System setup options
In order to setup the global system options for your classifieds system, you will need to login to your System Administrator account. You may login by clicking "Login" on the top menu of your classifieds. After you are logged in, you will be presented with the user account screen. On the left hand menu, you should see a link labeled "System Admin". Clicking this link will take you to the admin control panel.
When you enter the admin control panel, you will see a list of links in the left hand column. This section of the manual deals with the "Manage System" section of your control panel. After clicking the "Manage System" link, you will be presented with the global system settings for your classifieds.
Only System Admininistrators are able to view this section of the admin panel.
There are several different settings on this screen, which will control the overall behavior of the classifieds.
Meta settings
The first few options, the Page title, Meta-Keywords and Meta Description setup the title and meta tags for the HTML pages generated by the application. These settings represent the baseline for the meta tags, as visiting certain pages within the classifieds will adjust the meta tags for the page.
Display
The language selector will allow you to control which language you wish to display. Please note that this selector does not translate the actual ads, it only loads a different language file which uses pre-built phrases to display text, inputs, etc.
The classifieds offers you three choices of how the link structure will appear in the script. A traditional php style, a spider friendly style and an extended spider friendly style. Please see the reference section for Manage System for examples. After you have chosen your desired method, it is not advisable to change this setting.
Images
If you choose to allow images for your classifieds, this next section will allow you to determine the maximum size for the images. The first input box controls the size of the images displayed on the ad page. The second input box controls the size of the image which is displayed when clicking on the image in the ad page. This second image is displayed in a popup box. Please note that these settings control the maximum size in either width or height. Therefore, if you have a setting of 300, and the user uploads an image which is 1024x768, the newly resized image will be 300x225. If the user uploads an image which is 768x1024, the new image would be 225x300.
Payments
The payments section will allow you to choose which payment methods you wish to offer the user when they post an ad. Each payment method will require you to already have an account with that method. For instance, if you choose to accept PayPal payments, you will need to have a PayPal account already established. As more payment methods are created, they will be presented to you for your use. Each payment method requires it's own unique settings. To use one of the offered payment methods, check the box next to the payment method and fill in the information for that method. For the mail-in option, using a | in the address box will create a new line. So that "PO Box 444|Abilene, TX 79602|ATTN: Payments" would produce:
PO Box 444
Abilene, TX 79602
ATTN: Payments
Ad options
The ad options section will allow you to determine which extra options are presented to the user when they post an ad. You may control how many images the user may post, and how much to charge them per image. You may also control if the user can feature their ad, make it bold, italic or give it a colored background. You may choose to charge for these features by entering a price in the supplied boxes for each option. When entering prices, only enter the numeric value without entering any currency settings. For example, to charge $25.00 for a bold listing, only enter "25.00" in the price box.
Time options
The time options section will allow you to choose how long an ad may be displayed in the classifieds. You are allowed up to four options which are presented to the user when they place their ad. If you do not wish to display all four options to the user, simply empty the "# Days" box and that option will not be presented. The system uses the PHP command of "string to time" to determine the number of days. This command accepts phrases such as "+1 week", "+1 month", "+1 year", "+3 weeks","+45 days" to create the ending date for the ad. Please note that these fields must be entered in English, as that is the only thing that PHP itself understands. Thus, "+2 Wochen" would not work. If you wish to offer an option which will keep the users ad online until they delete it, enter "0" into the box. Along with the number of days, you have the option to control how much to add to, or multiple the price by based on the selected time frame. When entering prices, only enter the numeric value without entering any currency settings. For example, to charge $25.00 for an option, only enter "25.00" in the price box. For examples of how the pricing system works as a whole, please read this page.
Other settings
If you wish to allow visitors to post an ad without having to create an account, set the "Allow anonymous listings" to yes. When posting an ad anonymously, the visitor will have to enter a name and an email address when posting the ad. They must also pass a CAPTCHA image test to ensure that it is not an automated spam bot posting the ad.
If you wish to allow "free" ads to be posted immediately online, set the "Auto approve free ads?" to yes. Otherwise, any "free" ad will remain in a pending status until it is approved by an administrator.
BosClassifieds has the ability to load over 1.9 million cities into it's geoDatabase. If you wish to use this database system to enable filtering of ads based on location, and to offer your visitors a prepopulated selection of their location, then set "Use geodata database for listings" to yes. It is recommended that this setting not be changed after you make your initial decision. For more about the geoDatabase, please see that section of the manual.
At the bottom of each page in the index, there is an RSS link. This link will create on-the-fly RSS feeds for visitors to link to so they can stay up to date with listings posted to your classifeds. The "Number of RSS entries" setting of the control panel will allow you to enter a number which will be the maximum number of entries in this RSS feed. If you wish to disable the RSS feeds, enter a 0 for this setting.
The classifieds system allows you to prevent users from creating accounts based upon the users email address. If you wish to prevent users from registering accounts with for example Yahoo! or HotMail accounts, you may enter "@yahoo.com" or "@hotmail.com" into the "Banned email addresses" box. If you wish to prevent a specific email address such as "spammer@yahoo.com" you may enter their full email address into the box. Separate each enter with a space, example:
"@yahoo.com @hotmail.com joe@spammer.com".