Turbo-Charging Robosoft with DynamicPAD (Part 1)

In order to make this a bit easier on myself and get things done faster, I’m going to skip ahead to some of the more advanced stuff with Robosoft and DynamicPAD. Later on I’ll come back to some of the basics. If this stuff is too hairy, come back to it later once I’ve written the basics down here for you. (Should take a couple weeks.)

To really get maximum bang out of Robosoft, you need to submit different sets of PAD info to different sites. This allows you to optimize your off-site SEO for different keywords, phrases, and with completely different text that will all point to the same place, i.e. your software.

However, there’s a very big problem that you need to overcome: Robosoft is not setup to let you do this very easily for DynamicPAD. It uses a drill-down method with popup inputs that make it too slow to practically do. Here’s the DynamicPAD input UI in Robosoft:

DynamicPAD

Click the ellipsis (…) to display the DynamicPAD settings window:

DynamicPAD Settings

That is where you enter the DynamicPAD server URL and the login and password that you setup in the DynamicPAD “dp_conf.php.inc” file. e.g.:

define( "Login", "somelogin" );
define( "Password", "somepassword" );

The place where you enter your DynamicPAD info is under the “Edit dynamic data” button. Click that to see this:

DynamicPAD Data EditorSo far so good… Now… Enter some data…

DynamicPAD Data Entry Open

Now the problem becomes apparent. For every single custom entry, you need to click that “Click to add a new value…” link. Worse, once you do that, you must fill out something like this:

DynamicPAD Data Entry Char 2000 Main

Which isn’t too bad until you realize that you have to specify the site and see this:

DynamicPAD Data Entry Site Selector

That list has around 1250 sites in it right now, but it varies and can have more. I don’t know about you, but I can’t stand sifting through long lists. It’s mind-numbingly slow and painful to do.

So, to use DynamicPAD you need to do go through that for each entry.

Scared yet? If not, let me scare the living b’jeezus out of you. (Put on your adult diapers if you don’t want to clean up a mess…)

There are about 1250 sites.

You want to customize at least 14 fields.

Customizing 1 field requires about 12 user actions.

1250 sites x 14 fields x 12 actions = 210,000

Now, if you can perform 1 user action per second (this is unrealistically fast because you need to focus, copy, paste, scroll, click, etc.), then that’s 210,000 seconds, or 3500 minutes, or 58 hours, or 2.4 days of non-stop data entry at lightning speed.

Is your underwear still clean?

There’s not a hope in hades that I’d ever do that. But, I’d sure as guns find a faster way to do it, and I have. Setting up takes some time, but not that much, and I’ve already done most of the work for you.

So in my next post on turbo-charging Robosoft with DynamicPAD, I’m going to show you how to do several weeks worth of work in half a morning.

Make sure that you’ve digested most of what I’ve got here for you right now though, as the next part is where it gets truly hairy, scary wild!

If you’re confused at this point, then come back to this later once I’ve written the more basic stuff that will give you a better background to build on.

Cheers,

Ryan

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3 thoughts on “Turbo-Charging Robosoft with DynamicPAD (Part 1)

  1. Hi Ryan,

    I’m not sure why you’d want to do it this way (per site, for every site – MAYBE for a few specific niche sites)…

    You can just add a bunch of different sets of whatever you want to be different, and Robosoft/DynamicPAD automatically distributes this among sites (using Unconditional instead of By Site) .

    I have to agree that the interface is a big annoying though.

    1. True, it is a PITA, but random isn’t the way to go for a few reasons, and the additional effort required isn’t really all that much when you look at the entire process and how long it takes.

      I’m going to cover writing in a dedicated post though as it really deserves its own. That will make it clearer why. I’ll have lots of examples too. Denis brought up a point that I’ll also address then.

      My next post will cover the first steps to solve the UI problem. It’s actually very easy and doesn’t take much time.

  2. Great stuff, can’t wait for your followup. I’ve been dazzled by this before, so looking forward to the solution… Keep posting, and enlighten me on the mighty Robosoft (which I have to admit is OK, but I always wondered about this dynamic stuff)…