[OT?] Adding reward system to ranking site

[Sunchaser]

This post is not strictly related to a game but, as it is related to a ranking scripts for PBBGs i will post, it, if it's not pertinent i demand excuse and the moderators can lock or delete the topic.

I would like to extend the script i am using with rewards for the voting members. I imagine that a member who registers his game at my site will have to specify a URL that i have to call if the vote is confirmed and pass the parameters sent with the vote.

Then i will have to provide a voting button similar to this: http://www.example.com/vote.php?gameid=57&token=123456

When i register the vote successfully, i will send back the rewarding vote to the specified URL.
In your opinion, which security checks i should  implement?

Assumptions:
- unique vote check it's already in place, if a member with the same IP address clicks the button a gazillion times, one only vote is counted for the day

I would add:

- admin approval of the back link

The game owner should save the keys he is sending to me and when i call his script he should check if for that token he already gave the reward.

Am i missing something, or anyone has suggestions?

Thanks

[Chris]

In my opinion a waste of time. My game is on like 50 toplists (not counting the toplists it was on in the past but went down or removed for other reasons). There is no way I would ever include any custom coding for a single toplist (registering and putting votelinks is enough of a chore, and I have trouble keeping up with this alone...)

My suggestion, make a script to auto register instead. Harvest data from the net or other toplists, add these games to the toplist. When administrator will see your toplist in his logs he will surely add the link and votebutton and everything (I got onto several of my best toplists this way). Sure, most won't, but the admins of the biggest games will.

[Sunchaser]

Mmh, yes there are many toplists, i know... However a webcrawler like you are saying must be complex to do.
Anyway thanks for the opinion, I can collect the games data in an excel sheet and then upload it directly in the tables.

I guess the difficult think is getting a nice pagerank with SEO.

Seems to me strange that the biggest game admins joins, they should have already contacts from advertising...

I thought topsites would be necessary most to the indie developers/owners.

[Chris]

Harvesters are simple, first fopen() then find staring and ending limiter, next expode().

There is no surprise, big games are big because their owners use all opportunities to promote they can I also think that the biggest ones have separate staff to make all this registration (their entries appear to quickly for owner's only job).

For SEO affiliate with other toplists (or simply register there). Or just wait (2-3 months) if you have any PR2-3 links backs.

ToS:

3. Registered Games may not contain spam or excessive profanity, and may not focus on any illegal or offensive topics including violence, hate, hacking, warez, porn, drugs, gambling, weapons, alcohol or tobacco.

Good. Fair and square, means no strange things will appear on that one one day. I wish more toplists did it...

6. Games must retain a certain level of activity. Games that have had no new votes or no administrator login in the past 90 days will be considered abandoned and may be removed.

Bad. What do you need it for? Games with no votes will fall to the bottom or to the next page. It only scares off people like me who loathe to register at another toplist. Or maybe the toplist sux so much that it will never reach more than 10 games so there will never be a point in sending votes?

[Sunchaser]

Harvesters are simple, first fopen() then find staring and ending limiter, next expode().

Do you know where can i find an example?

There is no surprise, big games are big because their owners use all opportunities to promote they can  I also think that the biggest ones have separate staff to make all this registration (their entries appear to quickly for owner's only job).

Problem is how to contact them; by email seems not to work; but i can investigate the harvester and mass-registering them, but the 1st thing is to get a nice pagerank... maybe i need to insert my link in some public directories with high PR?

For SEO affiliate with other toplists (or simply register there). Or just wait (2-3 months) if you have any PR2-3 links backs.

Mhh, good idea but i think other toplists already established will not affiliate easily with mine. I'll try though.

About ToS: Thanks, you're right, I will remove point 6. Thank you for your feedback.

[Helderic]

Pretty good tutorial, don't know if it'll be much help just don't get into trouble using it
http://madppc.com/category/noobie-scraping-guide/

[Sunchaser]

Nice, Chris was right, it was an easy thing to do. However scraping a topsites doesn't work, the creator has done a nice job

Scraping my italian site for urls i got these for the games:

Code: [Select]

http://www.topwebgames.it/index.php?a=out&u=stfc&go=1
the real URLs are saved in the db

Anyway i don't want to go in trouble, but i learned something useful

Thanks

[Mufasa]

personally, I welcome all sites that do a post-back to tell me the vote was legit

[Sunchaser]

I agree, but topsites don't have a reward, post/back system.

You can modify the script and put a gateway with captcha to fight iframe cheating (i did), and the vote that are counted are unique on the couple http_referrer/ip address, i can confirm these checks are coded well. Nothing can be done for proxy cheating, afaik (you can make some cross-check on page visits and votes received, though).

When the site(s) (I have another one for italian games) will start (hopefully) to get decent visits, i will start to add a reward system. i already thought about it should be not too hard.

btw, if you want to add your site you're most welcome, as i posted in another thread you can get a 125x125 pixel on the right side for two months free.

website is new but if you search the keywords top pbbg in google i think is in 4th position now (?)