VisioList Button Settings

Option: "Would you like to count pageiviews on your members sites?"

- This option should be carefully considered for users on shared web hosting servers. Each time a member gets a visitor your server will need to make several MySQL database queries, if a popular site joins (or you have a fairly large list) this could result in overloading of your server. If this feature is enabled the users stats page will show their total and unique pageivew count.

Backlink Options

Option: Offer a text link
This will provide your members with a simple text link to link back to your VisioList.

Option: Offer A Static Button Image
This will provide your members with a single image to link back to your site with. You can create any size image you like. Use the "options" link to set the absolute path to this image.

Option: Offer A Button Showing Members Current Rank
This will provide your members with an image showing your members current rank. With this option you must generate an image for each rank using photoshop or your favorite graphics software.

the first option field is where you set the default button, this will show for all member beyond the ones you have made buttons for. So if you make 5 buttons, the sites ranked 6 and lower will display the default button.

Once you have made these buttons you upload them to your /images/ folder (or you can set a different path of you choose in the second option field).

If you made 5 buttons (1.gif, 2.gif, 3.gif, 4.gif, 5.gif) then you would fill in the last option field "If Yes - Number of buttons you have made" with the number of buttons you have made. In this example it would be 5.

With the above configuration your member ranked #1 will now display the button 1.gif, the same goes for all ranks up until 5 (or the number of buttons you made). All members after that will show the default button.

Option: Offer A Dynamic Stats Button
When enabled this will allow your members to select a dynamic stats button from their user control panel. The dynamic stats button can show any statistics and ranking using PHP to build the image on the fly! This can be VERY server intensive. This button can be configured/styled using a PNG designed in your favorite editor and by editing the PHP code in settings_buttons.php

Google-Friendly Links
When Google and other search engines see links pointing to your topsite, they see in.php?u=1 as a different URL than in.php?u=2. Therefore, topsites lists traditionally do not get ranked as highly as they deserve.
Aardvark Topsites PHP 5 / VisioList introduced a feature called Google-friendly links. When this feature is enabled, your members will be given code that links directly to your topsites list. Instead of http://www.example.com/topsites/index.php?a=in&u=username, the links will look like http://www.example.com/topspites/. That way, your topsites list becomes a powerful search engine marketing tool because of all those links.
The problem with direct links is that, when someone clicks the link, the script cannot immediately know what the username of the site is. Normally, the username is passed to the script by a URL like in.php?u=username. When Google-friendly links are enabled, Visiolist will attempt to determine the username based on referer URL. In other words, if http://www.site1.com/ joins and puts the button on http://www.site1.com/home.html, the link will be counted fine. However, if http://www.site1.com/ puts their button on an external site (a hosted forum, for example), then their hits in will not be counted. Some overly-restrictive firewalls block referer URLs. The script will not be able to count hits in from people with these types of firewalls.

Hits in is the only statistic that is affected by Google-friendly links. Hits out and pageviews will still be counted normally.
The ultimate results of Google-friendly links are slightly depressed statistics for hits in and dramatically increased popularity in search engines.