How long does it take to know with ODP?

[Marcia]

I submitted a couple of sites last week and happened to catch an editor in the logs late yesterday. How long does it take to know?

[diddlydazz]

You have just asked my question for me :)

I had an editor in my logs 2 days ago and was wondering if there were any indicators as to how long before I know if it has been accepted or not.

by the way Happy New Year.

:)

Dazz

[Marcia]

You too Dazz, have a great year! Did they look at all the pages of the site?

[diddlydazz]

Yeah they went through most of them, I have looked in the category where they were from but not in there as yet. I have tried to get this site in before but no joy and I think I found the problem with it (they don't like links to pages that are being updated ) which is fair enough.
Hopefully I will have more joy this time round ( let's hope the editor is in the festive mood ! :):):) )

Dazz

[VJL]

You would have to look at the category page for all categories where it might have been listed, to see if a site has been listed. Sites show in the listings as soon as they are listed.

You can't find a listed site with the search box untill the search index is updated. I'm not sure how often that is. Might only be once a week or so.

If an editor stops by your site at regular intervals that might indicate the editor wants to list your site, but is seeing something that would be contrary to the ODP Guidelines and is stopping back to see if it has changed.

Dazz: You are partially correct, "Under Construction" is not a good phrase to have on a page. Editors do like pages that are current and kept up to date. "Page last updated 12 December, 1998" just might be telling an editor the content is not current.
VJL

[diddlydazz]

thanks for the input VJL, the page I am refering to is a hardware trouble shooter and I like to update it at least once a month to keep up with the latest hardware and problems ( making no reference to win XP :) )

when I am updating it I take the page away and put an intermediate page saying it is being updated.

By the way welcome to webmasterworld :)

This is a great place !

Dazz

[VJL]

Thanks for the welcome. :)

I guess the only thing I can say is why take the page away?

I’ve done that, I redid my index and several other pages, at the same time changed the directory structure on the host.
Not being the brightest bulb in the chandelier…
I managed to turn the page and my site into a real mess.
I’m still not sure if I’ve picked up all the pieces. :(

Why not make a mirror page and then rename it after it’s updated?

Let’s say you are redoing a page called techinfo.html, save a copy as techinfo-new.html and save a coy as techinfo-old.html Work on the techinfo-new.html and publish it to your site. When you’re done debugging it, delete the local copy of techinfo.html, rename techinfo-new.html to techinfo.html then publish it.

You may already do this, I don’t know of course. I don’t do raw HTML myself. I can handle a little ‘C’ and very little ASM but not much else. Being the cheap-ster that I am, I use Composer. For all I know some packages like Front Page may not let you do things this way, I dunno, never used it.

I guess I’m just saying, never put anything on your site that tells users that it’s broken or incomplete. There’s nothing wrong with saying something like “Thank you for visiting this website, if you encounter any broken links or other problems please email us at: [e-mail] “Just a suggestion.
VJL

[diddlydazz]

The thing is it's a set of interactive pages that asks the user questions and then delivers the solution so to rename all these pages would be more work than it's worth, the pages are only down for about 2 days normally but it was just bad luck that the odp editor arrived on the day it wasn't running :(

but hopefully this time it will be OK. :)

Thanks for the info as always and I hope you find webmasterworld as helpful and informative as I do.

Dazz

[Marcia]

Just to update, with one there's been no word and no sign. It's a pretty full category with no editor, but there are several editors in the category above it. It seems like a VERY active, busy group of categories involved.

With the other, what I saw in the logs was the editor go to the page submitted, which is a small sub-site of another "main" one, then go to the main index page. The main site is not quite in a completed state, so it should probably be polished off and submitted. It could belong in any of a few different categories, so it's kind of hard to decide with that one.

[scotty]

Just a slightly off-topic question - how do I know that an ODP editor has graced my site?

Originally I thought I'll just grep "dmoz" from the referrer column of the http logs, but it did not turn out to be the case. With two of the sites I manage on my own server (one personal and one non-commercial), the personal site got listed on DMOZ without leaving any trace in the referrer record! And the non-commericial regional site which I reckon is much better constructed, has never got listed. I was wondering whether the DMOZ editor has paid a visit...

Thank you guys!

[bird]

Most often I don't leave a recognizable trail when I review sites, because I view them by opening the link in a second browser window by drag n' drop. For some reason, this keeps Netscape from sending a referrer string along.

Not that I have likely reviewed your site, but that's how it happens... ;)