April 1, 2005 - NEW Classified system will be fully implemented.

That means the forum based classified ads that you are now using will be closed to new ads (threads) being posted. People will still be able to respond to existing ads, but NO new ones will be able to be posted there. ALL new classified ads will ONLY be allowed in the new classifieds section I have been talking about for the last month or so.

I have set up a test section there, so if you aren't familiar with the way the new system works, now is your chance to do some experimentation and get familiar with that system.

Oh, one other thing. Those few people who have linked sites as sponsors of the classified section need to start thinking about how they want to handle a repositioning of their links, or maybe yet another alternative. Those forums, once sufficient time has passed, will eventually be deleted.

I see two options as possibilities:

(1) You select an alternative forum (discussion) to be a sponsor of and have your link moved there, or

(2) That money you paid for the link can be appled to an upgrade of your membership, or just extend the running time of your current one.

Just let me know which you feel most comfortable about.

Thank you All Mighty Cult Leader!
I can't wait to see the new classifieds. I won't have to double check the dates any more!!

Sounds good Rich.

Quick question – I have had some ads up for some time now and they haven’t expired. I thought the new classifieds system had expiration dates. I haven’t received any notifications of the expirations either. Maybe I’m missing something?

The new classifieds system is set to retain all closed/sold ads for 180 days following that event. There are a number of reasons for me doing it this way. One is that you would be amazed at the number of messages I get from people asking me if I had copies of old ads that had been deleted. Or if I could recall an ad for something that had been offered for sale that the person is now interested in and they can no longer find the ad. And lastly, until the new classifieds gets fully on its feet and carrying quite a bit more traffic, I want to keep some ads there to help fill it out a bit and not make it look so thin in participation. As more and more active ads are placed in the new classifieds section, I will reduce this holding period as needed to keep the number of ads visible at a manageable level.

Now anyone want to take any bets on how many "How come I can't place ads any longer in your classifieds section?" messages I will get after April 1 when people try to post ads in the old sections?

Originally Posted by WebSlave

Now anyone want to take any bets on how many "How come I can't place ads any longer in your classifieds section?" messages I will get after April 1 when people try to post ads in the old sections?

Maybe there should be a pool. Half goes to the person with the correct/closest number and the rest goes to Fauna.

webslave a couple of questions
1) and i think you already answered it but ill ask i tried to delete a couple of ads it said i can't. once traffic goes up will we be able to delete any of our ads?
2) will html be able to be used inside of the message area ?
i tried posting several messages using "[img]blah blah[/img]" but just got direct links to the photos but no photos appearing in the message body
or maybe im stupid and using the wrong code LOL

I have had some people request that I keep ads visible on the system for a period of time after they have ended or been sold, for reference purposes. And truthfully I would like the new classifieds to look a bit more active initially, and not so barren of active ads. So I have is set so that all ads will remain visible for 180 days after ending or being sold. As more and more ads are placed within the new system, I will reduce that as needed to keep the number of active posts from becoming too cluttered with expired ads. Eventually I would like to reduce that time period to where expired or sold ads remain visible no more then 60 days after they have ended. You would be amazed at the number of emails I get asking me if I can retrieve old classified ads that have already been deleted from the current system.

As for the other issue, initially I had HTML enabled within the descriptions of the ads, but the developers warned me of some security risks inherent in doing that in their code. Then secondly, I discovered that enabling this (by hacking their program to remove a line of code) apparently had another serious issue. It appears that when the code line is removed to allow the HTML codes to work, anyone editing their ad who has paid for highlighting, bolding, etc., will LOSE those enhancements during the edit. Obviously, this could be a real big headache for me. So with those points under consideration, I felt it best to eliminate that HTML capability entirely. Actually I didn't see many people using it anyway, so I didn't think it would be all that much of a loss to most people.

Hope that explains it a bit.

ok thank you

The condition field seems to be changing automatically. I’ve set the condition of ads with ‘excellent’ but it’s then changed to ‘new’. I was curious as to why this is happening?