I have had the Article Exchange “free” article directory script installed in two places for most of the year. During that time the script has crashed a couple of times. One of these is in a sub-domain, so it was not a big problem. The other is in the root directory of a site, so if someone tries to visit the site by the front door they can’t get in. Most of my traffic comes to this site through the back door and it is still open.
There is a new version of the script that has just been released. There is not an updater with the new version. You must reinstall the script on your space. The installation is fairly quick and painless aside from needing to reenter a few things that should have been picked up from the existing installation. I do think that the new script will probably be more reliable.
The earlier problem was probably bandwidth related. The developer of the script had originally set the script up to pull the articles off of his server. Very little was stored on the user’s server. This meant that his server was providing bandwidth for every article that was served. The new script stores copies of the articles on the user’s server. The developer will have the initial hit of serving the files all at once for each install of the script, but then his bandwidth usage should stabilize at a much lower level.
This is a very slick piece of work. The carrot held out to induce you to host his script is that you will have a site with a great deal of content. He provides three locations for you to place banners or text ads. He also has an affiliate program in whiich he allows you to participate. There are a couple of things that he neglects to mention in his sales letter, though.
There are three text links at the top of his nav column. One of the three ends up being an affiliate link. From the wording of the text this is probably the least likely of the three to be followed, but there is a chance. The next section of the nav column has about twenty of his affiliate links as does the footer section of the page. Then there is the category list for the article directory. Following that is a gaudy banner that does report your affiliate link and finally the space for your tower or wide tower ad unit. You do get one prime ad space at the top of the article list.
The coding of the page, both html and css is not the best. I did not check the new css file but the original took a good deal of adjustment to get things to display properly. My css file works fine with the new script, so I wonder if the current css file is any better than the original. The html uses empty divs for spacing and a table for the main content area. In order to see the coding of the page I needed to use a page source view in my browser. The original files are all encrypted. On the surface this is to protect the IP rights. Underneath, it prevents a user from removing his affiliate links.
I suspect that would not be much of a problem as most of the installations that I have seen change nothing on the site. Some do not even take advantage of the opportunity to place their own ads in the available slots. I don’t think many even realize that they are doing more for him than he is doing for them.
There are extensive instructions and videos on how to promote your article site. Of course, you are really promoting for the developer as much as for yourself, so it is in his best interest for you to know how to promote your site.
One of the bullet points in the presentation of why you would want to put up one of his article directory sites is that you can submit your articles on your site. They will then be distributed throughout the network of sites. So, not only do you get an article directory, you also get an article distribution service – all for “free”.
I wrote one article and submitted it through my installation. When I checked the article had been added to the end of the category under which I had submitted the article. Most article directories list the most recent articles first. Often you may be on the main front page for only a few minutes and on the category front page for a few hours to a few days depending on the category. Adding new articles to the end of the list gets you no exposure.
The features on the submission page were also a bit lacking. There is no provision that I could find to edit your article. Neither is there a preview feature. The instructions also left something to be desired. I ended up with a broken link in my resource box because I guessed wrong on what was required, and had no way to fix the link. I don’t recall that there was a spell checker available for the submitted article. I don’t recall that there was an approval process for the articles. If that is the case expect that many of the articles will be of low quality.
After installing the new script I looked things over on my server. There are a large quantity of articles in one sub-directory. Another sub-directory has author bio pages. My name was not included even though I had submitted an article and probably filled out a bio page. I downloaded a file from a third directory at random. When I looked at the file in my text editor I found that it was encrypted. Next trip up to the server I will download one from the apparent article sub-directory and one from the author bio sub-directory to see if they are also encrypted.
There was one other way in which the actuality did not live up to the promise on the sales page. This may not be entirely the fault of the developer but it is the case none the less. One of the bullet points in the sales letter stated that if you dedicated a domain to the article script your domain would be listed in their directory of article sites. They send out a list of the sites every so often. The ones that I checked recently did not list my article directory site. I had emailed the url when I put up the site and I saw from analytics that they had checked the installation. After their server problems they did say to submit an article to insure that things were working properly. I did not do that and probably they are now generating the list from the article submissions rather than the email notification that I was asked to send. The ones on the list are probably the ones that are actively helping him promote himself.
My general conclusion about the Article Exchange Script are more negative than positive. Do I really want to promote him so much and me so little? I put the script up on the sub-domain space to check it out. I doubt that I will bother to reinstall it in the top level domain space. I can not recommend this script. It will populate a site with articles – and the developers affiliate links and commercial messages. There is limited chance of seeing any traffic, and the page rank of these sites is unlikely to grow so the link juice may not be so sweet.
I had a site on the domain and made it a menu item with the article directory script. I can just delete the script and rename the old index page and be back where I was before I installed the script on the site. I may just do that.