Monster website
So how many cities ARE there in the US?
Approximately 31,307 – give or take. And how many counties in the US? 3261 – again as of the database date (2007?) I doubt counties change much, but there’s alway a city changing here or there.
Lizardwbs is putting the finishing touches on a drug addiction website for a client that needed national exposure. So we did a page for every state, county, and city in the US – and the total uploaded files were 35,525 when all was said and done. Thank God for vbscript – and the ability to use it with SQL Server. Doing something like that manually would have been just … sisyphean.
After working hard to create an actual “template” page that took into account every possible combination of content, state,county, city and a myriad of other details, I created a handy script to create folders for every state, county and city in the US and copy the “golden” page across. With some dynamic titles, meta tags and the like, I believe that we may actually just do okay.
Definitely put the SQL skills to work on this site. It picks up the user’s IP address to get the starting geographical point, displays their location and then the rest of the cities in that particular county. Each click digs them further and further down dynamically pulling up content and new city/county/states combinations as they go. Ain’t SQL grand?
It’s a tough and competitive market though. Will be very interested to see how we come up initially.
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January 1, 2011
Great post. Like the points you bring up.