I found this site called Link Vault through a mission on BlogShares. When I loaded Link Vault, the first thing I noticed was a graphic of a combination dial. I read some of the information on the page, and gathered that it is an automated system of exchanging links.

The way it works is simple. You add some code (PHP or ASP) to your site, which displays other members' links. In return, other members will display your links. When you display links, you get 'vaultage', which are like credits to display your links.

I thought this sounded interesting, so I created an account. I added my site, and it is awaiting approval. I glanced through the instructions a bit. You can choose to use either PHP or ASP code to handle the link automation. I chose PHP, since that is what my site is written in.

Being a PHP programmer, I looked through the code a bit. The main script is about 400 lines, and contains no comments. I didn't look at it enough to get an understanding of the total program flow.

In the instructions, one thing that seemed iffy to me was the code to use ini_set to add a few levels of parent directories to the include path. Since I have designed all of the scripting on my site myself, I'm not too sure about adding stuff to my include path.

I don't see why the link vault script needs access to so many levels of paths. I would like it to keep all it's stuff in one directory. Since I haven't looked at all the code in depth, I don't know if that approach would work.

In summary, I think link vault is a good idea, but I think the code should not need to modify my include path.

http://www.link-vault.com/ad-network