In-Link 2.0
http://www.in-link.net/
= interesting, promising
Software Tool
$ 195

This is the directory engine that powers content directories like NoodleLinks and which allows any content publisher to rapidly create and maintain a simple but effective Yahoo-like directory of content or resources.

As I have been using for almost two years the Hyperseek engine to develop and maintain a similar resource online, I am quite interested in finding solutions that are competitive and more cost-effective than the one I am presently utilizing.

Furthermore I am using Hyperseek as a hosted service and it costs me quite some money every month to maintain my resource online in this way. For example, Hyperseek is priced at $749.00 (compared to In-link's price tag of only $195). Furthermore, another competitor product on the market, Jackhammer is priced at $2,999.00. In-links claims on the other hand to provide pay-per-click functionality under $1,000.

In-links allows me instead to buy its web server database software for a relatively very low price, to set it up, configure it and stop paying my hefty monthly fee.

Among its key features I have noted the following:

a) In-link stores detailed information about all the links, categories and users in the database, including date, hits, votes, reviews, overall rating and up to five custom fields for every link, category and user. In-link allows to perform advanced search on all links and categories, set permissions for adding new links, add new links, suggest categories and rate and review the existing links. In-link displays top rated, new and most popular links, editor picks and maintains a count on all the categories and links and keeps permissions for every category.

b) In-link has built-in template editors that allow you to modify any visual element of the engine. In fact, In-link templates are quite flexible and you can create your own template files, have nested templates, declare your own tags, i.e. customize the output in any way or form. In-link themes support also Dreamweaver templates. In-link's templates even support PHP in them, along with JavaScript and any HTML tags.

c) In-link also supports language sets allowing you to modify and translate the system output on the fly. It is possible to download language sets from the In-link Web site or create your own. You can even change the browser language encoding and the date format for the entire system.

The entire system output is located in centralized language files that can be easily edited in any simple text editor.

In-link comes with a number of utilities for importing data from competing products. Unfortunately, at this time there is no built-in utility for importing Hyperseek data staff at In-links offered to provide me with custom data import for you.

They just requested to look at my database before providing a precise and final quote.

The people at In-links seem also to be highly responsive, courteous and proactive in finding solutions to their Clients. This is definitely a bonus to report about.

In their words "We have always had the primary initiative of good old-fashioned customer support service often forgotten in the high tech industry.

We provide 24/7/365 support through an online forum, e-mail and phone as well as through our state-of-the art support system" (http://www.in-link.net/support). Their highly visited and utilized forums testify fully to this. Please check:
http://support.intechnic.com/forum/

You can watch a working demo of In-links at:
http://demo.in-link.net/

Or better yet you can access a fully working Administrator Control panel at:
http://demo.in-link.net/admin/index.php? sid=752352391

In-links provides a downloadable trial version at:
http://www.in-link.net/download/

The company provides also an optional installation service to make sure you can set-up the software correctly on your web server. The cost of this option is USD $ 55.