the new legislature and the whole of the Directory impelled them to keep their predominance.

As the majority of Frenchmen wanted to be rid of them, they could achieve their purpose only by extraordinary means. They habitually disregarded the terms of the constitution, and, when the elections went against them, appealed to the sword. They resolved to prolong the war as the best expedient for prolonging their power. They were thus driven to rely upon the armies, which also desired war and were becoming less and less civic in temper.

Other reasons influenced them in this direction. The finances had been so thoroughly ruined that the government could not have met its expenses without the plunder and the tribute of foreign countries. If peace were made, the armies would return home and the directors would have to face the exasperation of the rank-and-file who had lost their livelihood, as well as the ambition of generals who could, in a moment, brush them aside. Barras and Rewbell were notoriously corrupt themselves and screened corruption in others. The patronage of the directors was ill-bestowed, and the general maladministration heightened their unpopularity.

The constitutional party in the legislature desired a toleration of the nonjuring clergy, the repeal of the laws against the relatives of the émigrés, and some merciful discrimination toward the émigrés themselves. The directors baffled all such endeavours. On the other hand, the socialist conspiracy of Babeuf was easily quelled. Little was done to improve the finances, and the assignats continued to fall in value.

Directory service

In software engineering, a directory is similar to a dictionary; it enables the look up of a name and information associated with that name. As a word in a dictionary may have multiple definitions, in a directory, a name may be associated with multiple, different, pieces of information. Likewise, as a word may have different parts and different definitions, a name in a directory may have many different types of data. Based on this rudimentary explanation of a directory, a directory service is simply the software system that stores, organizes and provides access to information in a directory.

Directories may be very narrow in scope, supporting only a small set of node types and data types, or they may be very broad, supporting an arbitrary or extensible set of types. In a telephone directory, the nodes are names and the data items are telephone numbers. In the DNS the nodes are domain names or internet addresses. In a directory used by a network operating system, the nodes represent resources that are managed by the OS, including users, computers, printers and other shared resources. Many different directory services have been used since the advent of the Internet but this article focuses mainly on those that have descended from the X.500 directory service.

Introduction

A simple directory service called a naming service maps the names of network resources to their respective network addresses. With the name service type of directory, a user doesn't have to remember the physical address of a network resource; providing a name will locate the resource. Each resource on the network is considered an object on the directory server. Information about a particular resource is stored as attributes of that object. Information within objects can be made secure so that only users with the available permissions are able to access it. More sophisticated directories are designed with namespaces as Subscribers, Services, Devices, Entitlements, Preferences, Content and so on. This design process is highly related to Identity management.

A directory service defines the namespace for the network. A namespace in this context is the term that is used to hold one or more objects as named entries. The directory design process normally has a set of rules that determine how network resources are named and identified. The rules specify that the names be unique and unambiguous. In X.500 (the directory service standards) and LDAP the name is called the distinguished name (DN) and is used to refer to a collection of attributes (relative distinguished names) which make up the name of a directory entry.

A directory service is a shared information infrastructure for locating, managing, administering, and organizing common items and network resources, which can include volumes, folders, files, printers, users, groups, devices, telephone numbers and other objects. A directory service is an important component of a NOS (Network Operating System). In the more complex cases a directory service is the central information repository for a Service Delivery Platform. For example, looking up "computers" using a directory service might yield a list of available computers and information for accessing them.

Replication and Distribution have very distinct meanings in the design and management of a directory service. The term replication is used to indicate that the same directory namespace (the same objects) are copied to another directory server for redundancy and throughput reasons. The replicated namespace is governed by the same authority. The term distribution is used to indicate that multiple directory servers, that hold different namespaces, are interconnected to form a distributed directory service. Each distinct namespace can be governed by different authorities.

Directory (databases)

Generally, a directory, as used in computing and telephony, refers to a repository or database of information which is heavily optimised for reading, under the assumption that data updates are very rare compared to data reads. Commonly, a directory supports search and browsing in addition to simple lookups.

A website which offer access to a categorized listing of other websites optimized for lookup, search, or browsing is a directory, a web directory. The Open Directory Project is an example of a web directory.

Directory technology is often used in white page applications and network information services.

WHOIS is a prominent example of directory service providing white pages.

The Domain Name System (DNS) is a prominent example of directory service providing a network information service. DNS is also an example of a distributed hierarchical directory service that only has simple lookup capabilities.

The X.500 and LDAP directory services are examples of general-purpose distributed hierarchical object-oriented directory technologies. Both offer complex searching and browsing capabilities and are used for white pages, network information services, public key infrastructure, and a wide range of other applications.

Web directory

A web directory or link directory is a directory on the World Wide Web. It specializes in linking to other web sites and categorizing those links.

A web directory is not a search engine, and does not display lists of web pages based on keywords, instead it lists web sites by category and subcategory. The categorization is usually based on the whole web site, rather than one page or a set of keywords, and sites are often limited to inclusion in only few categories. Web directories often allow site owners to directly submit their site for inclusion, and have editors review submissions for fitness.

RSS directories are similar to web directories, but contain collections of RSS feeds, instead of links to web sites.

Scope of listing

Most of directories are very general in scope and list websites across a wide range of categories, regions and languages. But there are also some niche directories which focus on restricted regions, single languages, or specialist sectors. One type of niche directory with a large number of sites in existence, is the shopping directory for example. Shopping directories specialize in the listing of retail e-commerce sites.

Examples of well known, general, web directories are Yahoo! Directory and the Open Directory Project (ODP). ODP is significant due to its extensive categorization and large number of listings and its free availability for use by other directories and search engines.[1]

However, a debate over the quality of directories and databases still continues, as search engines use ODP's content without real integration, and some experiment using clustering. There have been many attempts to make directory development easier, such as using automated submission of related links by script, or any number of available PHP portals and programs. Recently, social software techniques have spawned new efforts of categorization, with Amazon.com adding tagging to their product pages.

Directories have various features in listing, often depend upon the price paid for inclusion:

* Free submission – there is no charge for the review and listing of the site
* Reciprocal link – a link back to the directory must be added somewhere on the submitted site in order to get listed in the directory
* Paid submission – a one-time or recurring fee is charged for reviewing/listing the submitted link
* No follow – there is a rel="nofollow" attribute associated with the link, meaning search engines will give no weight to the link.
* Featured listing – the link is given a premium position in a category (or multiple categories) or other sections of the directory, such as the homepage
* Bid for position – where sites are ordered based on bids
* Affiliate links – where the directory earns commission for referred customers from the listed websites

Human-edited directories

A human-edited directory is created and maintained by editors who add links based on the policies particular to that directory.

Human-edited directories are often targeted by SEOs on the basis that links from reputable sources will improve rankings in the major search engines. Some directories may prevent search engines from rating a displayed link by using redirects, nofollow attributes, or other techniques.

Many human-edited directories, including the Open Directory Project and the World Wide Web Virtual Library, are edited by volunteers, who are often experts in particular categories. These directories are sometimes criticized due to long delays in approving submissions, or for rigid organizational structures and disputes among volunteer editors.

In response to these criticisms, some volunteer-edited directories have adopted wiki technology, to allow broader community participation in editing the directory (at the risk of introducing lower-quality, less objective entries).

Another direction taken by some web directories is the paid for inclusion model. This method enables the directory to offer timely inclusion for submissions and generally fewer listings as a result of the paid model. They often offer additional listing options to further enhance listings, including features listings and additional links to inner pages of the listed web site. These options typically have an additional fee associated, but offer significant help and visibility to sites and/or their inside pages.

Today submission of websites to web directories is considered as a common SEO (search engine optimization) technique to get vital back-links for the submitted web site. One distinctive feature of 'directory submission' is that it can not be fully automated like search engine submissions. Manual directory submission is a tedious and time consuming job and is often outsourced by the webmasters.


Bid for Position directories

Bid for Position directories or also known as bidding web directories, are paid-for-inclusion web directories where the listings of websites in the directory are ordered according to their bid amount. They are special in that the more a person pays, the higher up the list of websites in the directory they go. With the higher listing, the website becomes more visible and increases the chances that visitors who browse the directory will click on the listing. There are PHP scripts (free and paid versions) for the management of bid for position directories include phpLinkBid (paid), Link Bid Script (free) and a modified link bid version for phpLD (phpLinkDirectory).

Telephone directory

A telephone directory (also called a telephone book and phone book) is a listing of telephone subscribers in a geographical area or subscribers to services provided by the organization that publishes the directory.

Content

Subscriber names are generally listed in alphabetical order, together with their postal or street address and telephone number. Every subscriber in the geographical coverage area is usually listed, but subscribers may request the exclusion of their number from the directory, often for a fee. Their number is then said to be "unlisted" (American English), "ex-directory" (English) or "private" (Australia and New Zealand).

In the case of unlisted numbers, practices as to Caller-ID vary by jurisdiction. Sometimes, the Caller-ID on outbound calls is blank; in other jurisdictions, unlisted numbers still appear, unless the caller dials a blocking code; in still others, the customer may request automatic blocking from the telephone company's service representatives.

In some countries under current rules and practices, mobile phone and Voice over IP listings are not included in telephone directories. Efforts to create cellular directories have met stiff opposition from several fronts, including a significant percentage of subscribers who seek to avoid telemarketers.

In 1991, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled (in Feist v. Rural) that telephone companies do not have a copyright on telephone listings, because copyright protects creativity and not the mere labor of collecting existing information. Within the geographical reach of the Court, the Feist ruling has resulted in the availability of many innovative telephone directory services on CD-ROM and the World Wide Web.


Publication

Telephone directories can be published in hard copy or in electronic form. In the latter case, the directory can be provided as an online service through proprietary terminals or over the Internet, or on physical media such as CD-ROM.

In France, the Minitel videotex system originated as an attempt by France Télécom to rid itself of its paper publishing costs by forcing all telephone users to use Minitel terminals instead.

In Switzerland, most pay phones are now accompanied with electronic telephone directory terminals instead of paper directories, and phone users are charged for each search.


Types

A telephone directory may also be called a phone book or may be known by the color of the paper it is printed on.

* White pages generally indicates personal or alphabetic listings.
* Yellow pages, sometimes called the A2Z, generally indicates a business directory classified by business type or services provided, almost always with paid advertising.
* Grey pages, sometimes called a "reverse telephone directory".
* Other colors may have other meanings, depending on a country's customs. Information on government agencies is often printed on blue or green pages.


Ancillary content

A telephone directory may also provide instructions about how to use the telephone service in the local area, may give important numbers for emergency services, utilities, hospitals, doctors and organizations who can provide support in times of personal crisis. It may also have civil defense or emergency management information. There may be transit maps, postal code guides, or stadium seating charts, as well as advertising.


History

The first telephone directory, consisting of a single page, was issued on February 21, 1878. It covered 50 subscribers in New Haven, Connecticut. The Reuben H. Donnelly company asserts that it published the first classified directory, or yellow pages, for Chicago, Illinois, in 1886. The first British telephone directory was published in 1880.

Directory (file systems)

In computing, a directory, catalog, folder[1] or drawer[2] is an entity in a file system which contains a group of files and/or other directories. A typical file system may contain thousands (or even hundreds of thousands) of directories. Files are kept organized by storing related files in the same directory. A directory contained inside another directory is called a subdirectory of that directory. Together, the directories form a hierarchy, or tree structure.

Overview

A computer's file system can be visualized as a file cabinet, where high-level directories are represented by the drawers and lower-level subdirectories may be represented as file folders within the drawers.

Historically, and even on some modern embedded devices, the filesystems either have no support for directories at all or only have a flat directory structure, meaning subdirectories are not allowed; there is only a group of top-level directories each containing files. The first popular fully general hierarchical filesystem was that of UNIX. This type of filesystem was an early research interest of Dennis Ritchie.

In modern times in Unix-like systems, especially Linux, directory structure is defined by the Filesystem Hierarchy Standard.

In many operating systems, programs have an associated current working directory in which they execute. Typically filenames accessed by the program are assumed to reside within this directory if the filenames are not specified with an explicit directory name.

Some operating systems restrict a user's access to only their home directory or project directory, thus isolating their activities from all other users.

On Unix, directories are regarded as a type of file.[3]


The folder metaphor

The name folder, presenting an analogy to the file folder used in offices, and used originally by Apple Lisa[4], is used in almost all modern operating systems' desktop environments. Folders are often depicted with icons which visually resemble physical file folders.

Strictly speaking, there is a difference between a directory which is a file system concept, and the graphical user interface metaphor that is used to represent it (a folder). For example, Microsoft Windows uses the concept of special folders to help present the contents of the computer to the user in a fairly consistent way that frees the user from having to deal with absolute directory paths, which can vary between versions of Windows, and between individual installations.

Cell Phone Directories

Number directories, recording of the numbers and identity of callers, and recording missed calls so return calls can later be mad are also cell phone functions. PhoneFusion offers the latest technology to let anyone to unify home, office, cell, fax, and broadband VoIP numbers into one common phone number. Even though it is now possible to keep your cell phone number no matter what carrier you are with people are still changing their cell phone numbers to get a local phone number.

Personal Information, including: full name, mailing address, home, cell and work phone numbers, e-mail address, Social Security number, country of citizenship (most federal jobs require United States citizenship), veterans" preference, highest federal civilian grade held (give job series and dates held) and a professional summary written in the third person. Sure cell phone number lookups are fine and dandy, but what about unlisted, unpublished phone numbers. The VoIP telephone numbers can also be configured to simultaneously report a call to the IP Phone, a landline number, and a cell phone before diverting the call to voice mail.

If your children are old enough to memorize phone numbers, go through the basic family information such as the home phone number, your cell phone number and your address. The hassle with that option: You have to inform your contacts of your new cell phone number each time since you won't have your foreign cell phone numbers until you buy them. But my number 1 pick not only allows you to do unlimited reverse searches on Cell Phone Numbers, but allows you unrestricted access to over 1 billion records.

Also, be leery of directory sites without a toll free numbers or only a cell phone number given, as this could be a suspicious con artist. Personal cell phone users have always been able to add their numbers to the National Do Not Call Registry, it is the same Registry consumers use to register their land lines, by calling toll-free 1-888-382-1222 from the telephone number they wish to register. Simply leave the following information with them: Your full name (often babysitters don’t know this), where you will be and the phone number there, your cell phone or pager number, emergency phone numbers fire, police, hospital, etc.

Search Engines & Web Directories

The so called search box should be given a correct name “search engine” which can be further divided into keyword search engines and web directories. Web surfers can make use these two types of searching methods alternatively for better search results.

Search engines accumulated their data volume through spiders or robots that work among billions of websites and collect them back to the databases and index them into good order for future query by web surfers. Complicated algorithm will perform calculations and pick up right results according to keywords provided by web surfers.

There are virtually countless websites for spiders to crawl. How spiders crawl these sites? They start crawling those sites that attract bigger volume, coming to the end through sophisticated internal links. And that is the reason why website should always be linked to high traffic site for optimum market exposure.

Search engine crawlers will crawl web pages periodically for updated contents. The newly added contents should be available to web surfers at the next database updates which normally take few days up to few months.

At the moment, there are two types of submissions are available: paid inclusion and pay for placement. Through paid inclusions, websites can be indexed into database efficiently including your newly added contents. However, your paid inclusion does not guarantee your rankings in search engines. The best advice would be having a perfectly optimized web page ready before any paid procedures.

Pay for placement will give you immediate ranking for any targeted keywords. The higher you bid the better your ranking will be. And pay per click system will let advertisers have more say as to how their advertising budget will be corrected allocated. Normally, these search engines have many affiliates to cover more advertising areas.

Unlike Search Engines send out spiders to crawl websites automatically, the web directories accumulate their database manually by human editors. The most important web directory is the Open Directory Project (www.dmoz.org) that compiles databases manually and indexed websites of extreme high quality and unique contents.

To submit urls to web directories, you must first make sure if the site you are going to submit has been indexed already. You can check up this by entering your website url in the search box. Then choose the category that best correspond to your products and services.

After you get the proper category, submit your site by clicking the button of suggest a site or suggest url and follow the instructions. In the mean time, correct titles, descriptions, keyword meta etc should be well written. Promotional adjectives such the best and the most should be avoided.

Following strictly the rules listed would be our heart and soul suggestion to get your site listed successfully.

Website Submission to Directories

Online directories are locations where people go to find websites, the same way they do with search engines. However, there are considerable differences between the two. In order to be successful at increasing website traffic, it is crucial for people to understand these differences.

Whereas search engines usually accept almost any site that is submitted to them without looking at its quality, directories typically only accept sites that offer quality content. Since humans review all websites submitted to directories, low quality sites rarely get accepted.

Therefore, it makes sense to make sure that your website is ready before submitting it to any directories. Remember that directories list sites, not pages. In most circumstances, you should only submit the front page of your website to directories.

WHICH DIRECTORIES SHOULD YOU SUBMIT TO?

You should always begin your website promotion agenda by listing your website in the most popular online directories. These directories can significantly affect your search engine ranking so it is a wise move to list your website here before you submit to the search engines.

Directories can also send significant traffic to your website. Make sure you are listed in all of the major directories before you try any other promotional methods. In this way, you will have laid the groundwork for a successful marketing campaign.

Submitting your website to the directories is an easy process, requiring very little effort. However, making certain that the site will be accepted is the difficult part.

Since directories are far more selective than search engines and require much more preparation, you must become familiar with their policies before you submit your website. If you do not follow their instructions carefully, your website will be rejected.

If you are unsure about the appropriateness or quality of your website, research web page design articles to see what works and what does not. The primary goal of a webmaster should always be to have unique, high-quality content and lots of it.

OPEN DIRECTORY PROJECT: The best directory to start with is the Open Directory Project. Make sure you read their instructions carefully before you submit your website. The editors usually review sites quickly and will not reject them unless there is a good reason for doing so.

The Open Directory Project is free of charge, making it a perfect place to start. Once you are successful at listing your website on the Open Directory Project, you should move on to the number two directory.

YAHOO: Try to get your website listed in the Yahoo directory. Commercial websites are charged a fee but it is worth the price. Non-commercial websites are free. Again, make sure you read their instructions and guidelines carefully before you attempt to list your site.

LOOKSMART: The third biggest directory is Looksmart. A good listing in it can send a lot of visitors your way, but it is expensive. Looksmart does not draw as many visitors as Yahoo or the Open Directory Project. However, MSN, Altavista and Dogpile all use Looksmart's data in their search results, making it attractive to a lot of people.

SUBMISSION PROCESS:

Now you know where you should submit but how do you get started? It is quite simple. The first thing to do is to carefully read the rules and instructions on how to submit. They are usually displayed when you are beginning the submission process. Read them over a couple of times and follow them to the letter.

Most directories consist of various categories and subcategories. Each category consists of sites related to the category’s name (e.g. the Business category will only have sites relevant to business). You need to find the category (or more often, subcategory) that most closely fits the subject matter of your site.

You can accomplish this by browsing around the directory or by doing a search on the keyword or keywords that are most relevant to your website. There may be several categories that fit your website and you will have to choose the one that most closely describes it. Make sure you submit your website to the most accurate category for your site since submissions done to the wrong categories are usually thrown out.

All directories will ask for the title and description of the website you are submitting. Give careful thought to your choice. A good title can significantly boost the amount of traffic you receive. A bad title can work against you and decrease the amount of traffic you obtain from the directory.

Your title should be brief and include your most important keyword and start with a letter that is close to the beginning of the alphabet. Many directories list websites in alphabetical order and getting listed near the top can boost your traffic.

Since the title has to be the official title of the site and it must be used on your pages, you might be required to change the name of your site. The title must sound like it just happens to start with a letter near the beginning of the alphabet or it will get edited. Do not use hyperbole (best, unbelievable, etc.) or all capital letters.

As with your title, do not stuff your description with cheap filler words (greatest, cheapest, fantastic, etc.) Never use ALL CAPITAL LETTERS. Write a short (20-25 words) description that exactly describes your site and includes one or two of your best keywords. Your description should flow smoothly. If the editor thinks your description is just a list of keywords, he/she will reject it. Try to make it sound like an objective review.

After you have entered all the information, check and re-check for any possible typos or spelling errors. Be very careful typing in your URL as a typo in it would result in your site never getting reviewed. When you are ready, hit the submit button.

You will be notified by email if your website if accepted but not, as a rule, if it is rejected. Therefore, it is difficult to know whether your site has been reviewed and rejected or if it has not yet been reviewed. Give them enough time to process your submission and wait a few weeks before you resubmit your site.

Internet Directories

To reach an improved website visibility through search engines rankings has develop into a crucial requirement in today’s virtual world.

The growing use of directories resembling to www.leadinglinksdirectory.com serves the necessity of each and every business on the way to an upsurge in its net traffic.

This will be done by way of increasing its internet visibility on the web.

The most favorable means to create that is probably to get listed in a link directory. The formula of this manner of a net directory saves you the time spending task of searching into every single company goal website.

This look for might turn out to be a time taking exertion since there is an ever increasing figure of websites that make finding this information intentionally complicated as so to attempt and reject spam and also the mechanized submissions.

Obviously the directories have to be search engine welcoming and to maintain a good page rank, and so causing the act of directory submission to become an useful and an essential instrument intended for online marketing.

Via doing it correctly you can reach a senior mark In search engines results and have the advantage of receiving your website indexed and obviously obtain a click through internet traffic to your internet site.

There seem to exist a rising discussion taking place on the net whether directories are worth submitting to. There are those who would sa that it’s a time waste submitting your website that also an immense amount of directories are insignificant, those persons of course put their trust at search engine rankings at the net, however a lot of the webmasters do not succeed on the way to recognize the difference between the search engines to the directories.

This failure to tell apart the two would possibly lead the road to a fall down within the efficiency of the use of internet directories in order to increase the sites page rank and then to produce internet traffic, toward the site.

The robotic "spiders" applied through the search engines whose lone target is to blindly save information from within the internet pages consequently as to add them on their database.That is why search engines also use human editors in order to review web pages prior to when they are added in to their directories.

That is one of the reasons why it’s so important that you cautiously decide on the directories you want.

We at www.leadinglinksdirectory.com believe the means of human editor will be able to form a dissimilarity and furthermore that an incorrectly designed website that is not professionally designed could be noticed through search engines as an unhelpful internet site. This is the main reason we particularly make use of chosen exclusive human edited links and furthermore preserve regular maintenance with in our internet site including its numerous categories.

When you present your website onto a web directory if it’s a free of charge directory or a paid web directory, it is necessary to inspect it at times and so to see that errors ( if there might be any) are corrected, and then that any of the data displayed on the site is updated every time. This way you will surely recognize you chose the utterly best web site for you.

To cut a long story short there are some people who might claim that the way of using directories are just a few websites containing categories, only a gathering collection of links collected from across the internet.

Nonetheless they in fact are a way used for web surfers in order to effortlessly find the links they were looking for, with the help of pre defined categories, such as Alternative Medicine and also Sports and Fitness, each one of them containing exact data and info with reference to just those subjects, dropping the need to spend valuable time examining the internet for it, and naturally the use of the sub-categories makes the work of "fishing" for information and data still easier.

Nevertheless for you it’s a very simple tool to move up your website’s popularity at the search engines rankings.

Upon choosing the internet directory fitting you, a general one or a specific one that straightforwardly portrays your internet site, inside the web directory you can choose the appropriate category or maybe sub category as so to display your website.

Previous to submitting your web site to an internet directory might require a small amount of work, but it will bring you the search engine rankings that your website should have!

Business Directories

The Place To List Your Local Small Business When Looking For Local Customers

One of the oldest and most effective ways to market yourself online is through local small business directory listings. Small business Internet marketing requires starting with a listing of your small business in the major general directories then listing them in niche and industry-specific directories appropriate to your small business. It is a time consuming process to list your small business in the right directories, but a necessary one to ensure good rankings for your website.

The most essential directory for your small business to be listed in is DMOZ, also called the Open Directory Project. All the major search engines, and most of the minor ones, rely on DMOZ, located at www.dmoz.org, for information on websites. Google gets information on every website it crawls from DMOZ.

You should also list your small business in Google Local and Yahoo Local. All you need to do to get listed with Google is to go to Google, click on the Local link and find the "add your business link." For Yahoo, go to Yahoo, click on "Directory," then click on "Submit Your Site" at the bottom of the page.

You can find other directories online by using Google or Yahoo. Type in "directory of directories" and you'll get a list of small business directories, both paid and free, listed by state, industry, niche, and other categorizations. I recommend that you list in every directory that applies to your business. Here is a short list of local small business directory opportunities to help you attract local customers for your business:

http://www.dmoz.org
http://dir.yahoo.com
http://www.joeant.com
http://www.jayde.com
http://www.avivadirectory.com
http://www.goguides.com
http://www.botw.org

Some directories, like the Yahoo directory, charge, but it is well worth what you pay to be listed. Once you are included in Yahoo's small business directory, you can bet your website will be indexed in the search engine as well.

There are three primary considerations for your small business when listing in directories online:

The directory's PageRank

The directory's age

Is your small business category available?

PageRank is important for SEO purposes. Internet marketing pros all recommend getting inbound links from websites with high PR. A website with a PR higher than yours will benefit you with valuable inbound links that will give you a boost in the search engines as well. The age of the directory makes it more valuable because you know that if the directory has been around for more than two years then it will likely be around next year. You can get information on PageRank and the age of various directories at http://www.seocompany.ca/directory/web-directories.html.

Don't waste your time trying to get listed in a directory that doesn't offer a category you'll fit into. Be sure to browse the categories at any small business directories you consider before you list your business.

Two great sources for finding web directories for your small business Internet marketing efforts are www.dir-search.com and www.best-web-directories.com. The Best Web Directories website is perhaps the most comprehensive website for finding business directories online. If you want to find local customers through small business directories then I recommend these two resources for finding the best places online that list small business directories for your Internet marketing efforts.

One thing you'll need to keep in mind – all directories are different. Nevertheless, you should write your business directory listing before you submit to any directories. Your local small business directory listing shouldn't be too long, but it should include all the pertinent information: Your business name, your name, address, phone number, website address, e-mail address, and a short description of your business. In your business directory listing, be sure to use the best keyword two or three times to make your small business listing optimized for the search engines.

To find industry-specific or niche directories, go to DMOZ or one of the other general directories and search for your industry by keyword. Then do a keyword search at Google and Yahoo along with the keyword "directory." This should return a good listing of directories for your industry or niche.

One other source for listing your local small business is the local chamber of commerce's website. When you join your local chamber, they should list your website on theirs for free. The traffic you can get from this one source can be well worth joining the local chamber, and almost all of the traffic will be local customers looking for your type of business. The Yellow Pages online and www.merchantcircle.com are two other sources to consider for local small business Internet marketing. More and more people are looking online for small businesses to do business with and relying less on print publications like the Yellow Pages. That's just one more reason to look for local small business directories to be listed in.