When you want to gather more information about a customer's listing, you create an 'Extra Field' and relate it to a category. For example, if you have a “Houses for Sale” category and a “Land for Sale” category, you could create extra fields named “Acreage”, “Bedrooms” and “Bathrooms”. The “Acreage” extra field would probably be a single-line text field so that a decimal number could be input by the lister. The “Bedrooms” text field could be a drop-down list because houses have a “whole number” quantity of Bedrooms (1, 2, 3, etc.). The “Bathrooms” extra field could be a drop-down list as well. However, it's possible for a home to have a “half-bath” (without a shower) so the choices should be 1, 1.5, 2, 2.5, etc.

The “Acreage” extra field would apply to both the “Land for Sale” category and the “Houses for Sale” category and you would assign each field to the appropriate category.

A large variety of extra fields can be created based on your categories or your website's target market…. Automobiles, Boats, Airplanes, Job Listings, etc.

This section covers instructions for creating a new drop-down list or check-box list.

Field Name

Enter a title for the field.

Field type

Choose either “Drop down list” or “Checkboxes” depending on what type of field you would like to add.

Field seen in listing

If you would like the information to appear in an ad's listing, choose “Yes”, otherwise choose “No”. An example of a field listing that you may want to create but not show up on an ad's page may be a “How did you find us?” field. It will then show up when the customer registers but won't show up in the customer's listing.

Required

If you want to force your customer to provide information in the field, choose “Yes” otherwise choose “No”. If nothing is entered in the field, a warning message will pop up warning the customer of the requirement.

Field Searchable

If you would like the field to be included in searches, choose “Yes” otherwise choose “No”.

Please select which categories use this field

When you create a field, you may want to associate the field with a few of your categories. Select which categories this field will be assigned to here. Hold down your “Ctrl” key to select multiple categories.

The text-option extra field button allows you to create one of the following fields: text single line, text multi line, file upload, or a date field.

Field Name

Enter a title for the field.

Field type

Choose which type you would like to use.

• Text Single Line - This is a single line text field.
• Text Multi Line - This is a multi line text field.
• File Upload - This creates a file upload field allowing users to upload a file.
• Date Field - This creates a pop up calendar for the field allowing the user to select a date.

Field seen in listing

If you would like the information to appear in an ad's listing, choose “Yes”, otherwise choose “No”. An example of a field listing that you may want to create but not show up on an ad's page may be a “How did you find us?” field. It will then show up when the customer registers but won't show up in the customer's listing.

Field Default Value if any

(Optional) You can enter a few words to use as a prompt for your customer.

Required

If you want to force your customer to provide information in the field, choose “Yes” otherwise choose “No”. If nothing is entered in the field, a warning message will pop up warning the customer of the requirement.

Field Searchable

If you would like the field to be included in searches, choose “Yes” otherwise choose “No”.

Range

If you have selected the field to be searchable and it is a number field then you can assign a range to the search page. It works by creating two select boxes both start at the min value and go the max value. It increments by the step value you enter. Please note: The range is only used on the search page and you still have to enter the options so users can select the correct value when placing a listing.

Please select which categories use this field

When you create a field, you may want to associate the field with a few of your categories. Select which categories this field will be assigned to here. Hold down your “Ctrl” key to select multiple categories.

It's possible for your customers to add a video to their listing by using the Extra Field system. The first step in allowing customers to add video to their listings is to create an Extra Field as outlined elsewhere on the page.

It would probably be best to create a 'multi-line text field' so that the entire “embed” code from a video hosting site (like YouTube and Vimeo) can be seen by the customer when it's pasted to the field.

The next step is to make sure that you include the html tags used in the “embed” code in the “Allowed Tags” field within administration. This is done by:

• logging into administration
• navigate to “Settings » Settings » Checkout Settings”
• at the bottom of the page, add the html tags you want to allow. For example, YouTube's embed code uses: object, param and embed tags.

Once you have successfully created the extra field and added the allowed tags, your customers will be able to paste the “embed” code from a video hosting site.

The advanced parent child select list is complicated to set up but does give you more power to associate fields to each other.

Some examples for reasons to use this type of fields could be make → model options for cars, or state → city for realestate ads. But you can use your imagination and create these for all sorts of sites.

In this example we will be using cars with a make model choice, but again this can be changed to whatever suits your site.

1. We recommend creating the child fields first that way you only have to add/edit the parent one time. So create a new child option named Ford Model and enter all the Ford models. Then save and you will be returned to the main extra fields page.
2. Now create another child option named Toyota Model and enter the Toyota models then click submit.
3. After you hit submit you will again be returned to the main extra fields page with a list of all the extra fields.
4. From this screen get the id number of the two fields you just created. We will say these are number 1 and 2 respectively.
5. Now create a new parent option named Make and enter Ford and Toyota as the options. Beside each one of these you will see an input field which is where you would enter the child id from the previous screen. So in our case we would enter Ford 1 and Toyota 2.
6. Please keep in mind that a parent option must relate to a child and can not relate to another parent. It will only go one level deep.