I know some members have been asking for a method to search classified ads within particular geographical locations for a while now, and honestly an EFFECTIVE method to do this is more difficult to do than most probably realize. But I asked my programmer to set up something that while not perfect, at least it will give members at least a rudimentary method to try to locate advertisers selling items within a localized area of interest. There are some drawbacks, of course, that I will go over in due course.
First place to start is with the
Member List, which is shown as a link at the top of the page in the dark green bar.
Click on that link and it will take you to the member list function which will show all members registered on this site.
Next you need to click on the link in the upper right hand corner to
Search Members with the down pointing arrow to the right of the link.
When you click on that link, you are presented with a text entry box. Ignore that and instead click on the link below it that says
Advanced Search.
That brings you to a screen that gives you a bunch of search options applicable to the Members List. For the purposes of this HOW TO, the one we are interested in is the one that says
City and State. I entered
Tallahassee as my search criteria.
Clicking the
Search Now button at the bottom of the screen then searches the database for any matches of the entered text in the City and State profile field for all members. Which in this case, looks partially like this:
Of particular note are the two buttons in the
Find Posts column, second from the left. The button that says
Find will find ALL posts for that member. The one we are interested in for this HOW TO, is the
Ads button. That searches only the classifieds sections for ads placed by that member.
When you click on the
Ads button, you then are presented with a screen showing all classified ads that have been placed by that member that are still active. "Active" in this context ONLY means not deleted. It does not mean that the items are still for sale, nor that the ads themselves are still in any way current. It doesn't even mean that the member is still a participating member of this site any longer. I suggest that you check the DATE of the ad with the understanding that contacting the member about a very old ad is likely going to be a fruitless exercise.
Some caveats here.
The search function is not going to do a "fuzzy" search. If you want to search for members in California, the search algorithm does not know that "CA" means "California". It also does not know that someone using "Cali" or "Californica" is what you are looking for. It will ONLY find
EXACTLY the text you entered as your criteria. So you may have to try a couple of different searches in order to try to cover as many bases as you can.
So there it is. As I mentioned, it's not perfect, but simply because such a search function cannot on freeform text fields without very strict controls on what text is allowed to be entered. But hopefully it's better than nothing to some folks.
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