Hello folks - I have hunted the NET for months now looking for a Free Classifieds script (for free of course) which pleases me. I settled for e-lassifieds although not entirely happy.

The problem is that it will not tell you how many ads are in a section and it has a very long winded entry form.

So I decided to build my own - no perl experience and limited html experience.

I am using links 2, so I have used this as a base. It seems to work very well although I am still at the experimental stage.

When you think about it - it does all that a free classified script needs - admin can use the admin facility to delete ads when they hit a certain date, and the links template only needs very minor alterations - mainly deleting off ratings etc. I think it's good anyway.

I am still experimenting mainly as set out below

Letting ad owners delete their own ads or as I have tried without much luck to copy the modify.cgi and modify.db and rename them delete they in theory should appear when I validate and I can delete the ad. (Problems with ID length and date tag).

I have settled at present with ad owners using modify and request they eneter the word delete in the description field, I can then delete the ad when validating.

The ads facility is posted but not linked in yet in order for me to experiment.

I would really appreciate any ideas or views, it would be really nice if Alex would make a specific script for this purpose - but I appreciate he is busy (crawl crawl)

The address

http://www.wincamcs.com/ads/pages/

plaese please browse and email me with ideas

webmaster@wincamcs.com

Many many thanks for all the help in the past and I have no doubts that my inbox will be bombarded with sugestions

Davy

DC,

I am wondering how much modification was involved in this. I am also interested in knowing how do you delete the ads automatically after a pre defined period - 21 days?

Thanks

Thanks for the information and reference. I have been deciding between DBMAN and LINKS for my Free Classified Site. I, too, was using the E-Classified System (which sucks!).

I think that I will go for using LINKS. Thanks again.

Regards,

------------------
Eliot Lee
Founder and Editor
Anthro TECH, L.L.C
http://www.anthrotech.com/
info@anthrotech.com
==========================
Coconino Community College
http://www.coco.cc.az.us/
Web Technology
Coordinator
elee@coco.cc.az.us

In relation to deleting after 21 days I am not into perl scripting yet, but my idea was to use admin - delete and do a search under the date field, this is the theory anyway, although I beleive it should work. I would also like to find a way to let people to delete their own ads but I cannot find a way without giving access to admin which I do not want to do. The compromise is for users to use the modify option and insert the word delete in the description field, I will watch for this when I validate and then delete the ad.

Oh for the help of a perl programmer!!!!

If gossamer etc provide me with permission I will glady zip all the mods and add a readme file, for distribution on the small condition that if you can improve on this which is not going to be hard then you let me know, oh sod it you can have them anyway just email me.

DC,

Thanks for your reply. If there is a way to delete the ads automatically, say by creating a script and running it through "cron", it would be perfect. Here is an idea: There is already code in the scripts to find out the "new listings". Why no modify it and create a small new adon script, so that it can check for ads based on a date range and then run it through crontab to automatically delete the old ads. Because as the site grows and hopefully you have 100's of ads a day, it will be tedious to do that manually. I am not good with programming and can not write a script from scratch. Actually, I have asked this question a few times before and have not gotten an answer. I gave up and was thinking of modifying a message board script to do this.

Other than that, the only thing missing would be the ability to allow people to delete their own ads, but that may not be as important. If you have any ideas, let me know.

As far as permission for posting goes, I think as long as you do not claim the code as yours and you do not turn around and sell, you can post the zip files in the resource center, like everyone has done. You could be explicit about your requirement that people should update you of modifications.

[This message has been edited by socrates (edited May 16, 1999).]

hmmm... if a mod or admin sees this, you can delete it... this should be in the mods section... oops!

ok... about changing the db on the fly... i seem to recall (i haven't mucked thru the code for a week or 2) that links does change the links.db on the fly, but leaves it with the validated flag set to "no"...

what i'm thinking is to have the program work in the same manner, but have a script that runs every 1/2 hour or so (mmm, pointless recursion...) that would validate everything, cram it thru a cuss filter, if you want, and rebuild the categories that need rebuilding.

this would appear to be pretty easy (smack me if i'm wrong), as any time a user adds/edits an ad, it compares the cat/sub-cat that they edited to a database, and if that cat hadn't been edited since the last rebuild, it adds the cat index to the db, and at the end of the 1/2 hour, it'd rebuild only those that need rebuilding.

i hope u people understand that... i'm terrible about telling people my programming ideas... (i can kinda see how the code would flow... it's just reverse-compiling to english that i have a problem with... back in my mudding days, insted of talking to the other implementors like normal people, i'd spew code at them...)

if you don't understand it, i can put some of it down in C code... i'm still not familiar enough w/ perl... that's coming, tho...

--tom

[This message has been edited by mortenal (edited August 11, 1999).]