First of all I love your site and try to come here once/week at the least. Thank you for taking the time to eliminate dead links, I also have been frustrated with that.

However your script sections I feel have a very BIG weakness. I agree with the "how are your script sections organized" post and think you would do us a great service to organize your scripts by the "Updated:" date.

I don't (and I don't think I am alone) want to go to a section of your scripts like this for example:

http://www.hotscripts.com/PHP/Scripts_and_Programs/Image_Galleries/index.html

To find a cool Image Gallery script and have to page through 22+ pages and pages of scripts that have scripts that were last "updated:" in 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003 on the same pages. I want the latest and greatest first: sponsors, then latest "Updated:" and then if I have time I will check the last pages back to the year 2000 and beyond to find an oldy but goody.

If it hasn't been updated recently chances are: the link to the site is bad, there is no support or user base still using it, and the owner of the script has likely moved on to other things and will not appreciate being bothered about it.

Please, Please, Please consider doing this - it would be a BIG timesaver and make your script section MUCH more useful - I don't see why this would matter to the script owners because if it does all they need to do is update their listings/code.

Thanks for listening,


Teletubby

Hello:

Fantastic post Teletybby (by the way, are you Tinky Winky, Dipsy, La-la or Poe?)

Let us chew on this thought. I do agree somewhat with the logic in that the longer (days since) the update of the script/application, the higher the probability that the script is out of date.

However, as you can imagine, there are exeptions to this logic (probably a fair number of them).....

Whichever one is definitely straight - that's me. :D

I guess my main point is that it does not seem as if the scripts are sorted in ANY way (besides sponsors being at the top): I see updated 2003 on the last page and the first page and the middle pages, and on 22 pages that gets a little tedious trying to find the latest/greatest.

And I am such a dumb teletubby that I can't comprehend an exception to the by "Updated:" rule - since a script author (if they really cared/supported their script) could easily log in to hotscripts and update the description or a line of code and wouldn't that change the updated date?

Here's hoping,


Teletubby

I also agree that no ability sort search results or just browsing category by date, name, rating, downloads and so on is very big minus.
Hope one day you guys could impliment such a feature ;)
even without it this site is the best of its kind! great work!

hey ive never really thought about this but yeah true it would make it alot easier to find newer scripts cause the newer they are most likelly it will fill the needs of what the user is looking for.

sorting by rating would be great to add because newer users can learn from other people which are the good scripts and which are the bad.

that's in addition to the sort by last updated which would be great for those of us that like to download and test every new script we can lay our hands on :D

relledge,

Was there any decision on this?

Is this a possibility or no, or what is the status?

Don't wanna be a pest just axiously hoping.

Thanks,


Teletubby:)

We are sorting by our sorting formula, explained in another thread. We cannot sort by modified date, as then it would be a game of modifying daily to get to the top. Our formula is in place to reward people's listings for numerous factors... from positive reviews to number of hits etc.

What I will look into doing is subtracting points from scripts which haven't been updated for a lengthy period of time... this will help force them towards the end.

Relledge,

"What I will look into doing is subtracting points from scripts which haven't been updated for a lengthy period of time... this will help force them towards the end."

Thank you very much, going through 20+ pages of mostly older scripts is very very tedious and that should help a bit.

Thanks,


Teletubby

An option to sort by latest date. Like aspin.

Having scanning through the site once a week or two, isn't it tiring to go through pages of repeated pages you just recently seen?

If there's a drop down opt, I can choose to view by date descending, that'll be really useful for users.

I thought I can set that in members' preference or something, that's why I join, but I must have remembered wrongly.

Beginning tomorrow, we are giving demerits to scripts which have not been updated within the last 180 days. For each day beyond 180 since the last update, a point is taken away from their point total, which is utilized to determine sort order.

Regarding multiple sort methods, this is currently not possible with out system, and we have mixed feelings about developing such a system. Our mixed feelings come due to the fact that thousands of our listing partners have worked hard over the years to drive their link to the top of the category, and we do not want to all of the sudden make all of their hard work for nothing.

Also, to do a system as you speak of, we would have to make HotScripts.com be completely dynamic instead of serving static pages whenever possible. This would cause several issues:

1) link URLS would change, thus hurting google and other search engine listings.

2) The volume of traffic HotScripts.com receives means that a dynamic site may need to be spread out across multiple servers.

3) Much of the code we utilize for various functions of HotScripts.com would need to be rewritten.

We are continually modifying our sorting algorithim to incorporate your ideas and to help make the best matches be the ones at the front. We will continue to listen to your feedback and figure ways to improve.

Excellent Ideas, esp:

"What I will look into doing is subtracting points from scripts which haven't been updated for a lengthy period of time... this will help force them towards the end."

and

"Beginning tomorrow, we are giving demerits to scripts which have not been updated within the last 180 days. For each day beyond 180 since the last update, a point is taken away from their point total, which is utilized to determine sort order."