Noble Directory Owners Interviews

After finishing quite a few directory owners interviews, i thought i should change the trend and go interviewing with some directory Mod creators and writers. Starting with this, i thought off to do it with Anthony, who is known as LeopardAt1 in webmaster forums, and mainly find him at digitalpoint forums. He has a few Mods under his name such as pagerank report of your detail and category pages, a category dump generator, phpLD payment system. It was nice interviewing him.

Here goes the interview -

1. Can you let us know something about your personal background?

Sure. I’m about to turn 22 and my real name is Anthony. Most people know me only by Leopard. Before being interested in developing websites, I was one of those AOL nerds who used Visual Basic to build silly little programs such as punters and bots. Although it was very basic programming, it laid the foundation for me to learn other languages. I started working with databases at around age 16 and since then, been doing mostly freelance work.

2. From when are you into the Web directory world?

Although I didn’t own a directory nor purchased phpLD until April, my interest in the web directory world was in mid February of this year. At first, I had no intention of getting myself into it until I realized it was really exciting.

3. Which directory scripts do you work on specifically?

I work with phpLD primarily due to its large user base established.

4. Is it the inspiration of any other MOD Writer or did you start writing MODS by your own interest?

Even though the only real experience of me working with PHP was developing osCommerce sites, I looked at phpLD and realized I can do a lot with it. At first, I had no interest in building mods until I spent more time on DP. As each day passed, I was able to think of more and more ideas that people may find useful. With each idea came more interest in trying to develop them.

5. What web directories do you own at present?

As of now I only own RipenApples.com and have lots of plans for it. I realized the only way I can make it the way I envision it, is to completely redo the frontend and make it all PERL.

6. Can you list out your work done on MODS in several directory scripts?

Some mods I built so far include RSS news feeds combined with DHTML tabs, a pagerank report of your detail and category pages, a category dump generator, a category meta description generator, and a phpLD Payment system.

7. Do you offer any services of paid MOD installations anywhere?

As of now I only offer installation services to my phpLD Payment System. The system allows no unpaid submissions going inside your phpLD admin, deep links with individual prices, coupons, disabling top level categories, multiple submissions, multiple categories, and more.

8. In the web world, apart from web directories, do you offer or do anything else?

As of now, not really. Before web directories I freelanced a lot building unique custom web applications that included finance tools, e-commerce tools, online football squares, march madness pool manager, and a sports betting simulator.

9. Do you make a new MOD on the request of a directory owner, or by just your own plan?

Both. It depends on the request and if I’m capable or not.

10. Have you felt any difficulty in writing a MOD anytime? Share any experiences!

The mods I built so far were pretty much in my reach. The most difficult one I had to do was the page rank report for detail and category pages. That was when I had to resort to the php Smarty manual and to get my hands dirty with PHP.

11. How can the web directory owners get in contact with you?

I’m on Yahoo! Instant Messenger (username is LeopardAT1) and view my e-mails (anthony[at]dirtracker.com) daily.

12. If you would like to share anything else with us, or other directory owners, please do so!

Try to be unique as much as possible! Work hard and focus on content, which will better the directory industry overall. Also, if you plan on starting a general directory, expect to be patient. Established directories may not come in months, but years.

Thanks for the Interview Anthony! We were glad you took out time and gave the interview.

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