Classified Ads {Classified Ads Documentation}

Overview

Authors: Deds Castillo and Paul Doerwalds. Roberto Mello made several modifications and improvements and is maintaining this package under OpenACS since July 2003.

The Classified Ads system can be used for all manner of ads, from buy/sell to wanted to job listings. If one party has something another party wants or vice versa, the Classified Ads system can be used as the basis.

Ads can be categorized and grouped into containers according to the following breakdown:

Classified Ads Instance -> Category -> Container -> Advertisement

Examples:

For Rent -> Apartment Buildings -> 319 Hazel St. -> Unit 205

By Roberto Mello:

The package is taking shape, with almost all of the truly hard parts done. I'm now working on improving the interface, user and administrative.

While developing I was creating everything under www/admin. That's why it seems that nothing is "done" under www (the user pages). I am going to move th funcionality under www/admin under /lib so it can be reused in both places.

Features

Uses the content repository.
Categorization.
Uses the templating system to build forms.
Allows for custom fields per category.
Others that I'm probably forgetting.

What needs to be improved (no particular order)

Fix all the FIXME's in the code.
Add searching functionality.
Integrate with notifications so users can be notified of new ads.
Integrate with RSS so news aggregators can pick up new items (crazy idea? -Roberto)
Give users a confirmation screen when placing new ads.
Convert to use list-builder. (index page done)
Category index page shows user-selected number of ads.
Category index page: Select box with all subcategories and number of ads in them. Notifications link. Table on the right shows available actions (Search, Post, Edit/Delete Your Posts, Get E-mail Alerts, New Since Last Visit).
general-comments integration.
general-ratings for users (for the future).
Uploading of images with parameter to allow/disallow.
DONE Items: (by done I don't mean it can't be improved, I'm just keeping track of major things I've done)
Give users a better UI for placing and viewing ads (DONE - Roberto) - Need to move code that is in /admin to /lib so it can be used in both www and www/admin.
Make it possible to place an ad under a category, instead of placing under no category then assigning it to one. (DONE - Roberto)
Main index page shows last x placed ads (DONE - Roberto)
Make it so custom fields can be added on a per-category basis (DONE - Roberto).
Fix data model (DONE (I hope) - Roberto)

Better admin user interface for managing categories (DONE - Roberto)
Main Admin page: "View ads from last x days", "All ads", "All ads by category", "Pick out users who have posted at least x times between date_1 and date_2", "View alerts", "Manage Categories", "Add moderators for this category", "Edit this category", "Delete this category".