InvestorLinks.com is a well established & reputed Financial Directory.
Our team was chosen for the big task of converting this ASP / MS-Access based application to open source technologies so that it can benefit from all the goodness that open source offers and be ready for the future.
We started by analyzing the database structure and implemented some important changes in Database structure to include the new features such as Payment plans & subscription management.
We then migrated most of the data by writing custom scripts to MySQL and then developed the website using PHP and used Smarty for templates.
Smartly helped us in keeping the code & presentation in separate files, so that Programmers and Designers can work on the site collaboratively to launch on the aggressive timelines shared by client team.
Following are the main features of the project:
- Custom developed Content Management System for Managing Pages, Articles & Newsletters
- Business Categories Manager - For add/editing/deleting Business categories from Admin area
- Business Listing Manager - For reviewing, approving & rejecting new business listing submissions received on the website
- Payment Plan Manager - For defining various payment packages for users to advertise on the website. It features Free, Paid listings with different prices for Top level category pages, sub category pages and sub sub category pages
- Payment Transaction Manager - For reviewing details of payments received on the website with all the details about the buyer. We used Paypal for payment integration on the website for accepting payments.
- User Manager - Allows admin to manage users, block / delete a user, block an IP or IP range with other usual editing of user profile information
- Master manager - There were several other master tables used on the website for Country, State, City & other Location data, User Profile Categories, Message board categories and lot more
- RSS Parser - For parsing news items from popular news websites
- Business Link Validator / checker - We have written several utility functions needed for Business Directory websites to find out expired / non working links and automatically un-publish those to maintain good quality of the directory
There are several other enhancements implemented on the newer version of the website Search engine friendly URLs, Per page & Per category meta tags, Message boards, Stock Charts & Indices & a link bookmarking tool.
Picked by Barron's as one of the best financial websites on the Internet, we are a financial resource website offering the most comprehensive financial directory on the Internet, with links and descriptions to over 12,000 financial websites! Free portfolio tracker, e-mailed news alerts, message boards, stock quotes and indices.