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System setup options
In order to setup the global system options for your yellow pages system, you will need to login to your System Administrator account. You may login by clicking "Login" on the top menu of your directory. 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 yellow pages.
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 directory.
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 directory 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 directory 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. You can change the structure by using the "Use spider/robot friendly urls" selector. 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.
One of the features of the directory, allows you to turn on or off an alphabetical shortcut to the listings. This allows your users to either browse through the categories you have set up, or use the alphabetical selectors. You may turn this on or off by using the "Show alphabetical links page?" selector.
Controls
The system will allow you to determine how listings, and reviews are accepted when submitted by the viewers. There are individual controls for submissions, and for reviews.
Submissions:
If you wish to allow visitors to post a listing, without having to create an account, set the "Allow anonymously posted listings" to yes. If it is set to no, they will be required to register an account in order to post. Anonymously submitted listings, will ALWAYS require admin approval before the listing is shown to the public. The second control for listings, allows you to determine if submissions submitted by registered users are shown live, or if they too require admin approval. You can force approval by setting the "Auto-approve listings" to no. If a listing is submitted, which requires a fee and the "Auto-approve listings" is set to no, the admins will be able to review a submission before it is paid for. Upon approval, the submitter will receive an email with instructions on how they may pay for their listing. Once the listing has been paid for, it will go online for public viewing.
Reviews:
You can completely disable reviews, by setting the "Allow reviews" selector to no. If you do wish to accept reviews, there are two additional controls you may set. You may require visitors to be registered to leave a review, by setting the "Allow anonymously posted reviews" to no. If you wish to preview and reviews, you may set the "Auto-approve reviews", and the system will hold the review until you have approved it. Anonymously submitted reviews are ALWAYS set to require admin approval before being displayed.
Payments
The payments section will allow you to choose which payment methods you wish to offer the user when they post an listing. 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
Time options
The time options section will allow you to choose how long a listing may be displayed in the directory. You are allowed up to four options which are presented to the user when they place their listing. 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.
Optional fields
The optional fields section will allow you to collect custom information for your listings, so the directory better suits your market. These fields can be radio buttons, check boxes, input boxes, etc. Please see the section on optional fields for details on what needs to be placed in these boxes. These optional fields are not limited to specific categories, they are system wide.
Optional rating fields
The review system, if in use, will allow you to set custom review criteria in addition to the standard rating and text review. To use these optional ratings, enter a rating title in the boxes provided. It is strongly recommended that once you set your options, that you do not change them. If you do change them, the ratings for the listings, do not change.
Other settings
BosMarket has the ability to load over 1.9 million cities into it's geoDatabase. If you wish to use this database system to offer your visitors a prepopulated selection of their location, then set "Use geodDatabase" 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 directory. The "# of RSS entries to display" 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 directory 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".
If the listing has a full address, a map link may be presented on the listings page. You may use the "Enable map" selector to choose if you want to use this feature, and which mapping site to use for the map generation.
The "Allowed file types" box is used if you set up your directory to allow users to submit files, such as menus, word documents, etc. Enter a comma separated list of which file extensions to allow, such as ".txt,.pdf,.doc". It is HIGHLY suggested that you do not allow html, php, javascript, or other file types which could allow a malicious visitor to do damage to your web site.
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