Turning Classifieds into a Nice Personals Site

thumbsucker · February 1st, 2006, 08:10 AM

Hi,

I just installed Classifieds and have started to fiddle with the templates to turn it into a nice Personals.

I have a few questions however.

1. I enabled the 6 "Extra" fields but the default drop down menu options for Extra 4 and Extra 5 do not appear when you try to place an ad (the options exist, but they all appear as blank white space). Any idea why it is doing this?

2. I would like to get rid of or significantly modify the "Am Searching For" question/answers (Male-Female, Male-Female, Male-Male, Female-Female, Friends, Other). How can this be done? It seems to access some kind of global file and not be editable from the 4-5 templates you discussed in a previous thread.

3. I noticed there are still "product" related text throughout (e.g. Sold It!, Report Product, Seller/Buyer Feedback). Do you have a comprehensive list of templates where these textual changes should be made?

4. I would like to make the ads anonymous since my users will want to preserve their Vbulletin/Photopost pre-existing identities. Can you tell me which templates I should modify and/or how to best accomplish this?

Thank you!

Chuck S · February 1st, 2006, 10:52 AM

1. depending on the template type your editing extra fields are questions asked when you upload a product and anser them

2. I know extra 4 of 5 in the personals template is hardcoded in the templates so you would edit that in the uploadproduct2.tmpl showcat2.tmpl showproduct2.tmpls etc

3. You can change wording in the language file

4. Well you could remove the username from being inputted on upload in uploadproduct.php otherwise the product is designed to input the username.

thumbsucker · February 1st, 2006, 07:48 PM

Hi Chuck,

I've basically found it impossible to make this into a Personals site that's fully customized to my needs.

I've poured through the templates and cannot find an easy way to get rid of all the "Product" related language and options found throughout the script.

Additionally, I've also found it impossible to make the ads anonymous, since the user name of the person who posted the ad pops up through the site including searching results, profiles, etc.

Finally, even making the data for the "Extra" fields too long seems to cut off their display sometimes.

What would be the cost of getting someone to customize this so that:

1. All product-related information is gone (including disabling the "Feedback" option)
2. Anonymous ads can be made possible (or alternatively, every ad is made anonymous) so that Vbulletin user identities can be kept private

Thanks.

Chuck S · February 1st, 2006, 08:05 PM

Quote:

I've poured through the templates and cannot find an easy way to get rid of all the "Product" related language and options found throughout the script.

It all depends what you mean by product? The language phrases are contained in the english.php file and the english/*2.php language files for personals. You can change the language strings to whatever you want.

Quote:

Additionally, I've also found it impossible to make the ads anonymous, since the user name of the person who posted the ad pops up through the site including searching results, profiles, etc.

Remember this is because your not allowing unregistered uploads. You are allowing logged in users to upload which means there username is displayed. You can alter the templates to remove the username displays but if you truly want to allow just unregistered uploads why not turn off posting to members and only have unregistered allow to upload.

Most of what you want to do you can do by just removing the username displays from the templates and altering language files.

I do not know of anyone at this particular time who you can hire to help you if this is something your trying to do at this minute. I am backed up with work at this time. You could possibly talk with Zachariah here.

thumbsucker · February 1st, 2006, 08:20 PM

Hi Chuck:

Thanks for the fast response.

I'll just forget about the anonymity for now since I am having a hard time editing out all the instances where the user name is listed (unless you can tell me the exact code snippet I need to remove and from which files).

I do have 2 questions however:

1. How can I get rid of the Member Feedback apparatus? It does not really make sense for a Personals site. It appears when you click on the profile of the user.

2. How can I make the display field for "Who am I?" larger? This is the default question you include, the answers to which I edited in the language file. However, when displaying the ad, the answers I edited are too long and do not fully display.

Thanks.

Chuck S · February 1st, 2006, 08:48 PM

Well to get rid of feedback delete this from the profile.tmpl

Code:

Content visible to verified customers only.

You have lost me on who am I

what field is that?

thumbsucker · February 2nd, 2006, 05:06 AM

Hi Chuck,

The "Who am I" is the default question, the answers to which are found in the language file and state

"Male looking for Female", "Female looking for Male", "Male looking for Male", "Female looking for Female," "Someone looking for Friends", "Someone Else" as defaults.

I changed the answers to be longer and they no longer fully display when you look at a published ad. The answer seems to be cut off.

[Got rid of Member Feedback! Thanks! Now just need to get the the "Who am I" answer fully displaying on the ShowAd.]

Thanks.

Chuck S · February 2nd, 2006, 10:13 AM

No wonder I have no idea what your talking about the case is this not WHO AM I

$Globals['pp_lang']['interest'] = "In Search Of?";

You can edit your uploadproduct2.tmpl and remove the html. Just curious though this is a personal ad why in the world would you want to remove that case

thumbsucker · February 2nd, 2006, 06:15 PM

Hi Chuck:

No, it's not that I want to get rid of it.

It's this:

"Male looking for Female" was changed to "Male looking for Female for Dating/Romance"

The "for Dating/Romance" part of the sentence does not show up when you look at an ad. I think it's perhaps too long.

I'd like to correct this so that the full "Male looking for Female for Dating/Romance" is shown.

Chuck S · February 2nd, 2006, 06:57 PM

Well I can not comment on something you have modified

Dating/Romance is found nowhere in our program. If you want advise about something you have modified you would need to post a url but I can tell you the rating field is only a varchar 24 field. You would need to alter the mysql field in the products table for rating to a higher limit than 24 characters

thumbsucker · February 3rd, 2006, 06:07 AM

Ok sounds good. I'll shrink the choices.

In terms of making the ads "anonymous," is there a particular string (e.g. $user) I should be looking for, and could you advise on what to replace such strings with to make everything private? I'm not much of a computer expert.

Also, could all this be accomplished strictly by modifying the templates?

I really think having anonymous ads as a feature would be important to make PP Classifieds into a nice Personals script.

Later on, greater integration with Photopost and Vbulletin would be great.

For example, right now, the "Memberlist" shows noone except the people who posted an Ad, even thoug the actualy Memberlist (of Vbulletin users) is over 1000+.

Chuck S · February 3rd, 2006, 07:06 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by thumbsucker

For example, right now, the "Memberlist" shows noone except the people who posted an Ad, even thoug the actualy Memberlist (of Vbulletin users) is over 1000+.

Yes and that is correct. This is not a members list like you are thinking. This is members whom have uploaded to your classifieds much like in Photopost's members gallery.

You can rename the language string if it makes sense for you to Member Ads

Now as far as your one tweak if you dont want to show the member names on ads its easy and it all can be achieved by template edits except one thing.

You can edit pp-inc.php and edit the topmenu function to remove the members list.

Other than that it is just a matter of removing say from the maybe showcat and showproduct templates the display of ads. Its just a matter of removing the proper variable.

At any rate this is why we have a modification forum here for user's to help each other. If you need help modifying your code which is outside product support you may want to post a thread in the mod forum and see if someone will give you some direct pointers and help.

KevinVo · February 3rd, 2006, 07:26 PM

Photopost Classified is POSSIBLE to customize to Personal Features. Of course its not going to have a lots of features like those personal scripts out there. But if you are familiar with coding, it's always possible to be whatever you want it to be.
I am trying all my best to customize PP Classified into an escort classified and adult dating classified. i am also intergrating to my VBulletin 3.5.3 , that's what the reason I like PP , because the features of using the same member login/log out system.
For my adult dating using PP Classified, I just customize a few templates, with helps from Chuck, it's pretty easy and really friendly to customize, ( swear to god, I am not a programmer or a coder at all ). Also I created an extra field that take the member profile from PP Classified to Vbulletin member profile ( I did a mod hack in Vb member profile call Myspace Member profile in Vbulletin.org ), and that's it, you have a nice dating site up and running.
When im done with my site, I will post it up here and share my templates with other members.
Good luck thumbsucker, and I am sure you can do it too my friend.

thumbsucker · February 5th, 2006, 02:36 PM

Hi,

I think I almost got it turned into a barebones Personals site with anonymous posting.

However, I cannot for the life of me locate two things:

1. How do I get rid of the user name from the "Last Product Uploaded by" column which appears on the initial index page and displays the user name of the person who last posted an Ad? I've been looking at the categories template but cannot locate the user variable at all.

2. How do I get rid of the "Search by username" function altogether from the search page?

Any help would be appreciated!

thumbsucker · February 5th, 2006, 05:10 PM

[Deleted]

Chuck S · February 5th, 2006, 05:32 PM

1. Edit pp-inc.php and remove this

Code:

Content visible to verified customers only.

2. Edit the search.tmpl and remove this

Code:

Content visible to verified customers only.