List Over Multiple Pages - Alphabetical Order

Static HTML Pages - Listing Table in Alphabetical Order

[riospace]

I have a subject specific directory and I have all of the sites in the directory listed by popularity. My site has grown quite large and I want to add the option for the user to sort the listings in a category alphabetically.

My entire site is human edited, static html. I know how to set up a javascript to order a table, but each category is multi-pages. I was thinking that I could have a link for alphabetical order and this link would direct the user to a separate folder that would have new pages of the same content listed alphabetically. In doing so, I am worried about duplicate content.

Does anyone have any other ideas aside from creating a dynamic site?

[penders]

By the sounds of it, your directory (data) is quite literally begging to be put into a data-base! And for it to become a 'dynamic site'.

If you try to continue to manage it as a static site, particularly if you are going to try and manually sort it, the task is going to get more and more tedious and time consuming as the volume of data increases which will lend itself open to human error and like you say, duplicate content. And how useful is erroneous data?

It is possible to write scripts to parse your static data and to possibly sort it in other ways... but I kinda feel that if you're going to go to that much trouble, you may as well parse it straight into a database!

And once you have it database'd you should be set for the future... sorting, searching, whatever you like.

How big is your directory? If it isn't too much/involved, you could perhaps get away with JavaScript/PHP arrays - as editing a simple text file could be quicker in some cases.

[tedster]

Just to add, it is a good practice to keep dynamic "sort" urls out of the search engines and only let them index the default version. But what you've described -- static alphabetical drill-down browsing by title only -- does not sound to me like it would create duplicate content challenges.

[riospace]

The directory is not too big yet, but I do not feel confident in my abilities to convert the site to a dynamic one. I guess I need to get my feet wet. I hope I don't drown.