Ads "Max Ads Limit"

rcull · February 16th, 2008, 12:06 AM

I would suggest that if a person was paying for the ads, who cares if he uploads 100 ads per day.

The problem is when the ads are free. If the person uses their free ad or two, but chooses to place 20 more ads at $10.00 per ad, is that a spammer?

I think a paid or paid subscription member should be allowed to have X (in my case, one) free ad(s) running at any one time. If they want more than that, they can have them by paying for them.

If when you went to your "Photopost Classifieds UserGroup Editor" the column on the right, "Max Ads Limit?" refered to the maximum number of free ads that that usergroup was allowed to have running at any given time, that would be perfect!

I can not believe that photopost classifieds owner wish to limit the number of ads that a paying customer wishes to place!

If we can get the support for the improvement of this feature, maybe the gurus at photopost will consider improving it in a future release!

rcull · February 16th, 2008, 10:09 AM

I know this has been hashed over before, but with a new version in beta testing that probably isn't changing anything, I felt maybe the writers could be influenced with some pressure

Perhaps this should be added as another option that users can either use or not if they like it... Call it "free ad limit" before payment is required.

Here is roughly how I think it should work:

The "free ad limit" is set to 2, this means that a user in that usergroup can have up to 2 free ads running at any given time.

A user fills out the ad form and clicks post
The program checks the users usergroup free ad limit: if it is < or = to the free ad limit then the ad is posted. If it is above the free ad limit then the user is asked to pay for the ad.

I, for one, would be willing to pay for such an option if it could be written in a manner that upgrades wouldn't effect it's operation. Can this be done, and for how much?

Reasons:

I run a free ad board. I am sure spammers are just a problem on "free boards".

I try to take advantage of the highlight, italics, bold features by chargeing for them, and some purchase.
The people who take advantage of the free aspect can be a problem, but they often are selling things that are nice to have on the board. They sometimes run 15 ads. I don't mind them running 15 ads, but 15 free ads is taking advantage, so make them pay after they get to the free ad limit. Somehow someone giving me $130.00 for 13 ads over their free limit make their ads acceptable.

Chuck S · February 16th, 2008, 11:51 AM

It is totally possible and I can look into it.

rcull · February 16th, 2008, 08:35 PM

Chuck,

Thank you, I look forward to hearing from you!

Bob

rastacat · February 19th, 2008, 10:27 PM

Chuck added this for me as a paid custom feature 2 years ago and it worked great. After a few upgrades though I could no longer integrate the custom work and let it go.

It worked perfect. All registered users could have, say 20 ads. If they wanted to post another one then they neeeded to delete an old ad to make room. Kept the playing field level.

Now, my ads are messy as guys routinely try to abuse our classified limits so all I can do is let them post a max of 20, then that's it, they are done. Of course a user would sign up new names to post more ads so I do not use that feature and spend a fair bit of time to review the ads and anyone with more than the limit gets an email and a trim job, very tedious.

I'd love the other system again. Very smooth and fair to everyone.

Thanks for listening.

Al

rcull · March 20th, 2008, 12:05 AM

Chuck,

As I haven't heard any developement on this, I would like to bring it up again. Sorry to be a pain

I looked to see if I could PM you, but I see it can't be done. If you contact me, I would like to know how much you think it will cost to develope this. I am willing to make a contribution, it may even be enough to do the job, or at least to give it a good start.

shri · March 20th, 2008, 05:14 AM

If you use vbulletin there is a way you can do this easily using the subscription feature.

1) Create a limit on the number of ads "Registered Users" can upload.
2) Create subscriptions ( say Classifieds Users, Premium Advertiser ) in vBulletin and assign new limits to those user groups in photo class.

vBulletin handles recurring subscriptions nicely and you can offer paypal and a few other payment options.

Chuck S · March 20th, 2008, 08:41 AM

Both of your post rcull and shri I would suggest you read the classifieds 3.0 announcement

http://www.photopost.com/forum/showt...87#post1219287

shri · March 20th, 2008, 10:18 AM

Should have it installed this weekend. Traffic's low because of Easter.

Chuck S · March 20th, 2008, 10:18 AM

Yeah is a good weekend for site maintenance.

rcull · April 18th, 2008, 07:11 PM

A Great step in what I consider the right direction! I would like to suggest a change though.

After some testing it appears that the person is only getting the set number of ads free, then never drops down into the free level again. So, if you set the number to 2, the person gets 2 free ads then always has to pay for them.

I would like to suggest that it would be nice, if a user never has more than 2 ads running he will never have to pay. So when an ad is deleted or expires, it no longer counts against their total.

I also think that it would be nice to be able to have different settings for different ad catagories.

So I can allow anyone to have one free car for sale ad running at any time, but I can also allow them to have 3 free parts for sale ad running at any one time.

Thanks again,
Bob

Chuck S · April 18th, 2008, 07:45 PM

The count updates constantly. If you run your cron task to delete ads and you visit the admin panel to let the script delete old ads if you dont do this then his count should go down.

As far as this for different cats we can always look at that in future versions.

doc1975 · July 30th, 2008, 11:10 PM

Was ever implemented. The ability to limit the number of ads per usergroup, per category would be PERFECT for what I'm looking for!

Chuck S · July 31st, 2008, 12:32 AM

max ads per usergroup is part of the software.

ktmtalk · October 29th, 2009, 08:29 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Chuck S

max ads per usergroup is part of the software.

is there an option so that if they exceed their max ads, instead of a message that says "you have exceeded the max ads", that they are allowed to purchase an ad??

Chuck S · October 29th, 2009, 08:34 PM

Max ads is a global usergroup option meaning thats the max amount of ads they can have period. free ads is another setting which does what you want.