DirectoryPedia™ - The Directory Encyclopedia

Welcome to DirectoryPedia™ -- The Directory Encyclopedia

Our Mission:
Provide consumers with faster, easier access to the information, products and services they want.

We search the major search engines and remove the duplicates, the advertising sites, the pop-up ads, and anything that might harm your computer. Then we include all the related products and services in this easy-to-remember place where you spend less time searching, and more time finding what you want.

Directory News Links:
Teen Shot In Mount Auburn Apartment
8 Feb 2010 at 6:03pm
TV 1906 Highland Ave Cincinnati, OH 45219 513-763-5500 Driving Directions Breaking News Hotline 5...
Power Out In Norwood, Hyde Park, Oakley
8 Feb 2010 at 6:03pm
TV 1906 Highland Ave Cincinnati, OH 45219 513-763-5500 Driving Directions Breaking News Hotline 5...
Michael Jackson's Doctor Charged With His Death
8 Feb 2010 at 6:03pm
TV 1906 Highland Ave Cincinnati, OH 45219 513-763-5500 Driving Directions Breaking News Hotline 5...
Top Green Financial News Feeds at Investor Ideas: Renewable Energy...
18 Feb 2009 at 6:00am
Feb 18, 2009, Investorideas.com, one of the first financial and investing sites to cover renewabl...
Investing In Water Stocks - Climate Change and Water
16 Feb 2009 at 6:00am
February 16, 2009 - Investorideas.com and its Water-stocks.com portal update the current director...

Directory:
(Directory) File Systems:
In computing, a directory, catalog, folder or drawer is an entity in a file system, which contains a group of files and/or other directories. A typical file system may contain thousands (or even hundreds of thousands) of directories. Files are kept organized by storing related files in the same directory. A directory contained inside another directory is called a subdirectory of that directory. Together, the directories form a hierarchy, or tree structure

A computer's file system can be visualized as a file cabinet, where high-level directories are represented by the drawers and lower-level subdirectories may be represented as file folders within the drawers.

Historically, and even on some modern embedded devices, the filesystems either have no support for directories at all or only have a flat directory structure, meaning subdirectories are not allowed; there is only a group of top-level directories each containing files. The first popular fully general hierarchical filesystem was that of UNIX. This type of filesystem was an early research interest of Dennis Ritchie.

In modern times in Unix-like systems, especially Linux, directory structure is defined by the Filesystem Hierarchy Standard.

In many operating systems, programs have an associated current working directory in which they execute. Typically filenames accessed by the program are assumed to reside within this directory if the filenames are not specified with an explicit directory name.

Some operating systems restrict a user's access to only their home directory or project directory, thus isolating their activities from all other users.

The Folder Metaphor:
The name folder, presenting an analogy to the file folder used in offices, and used originally by Apple Lisa, is used in almost all modern operating systems' desktop environments. Folders are often depicted with icons which visually resemble physical file folders.

Strictly speaking, there is a difference between a directory which is a file system concept, and the graphical user interface metaphor that is used to represent it (a folder). For example, Microsoft Windows uses the concept of special folders to help present the contents of the computer to the user in a fairly consistent way that frees the user from having to deal with absolute directory paths, which can vary between versions of Windows, and between individual installations.

If you are referring to a container of documents, the term folder is more appropriate. If you are referring to the mechanism that tracks the document files, the term directory is the better choice.

(Directory) Databases:
Generally, a directory, as used in computing and telephony, refers to a repository or database of information which is heavily optimized for reading, under the assumption that data updates are very rare compared to data reads. Commonly, a directory supports search and browsing in addition to simple lookups.

A website which offer access to a categorized listing of other websites optimized for lookup, search, or browsing is a directory, a web directory. The Open Directory Project is an example of a web directory.

Directory technology is often used in white page applications and network information services.

WHOIS is a prominent example of directory service providing white pages.

The Domain Name System (DNS) is a prominent example of directory service providing a network information service. DNS is also an example of a distributed hierarchical directory service that only has simple lookup capabilities.

The X.500 and LDAP directory services are examples of general-purpose distributed hierarchical object-oriented directory technologies. Both offer complex searching and browsing capabilities and are used for white pages, network information services, public key infrastructure, and a wide range of other applications.

Directory Service:
In software engineering, a directory is similar to a dictionary; it enables the look up of a name and information associated with that name. As a word in a dictionary may have multiple definitions, in a directory, a name may be associated with multiple, different, pieces of information. Likewise, as a word may have different parts and different definitions, a name in a directory may have many different types of data. Based on this rudimentary explanation of a directory, a directory service is simply the software system that stores, organizes and provides access to information in a directory.

Directories may be very narrow in scope, supporting only a small set of node types and data types, or they may be very broad, supporting an arbitrary or extensible set of types. In a telephone directory, the nodes are names and the data items are telephone numbers. In the DNS the nodes are domain names or internet addresses. In a directory used by a network operating system, the nodes represent resources that are managed by the OS, including users, computers, printers and other shared resources. Many different directory services have been used since the advent of the Internet but this article focuses mainly on those that have descended from the X.500 directory service.

Telephone Directory:
A telephone directory (also called a telephone book and phone book) is a listing of telephone subscribers in a geographical area or subscribers to services provided by the organization that publishes the directory.

Web Directory:
A web directory or link directory is a directory on the World Wide Web. It specializes in linking to other web sites and categorizing those links.

A web directory is not a search engine and does not display lists of web pages based on keywords; instead, it lists web sites by category and subcategory. The categorization is usually based on the whole web site rather than one page or a set of keywords, and sites are often limited to inclusion in only a few categories. Web directories often allow site owners to directly submit their site for inclusion, and have editors review submissions for fitness.

RSS directories are similar to web directories, but contain collections of RSS feeds, instead of links to web sites.

Scope of Listing:
Most of the directories are very general in scope and list websites across a wide range of categories, regions and languages. But there are also some niche directories which focus on restricted regions, single languages, or specialist sectors. One type of niche directory with a large number of sites in existence, is the shopping directory for example. Shopping directories specialize in the listing of retail e-commerce sites.

Examples of well known, general, web directories are Yahoo! Directory and the Open Directory Project (ODP). ODP is significant due to its extensive categorization and large number of listings and its free availability for use by other directories and search engines.

However, a debate over the quality of directories and databases still continues, as search engines use ODP's content without real integration, and some experiment using clustering. There have been many attempts to make directory development easier, such as using automated submission of related links by script, or any number of available PHP portals and programs. Recently, social software techniques have spawned new efforts of categorization, with Amazon.com adding tagging to their product pages.

Directories have various features in listing, often depend upon the price paid for inclusion:
Free Submission – there is no charge for the review and listing of the site.
Reciprocal Link – a link back to the directory must be added somewhere on the submitted site in order to get listed in the directory.
Paid Submission – a one-time or recurring fee is charged for reviewing/listing the submitted link .
No Follow – there is a rel="nofollow" attribute associated with the link, meaning search engines will give no weight to the link.
Featured Listing – the link is given a premium position in a category (or multiple categories) or other sections of the directory, such as the homepage.
Bid for Position – where sites are ordered based on bids.
Affiliate Links – where the directory earns commission for referred customers from the listed websites.

Human-Edited Directories:
A human-edited directory is created and maintained by editors who add links based on the policies particular to that directory.

Human-edited directories are often targeted by SEOs on the basis that links from reputable sources will improve rankings in the major search engines. Some directories may prevent search engines from rating a displayed link by using redirects, nofollow attributes, or other techniques. Many human-edited directories, including the Open Directory Project and the World Wide Web Virtual Library, are edited by volunteers, who are often experts in particular categories. These directories are sometimes criticized due to long delays in approving submissions, or for rigid organizational structures and disputes among volunteer editors.

In response to these criticisms, some volunteer-edited directories have adopted wiki technology, to allow broader community participation in editing the directory (at the risk of introducing lower-quality, less objective entries).

Another direction taken by some web directories is the paid for inclusion model. This method enables the directory to offer timely inclusion for submissions and generally fewer listings as a result of the paid model. They often offer additional listing options to further enhance listings, including features listings and additional links to inner pages of the listed web site. These options typically have an additional fee associated, but offer significant help and visibility to sites and/or their inside pages.

Today submission of websites to web directories is considered as a common SEO (search engine optimization) technique to get vital back-links for the submitted web site. One distinctive feature of 'directory submission' is that it can not be fully automated like search engine submissions. Manual directory submission is a tedious and time consuming job and is often outsourced by the webmasters.

Bid for Position Directories:
Bid for Position directories or also known as bidding web directories, are paid-for-inclusion web directories where the listings of websites in the directory are ordered according to their bid amount. They are special in that the more a person pays, the higher up the list of websites in the directory they go. With the higher listing, the website becomes more visible and increases the chances that visitors who browse the directory will click on the listing. There are PHP scripts (free and paid versions) for the management of bid for position directories include phpLinkBid (paid), Link Bid Script (free) and a modified link bid version for phpLD (phpLinkDirectory).

If you have information or links that you would like included in DirectoryPedia™, please email us at: