PP Personals: Country and Location

globalinsites · November 2nd, 2006, 04:39 PM

We're using PP Classifieds as Personals and we know that our users want/need to be able to view/add Country and Location in Personal Ads.

By default there doesn't seem to be a Country and Location field available in PP Classifieds/Personals. We have PP Classifieds integrated with vB 3.6.2 and vB doesn't have a Country field by default either (only a Location field). In vB we added a custom profile field for the country (using a single selection menu, dropdown menu, containing a list of all the states/countries) and the Country/Location info is visible in in profiles and editable in User CP/Edit Profile. My question is: is there a way to somehow use the Country and Location field information from vB in PP Personals?

For example in a way that on the page where the user places an ad the Country and Location information is pulled from the user's profile?

Or is it possible to only show the Country and Location field information in the user's ad?

Or, if there is no way to pull the information from vB, is there a way to set up a Country and Location field in PP Classifieds? If so, how can we do this?

We are not sure how to deal with this but because Country and Location info is about the most important info in a personal ad we hope that there will be a solution for it.

Thanks.

Chuck S · November 2nd, 2006, 06:48 PM

Why not use the category extra fields to store country and location?

globalinsites · November 2nd, 2006, 07:59 PM

Well, as far as I can't tell I cannot use a dropdown menu for the countries by using the extra fields. I don't like the fact that users can type anything they want in the extra fields, that's why I'd prefer a dropdown selection menu, for the countries anyway. I figured that if there would be a way to pull the info from vB that that would be best, especially because the user has already entered the info by the time he submits an ad. But it's not possible to do that easily?

I tried to enter extra fields just to see what it looks like:

Country
Location

That seems to work okay, although it adds: '* Enter country if n/a.' at the right of the Location field. Can I remove that text (I have a Country field added so I don't need that text).

Chuck S · November 2nd, 2006, 08:01 PM

You can try using the 2.6 beta as well and that has the additional extra fields per category downdowns checkboxes etc

globalinsites · November 2nd, 2006, 11:06 PM

I don't want to upgrade at this point. I'd rather wait for the stable version.

So, in the mean time I will use the extra fields. I added these ones:

Age
Country
State/Provence
City

Now, when I place an ad, the City field (so the 4th extra field) has a dropdown that is empty. I don't need a dropdown menu there. Why is the field showing up as a dropdown? How can I change it into a normal field?

Also, now it says '* Enter country if n/a.' right next to the Country field. Looks like that text just show up at the right of each second extra field. I want to remove that text. It doesn't make sense to have it there, or anywhere else as long as I'm using a country field. How can I remove it?

Thanks.

Chuck S · November 3rd, 2006, 08:38 AM

what template are you using? None of the extra fields are dropdowns they are input boxes.

globalinsites · November 3rd, 2006, 09:52 AM

In the Category Editor we have set 'Template Type' to 'Personals'.

I was surprised to see a dropdown because in the category editor it only says:

Extra Field #1
Extra Field #2
etc.

and nothing is being mentioned about dropdown menus. Yet, the 4th extra field shows up as an empty dropdown menu.

Chuck S · November 3rd, 2006, 11:19 AM

Okay thats because the personals template is customized for personals meaning that is a hard coded male female box. You can edit that template and replace the extra4 html with the norm from any of the other templates

globalinsites · November 3rd, 2006, 11:54 AM

Hmmz. Is there any documentation about this? I mean, was I supposed to be able to figure out that that field is a hard coded male female box? I don't see male/female in the dropdown btw, it's just an empty dropdown menu.

Perhaps extra field 5 and 6 have some function specific to Personals to that I don't know about.

Which template do I need to edit? uploadproduct.tmpl in /classifieds/templates? There's also uploadproduct1.tmpl, uploadproduct2.tmpl and uploadproduct3.tmpl.

Chuck S · November 3rd, 2006, 02:15 PM

There is documentation about how to add additional template sets but as to how to hack your files sorry there are not instructions.

You would need to edit all the number 2 series templates like showproduct2.tmpl and make sure extra4 and extra4 are like this

Code:

Content visible to verified customers only.

globalinsites · November 6th, 2006, 02:07 PM

I didn't expect having to hack the files for making it suitable as personals. I was expecting the script to be suitable/ready for personals just by using the personals template.

Anywayz, I could only find the code you gave me in uploadproduct2.tmpl in /templates/vb3enhanced

Is that the only file I need to edit?

Coop1979 · November 8th, 2006, 11:38 PM

Along the same lines, is there a way to pull in data from the vb profile into the PP Classifieds profile?

For example, if I have a field called "Real Name" in the VB profile, can I pull that into the profile page for the classifieds?

Chuck S · November 8th, 2006, 11:55 PM

Not without code modification

Coop1979 · November 9th, 2006, 01:51 PM

Does that mean that I should post a request like this in the Mods forum?

Chuck S · November 9th, 2006, 02:37 PM

Yes code modification is outside product support