how intensive would this be?

[DGiscombe]

My client wants to display ads depending on what country is selected, and I know full well that this is a bad idea as I'm sure a lot of categories with (0) next to it .

The only way I can think to make this happen is to make the countries as parent categories (23 of them!) and make a set of child/parent categories under each of them (64 I think).

So that makes it about 138 or categories. Will this seize the site up, or should I just advise them to buy a very very good dedicated server?

[Mike-N-Tosh]

The number of categories that you have isn't really going have much affect on the server or the script. I wouldn't be concerned there.

-Mike

[Eric Barnes]

Really the only affect I have seen with tons and tons of categories is to turn of the number of category listings. The way these are pulled out is pretty intensive. Of course if you are getting a lot of ads it may be wise to use some type of server caching and so forth.

[DGiscombe]

Is there an easier way to duplicate a batch of categories and setting them to a different parent?

At the moment I'm pressing the duplicate button, changing the slug to make it unique and changing the parent.

Is there an SQL solution to this?

[Eric Barnes]

I am sure that is possible. Although if you know a little php the best way may be to have your main categories but limit the listings displayed based off the country the selected. To go that route you would just look in the Listings class "getAllListings()" and modify the query.

[DGiscombe]

I wouldn't know how to do that.

I'll carry on with this method then, 1200 to go :|

[Mike-N-Tosh]

The easiest method would be if you have access to the mysql database directly with phpMyadmin. Just make the list in Excel. Save as a csv file. Import it in phpMyAdmin.

That's how I always set up new classifieds sites, because it's so much faster and easier to work with in Excel.

-Mike