Classifieds 2.0 Beta Now Live

[StereoNET]

As we have been discussing since late last year, the time has come that soon our existing classifieds that is made up of a number of workarounds and 'hacked' forums for want of a better word, would eventually stop working. That time is nearing ...

 

We have been rapidly developing a new system, more of a 'plugin' or 'app' for our forums designed around handling classifieds ads. There are of course still limitations relating to the underlying forum architecture, but we now have a much more customisable system, and one that will be able to be updated into the future as the forum software changes.

 

This development is now live, in a public beta stage and we are currently transitioning to this new system.

 

You can access it here: https://www.stereonet.com/forums/classifieds/

For now, creating new advertisements in the "old" classifieds has been disabled. This means all new ads will be posted to the new classifieds here.

 

We invite you to place your current ads in the new system. It will allow us to find any additional bugs or issues, or need for additional functionality. Despite the vigorous testing by a select few volunteers here - @Dystoria, @Steff, @Jakeyb77_Redux, and the Volunteers for whom I am eternally grateful, there are some things that just don't become clear until you go live. That's where are at now.

 

Please by all means give it a whirl. Change can be hard to accept sometimes, but we're in this for the long haul and once the teething issues are sorted, I think this will be much better going forward. Further styling will evolve as we see more content and get a real feel for how it works and feels.

 

There will be a transition period before we shut down the old forum-based Classifieds of course. So for now, both systems will be active.

 

Please post only genuine ads.  

[Guest]

Before anyone asks, when the system finally switched over to the new one - existing Trader Feedback will be imported over. 
A lot of work went into that being able to happen.

[Guest]

I'll be adding points of interest here as I think of them.

• There's no longer seperate Commercial and Personal sections of the Classifieds. They now coincide together, with ads from Commercial Sellers shown with a badge displayed the ads indicating it is a commercial sale.

[Guest]

• The new system also caters for multiple regions and currencies. 

We may need to better style the region and currency so it's more obvious, and color code them so you always know what to look for.

[Steff]

Just FYI: any ad pre-dating April 30 will be a trial-and-error ficticious ad from the testing phase.

[Guest]

• The search system is now very advanced. You can now search for a certain brand in a certain price bracket, for example.

[Anthony1]

Okay I have tried to post an Advert and am completely stumped by required heading

- Type

The presets don't even come close to what one wants to say

 

Placed adv under Accessories - Power Filtering / Conditioning

Brand: PS Audio

Model Number: (I wrote) P15 DirectStream Power Plant (was accepted)

- Type - (I wrote): Power regenerator (not accepted)

 

Well for Type, the simple category list doesn't even come close to anything related to the carefully selected subject Power Filtering / Conditioning. Instead it just has the most simple categories (amplifier, speaker, cable etc).

 

Obviously people will have trouble when there is no answer applicable acceptable to the item.

Solution - Don't make Type, a REQUIRED fill box. (because the very 1st thing a person did was to carefully select a category subject eg Power Filtering, so why the question?)

 

Only trying to give reasonable feedback.

Anthony

PS. Give people a hint at the start to just type a letter inside the box (eg Brand) that will then become a list to look through.

Edited April 30, 2024 by Anthony1

[Guest]

I think you may have overlooked one very key feature?

 

We knew full well it would be impossible to include every type of product from the start. So a lot of work was put into the ability for users to add a type. We will be curating this list and editing/adjusting where necessary until it is concise and comprehensive. At some much later date, we'll likely be able to remove the ability to add Type.

Why is this needed? To fulfil the long-asked request for being able to search (and set up monitoring) by product Types.

[Anthony1]

Got it, thanks Mark.

[The Rock Puppy]

Just had a quick look. Seems nicely set out and quite comprehensive. Can't see why there should be any major problems with using it if people take it easy for the first time or two until they get used to it. Well done to all concerned in the development and testing of this worthwhile new system!

[Guest]

8 minutes ago, The Rock Puppy said:

. Can't see why there should be any major problems with using it if people take it easy for the first time or two until they get used to it.

 

I think that is the key, thanks for the common sense approach @The Rock Puppy.

There will be teething issues and we're already identifying areas that need improvement.

I am confident though in time this will grow to become quite evolved and refined.

[Lowgroove]

Initial browse of the new system - don't like it anywhere near as much.

 

I used to enjoy looking through the list of what people have added in the last 24-48 hours in one list - how do I do that now?  It looks like a lot of small lists by category?

[Andy :)]

Hi, the photo resolution is not as good as the old classifieds. Or I missed something.

[Guest]

3 minutes ago, Lowgroove said:

Initial browse of the new system - don't like it anywhere near as much.

 

I used to enjoy looking through the list of what people have added in the last 24-48 hours in one list - how do I do that now?  It looks like a lot of small lists by category?

 

 

As mentioned previously, there is a lot of styling still to be done. One of those tasks is colour coding those buttons so they are easier to distinguish from one another.

But how you browse is exactly the reason we put that button in.

 

We learned that many people browse the Classifieds in very different ways. I believe we have catered for each of those ways in the new system, including ways that were not possible under the old system.

[Guest]

3 minutes ago, Andy said:

Hi, the photo resolution is not as good as the old classifieds. Or I missed something.

 

I don't believe there have been any changes in that regard, as the core image handling has not changed (uses the same engine). It could be that the resolution of the latest ads is just low. One thing we are investigating though is that once you click on an image and it pops up, a way to click arrows to simply cycle through them. This is a bug in the forums themselves, and not our development but we hope to fix that soon.

[Ars Paart]

I really like it, so many more categories, so many ways to filter/sort the information. 

 

One thing I *don't* like is RRP as a field on the form. It is probably just me, I just don't like it in ads for used equipment - was it the original RRP when it was bought 15 years ago? Or the current RRP for a unit 5 years old? It just isn't relevant, although I think it's very appropriate for discounted new or demo stock (or perhaps used near-new equipment), but that's it.

 

But of course 3 million other people will disagree with me, and that's fine. I will just ignore it. 

 

[Guest]

1 minute ago, Ars Paart said:

One thing I *don't* like is RRP as a field on the form. It is probably just me, I just don't like it in ads for used equipment - was it the original RRP when it was bought 15 years ago? Or the current RRP for a unit 5 years old? It just isn't relevant, although I think it's very appropriate for discounted new or demo stock (or perhaps used near-new equipment), but that's it.

 

 

It was being included in many of the ads in the old system anyway, so we thought to include it in the new as a dedicated field. I'm neither here nor there, but think it's only relevant to "current" products. The more information, the better IMO. However it is not a required field so will be left out of many ads.

 

It was already suggested to us this morning that field should be attached to a "Year" which is a good idea. But my guess is that 95% of members wouldn't have a clue what year it's relevant to. Probably best not to expand on that one. Let's see how it goes - the RRP field can always be removed later if its more trouble than its worth.

[lazarian]

56 minutes ago, Andy said:

Hi, the photo resolution is not as good as the old classifieds. Or I missed something.

Yeah I'm seeing the same. I think the issue isn't in the underlying image on the server, rather it's the full page image viewer system I'd assume not pulling up the full res version in it's viewer, and instead using the hover over preview image.. or something like that

Edited May 1, 2024 by lazarian
clarified things

[Willmax]

Are the old classifieds listings going to be available for archival/historical search purpose? That would be good if at all possible.

[Guest]

9 minutes ago, lazarian said:

Yeah I'm seeing the same. I think the issue isn't in the underlying image on the server, rather it's the full page image viewer system I'd assume not pulling up the full res version in it's viewer, and instead using the hover over preview image.. or something like that

 

Will be looking into this one further later today to see if it can be improved.

[Guest]

3 minutes ago, Willmax said:

Are the old classifieds listings going to be available for archival/historical search purpose? That would be good if at all possible.

 

Absolutely.

[Darryl]

1 hour ago, Marc said:

 

I don't believe there have been any changes in that regard, as the core image handling has not changed (uses the same engine). It could be that the resolution of the latest ads is just low. One thing we are investigating though is that once you click on an image and it pops up, a way to click arrows to simply cycle through them. This is a bug in the forums themselves, and not our development but we hope to fix that soon.

I was just about to ask about missing left and right arrows but you're already aware of it

 

When I click on one of the smaller pics, not the main pic, can that pop up as a large pic rather than being added to the top and then having to click on it again for the pop up?.

Hope that makes sense! 

 

[Guest]

3 minutes ago, Darryl said:

When I click on one of the smaller pics, not the main pic, can that pop up as a large pic rather than being added to the top and then having to click on it again for the pop up?.

 

 

Makes perfect sense. We're on it. Don't expect any changes for around 14 hours as the main developer (Brazil) is now sleeping after we did a marathon session last night going live. But there are definitely some improvements that can be made on the image handling.

Personally, I've never liked "hover zoom" over images. I'd rather do away with that altogether, and click to open in a bigger window and then cycle through the images. Rest assured all, we will get the image handling functioning nicer.

[Darryl]

2 minutes ago, Marc said:

 

Personally, I've never liked "hover zoom" over images. I'd rather do away with that altogether, and click to open in a bigger window and then cycle through the images. Rest assured all, we will get the image handling functioning nicer.

I'm with you on that.

[rantan]

This is probably abundantly clear to everyone except myself, but what has happened to listings which were placed more than a week in the past?

When I clicked on"view all ads" a list of about six ads came up.

 

Thanks for putting up with a fool.