December 04, 2003
Link Stealin' - Goog Style!
Rather than trying to update a list of links to weblogs and such, I figured I'd just write a little app that steals them all from Full As a Goog. Check it out on the right under "Links" on the main index page -- (may take a little to load). I used the new tree component from Flash MX 2004 Professional and wrote a little script to parse the .opml files that Full As a Goog has listed in their "blogs on tap" page.
Pretty sweet, huh? Now I don't have to worry about maintaining my own link collection. In the future I should probably put the listing of all of the links in a hidden div in my html code so google will increase everyone's page ranking....
I don't think I can share the .fla because of the EULA and it having the tree component included. I can, however, share the script if you like. I hope I don't suck up too much of the goog's bandwidth though... hehe. Oh great googmaster, let me know if this becomes a problem! :-)
Comments
Nice concept, and a great idea!
I haven't seen the script, but I can only assume from your blog post that you're making a call to FullAsAGoog everytime YOUR index page is created. As you know, eats the Goog's bandwidth and slows down getting your page.
Why not run an independant script to retrieve the Goog data and store it locally on your server, perhaps as XML. Then serve it to your index page from there. Run the script as a cron job (Linux, etc) to run daily/weekly or use whatever the current Windows equivalent method is to have timed execution of a program. Then to save your own bandwidth, you can cache the XML locally on the Flash client, with a mechanism to check for updates from your server cache. Makes your implementation much more complex, but probably worth it. I haven't quite mastered all the pieces of this puzzle yet myself.....
I think it would work well in your case since the list of feeds in the Goog doesn't change frequently, so there's no need to request it frequently. The fact your taking the Goog's full listing implies you don't care what's in your link list, so being slightly out of date is not a huge issue.
Hope you don't mind the critique and feedback.
Posted by: Adam at December 4, 2003 10:23 PM
I onced did steal all of fullasagoog's flash list and rolled out as a blog roll but it turned out to dragged my site down so much that I stopped, http://www.brajeshwar.com/archives/000126.php
Posted by: Brajeshwar at December 4, 2003 10:35 PM
Looks great! I will have to learn more about this Flash development caper ;) The OPML only change whenever I add a new blog -- so it might be worthwhile hosting the feed on your server and updating intermittently.
Posted by: Geoff Bowers at December 5, 2003 02:45 AM
Good call guys - I think I'll suck down the .opml files every week to my site, and then load the links from my site instead.
I just threw this together quick last night. I had the idea during the day, and I wanted to get something up and running. I'll tinker with it some more tonight after I get home from work. :-)
@ Adam - My index page doesn't slow down because the links are loaded from Flash. You'll see my site show up without delay, but the links will be delayed in displaying until the .opml is loaded and parsed.
Thanks for the feedback!
Posted by: darron at December 5, 2003 07:56 AM
Good catch. You're page would still load at the same rate. I meant to say "seeing the results in your page", since retrieving a static XML from your page should be faster than retrieving it from the Goog, depending on geographic location/server load/network condition/etc.
Posted by: Adam at December 5, 2003 10:25 AM
Yeah it's very nice and lovely. the list section i mean. I was wondering if you could still share the scripts. i would love to implement it on my website. I have actally had the idea for this for a while now but couldn't get it up and runnunig. But hey, you have! On my knees, Scripts Please?
Maxizion
Posted by: Maxizion at April 23, 2004 11:59 AM