Relisting an ad?

Rich Z · January 22nd, 2006, 12:06 PM

How do I relist an expired ad in the classifieds? I've had some users asking about this function, so I went through some old test ads of my own looking for this function. But darned if I can find it. So obviously I must be overlooking something.

Can someone give me a roadmap to this function?

Thanks.

Chuck S · January 22nd, 2006, 12:30 PM

Well expired ads are not shown on the classifieds only to admin in the approval area where you would delete expired ads. You can reapprove expired ads there. Users are sent a link to relist the ad 3 days before it expires if your running the sendnotice script otherwise if they do not only admin can relist them

Rich Z · January 22nd, 2006, 04:27 PM

Well something appears to be wrong. I just checked the admin section and there are NO expired ads listed. I have been running this script for a year or so, and that seems rather odd. So I checked, and sure enough, there are quite a few ads there that are a year or more old. Regardless of the fact that I set the max running time for them as 90 days, and with an extension of 180 days after expiring for them to be automatically deleted.

Yes I am running the sendnotice script in CRON.

I have several of my own test ads running that have long expired and I have NEVER gotten a renewal notice about them.

So what has gone wrong? Why no notices, and why are those old ads still on the site?

Chuck S · January 22nd, 2006, 04:33 PM

I would tend to think your cron task is not running if this is the case

What happens if you run the script in your browser?

Rich Z · January 22nd, 2006, 05:22 PM

I just ran it from the browser and got a TON of messages displayed, such as:

REMOVED BY REQUEST

So, any ideas what is going on? Is the CRON job not working at all? I did notice that when I ran that sendnotice command from the browser that it seemed to take a LONG time before I got that return screen with the notices listed above. Is it maybe timing out?

Oh yeah, I checked the admin page and have a TON of expired ads now listed. No way I can do each one manually. It would take me days to do that. Any way to bulk delete them?

Thanks.

Rich Z · January 22nd, 2006, 05:27 PM

Am rats...... Something VERY wrong just happened. I just checked my pp_classifieds area and where I had almost 13,000 active ads, it now shows only 1,328. That sendnotice script just whacked out nearly 12,000 ads????

Not only that, but it knocked the views count from over 2 million or so down to 183K.

Damn, talk about a kick in the teeth! People judge sites by the number of ads running on them and by the number of views those ads have gotten. How the heck do I roll back that darn sendnotice routine? This was like cutting off my head to cure a pimple on my nose.

Chuck S · January 22nd, 2006, 05:33 PM

Rich

The sendnotice script is suppose to expire expired ads so nothing went wrong. This proves what I stated above your cron task does not run as setup on your system. Running the sendnotice script in the browser let it do its job and your expired ads are now expired. If you want to relist them you need to view in Admin => Approval your expired que and reapprove any ads you want to show again.

As far as the cron task there are a couple different variations listed in that thread you might need to find out what one works for your system.

Rich Z · January 22nd, 2006, 05:49 PM

Nothing went wrong? Why were the total views for the classifieds dropped down to nearly nothing at all? That just is not logical to me. Aren't the statistics supposed to show the total views that the ads have gotten IN TOTAL? Just as the number of sold ads and the value of sold items does?

As for the CRON script, you installed the system for me Chuck. I would have thought that part of the money I paid for installation would have included getting that CRON job working properly. But after seeing what it has done with the views stats, does this routine really work correctly?

Quote:

If you want to relist them you need to view in Admin => Approval your expired que and reapprove any ads you want to show again.

Are you serious? Go through almost 12,000 ads MANUALLY?

Sorry if this seems blunt, but I'm feeling kind of pissed now.........

Chuck S · January 22nd, 2006, 06:20 PM

Rich,

Most cron tasks can not be installed with the info we get on an installation. Most people just give us FTP and mysql info. Cron tasks are setup through a control panel or SSH. You set up your cron task along time ago and these emails you have been getting where telling you that your cron task is not correct for quite some time now.

Views have nothing to do with any overall scheme as thats just a statistics of the ads which exist in the system. Classifieds content is dynamic and changes. When an ad expires we record the amount sold and increment or decrease the total products sold and amount sold. Those are the statistics we track and update.

If you want to get the ads back you could try running this query and add your table prefix. Make sure to run a scan database after running this query to update the counters.

UPDATE products SET approved='1',status='0',enddate='1141146000' WHERE approved=2