Building a Site Submission Program, Continued

Things to Keep in Mind

This program immediately tries to submit a URL to several search engines. It will also try to determine whether the submission was successful. Because of this, you will have to wait while the program generates its output. The site running the program has to access each of the search engines' submission pages, and some of the search engines try to access the submitted URL before determining if the submission was successful. How quickly the program runs depends on how quickly these various connections are made.

If you don't want to keep your users waiting, you can split the program into two parts. The first part can take in the user's URL and email address, quickly show them a response page saying the site will be submitted, and place the URL in a queue of URLs to be submitted. The second part of the program can look through the queue of URLs and submit it on a daily (or even hourly) basis, and notify an administrator if there are any errors encountered in submitting the sites. If there are errors, the administrator will need to submit the site by hand to those search engines that did not accept it, or notify the user that a particular submission didn't work.

If you copy this program and add more search engines, be sure to find out those search engines' policies on automated submissions. Irrational as it may seem, you may find that some sites will refuse to take such automated submissions.

Edward Piou is an Anchor producer and runs ep Productions, a Washington, D.C.-based development company.

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