AGD Tools and Scripts

[Guard Dog]

Hey everyone,

I wanted to get a roundtable discussion going on an upcoming section of AGD. The section I envision will be tools/scripts which are helpful to webmasters.

I haven't fully envisioned the idea yet, but I do have some tool ideas already. So, I would like to discuss 2 things

1. How would you envision a section for webmaster tools? What are some ideas for features and usefulness?

2. What tools would make sense (and you would likely use)?


My ideas are:

Webmaster Tools Section

• Allow webmasters to submit their own tools and scripts
• Allow webmasters to mark them as 'installed' and get notifications when those tools/scripts are updated
• Integrate with the forums (i.e., a custom forum section)
• possibly allow voting on the tool and it's usefulness

Tool Ideas

• Keyword Script (I have written already) - This is a simple script, actually. When a surfer comes through a search engine, the script will email me with the keywords and the SE. It is very rudimentary at this point. I would envision the script being modified to allow storing to MySQL and generating a weekly email.
• Tag Cloud Script (I have partially written) - This would take the keyword idea a bit further and allow a tag cloud (of search keywords) to be generated based upon a template. The tag cloud could be site-driven or page-driven and each keyword would point to the page that the user went to when typing that keyword into the Search engine.

I have a lot more ideas, but I don't want some of them written before I write them

What do YOU think?

[bonusjackpot]

This is a great idea, I will put my thinking cap on.

[Engineer]

Good idea for a discussion. At the moment, I can't think of anything to add, but I'll put my thinking cap on, like bonusjackpot.



I hope that we don't think too hard... Otherwise, this could happen:



Or possibly:



LOL -- seriously though, I'll think about this and try to come up with some specific ideas.

[Bonus Paradise]

Ahh, this sounds great
I am always in need of some help and tips
you guys are great,

Sorry , I wont be any help with such things, but I hope I may read here and take some of your scrips and tips here and then?

oh btw, compliment on the affiliate payments calendar
this is so handy
I love to come here and see fast who did pay.
Great , thanks for that

[bc518]

I'd like to try all small scripts.
I got one great small script from Simon!. Thank you Simon!

[Engineer]

Coming back to this....

I can't think of much to add here; sorry.

I guess a place to share scripts sounds good. I could paste in little snippets of code if people wonder about a specific thing related to PHP or MySQL (if I know the answer), but I probably would not be interested in developing a full-fledged "package" that other webmasters could install and use. But that's just me...

About the keyword script specifically -- I probably wouldn't use this. Google Analytics does a good job here, and it filters out fake keyword referrals (AW stats does not). Again, this is just me... certainly other webmasters might find it useful to receive an email whenever someone comes to their site via a search engine.