68 Classifieds Blog

Site Showcase - Boating Swap Shop

1. Can you tell us a little about your site.

BoatingSwapShop.com is a free classified website catering to buyers and sellers looking for used boats, pwc’s or other marine parts and services. We are new and exciting, no more wasting your time looking at those boring classified text ads.

2. What made you choose 68 Classifieds?

After months of research looking for classified software, I came across 68 classifieds. Then, trying the demo, I noticed the ease of use. Upon researching the product more, I found a great customer support team and then the forum. It was exactly what I was looking for and I decided to make the purchase.

3. What was the easiest part in building this site?

Most definitely the installation. I had 68 classifieds install the software directly to my hosting service. They emailed me my login and password within minutes. Very easy!

4. What was the hardest part?

The hardest part, and still is, is learning all the html/coding to customize my site. Don’t get me wrong, 68 classifieds provides a lot of extra options so you can customize your site, but I am always looking for more.

5. Any additional details you would like to share?

There are not very many products I recommend. But, if your looking for a classified site to build with, 68 classifieds is the one. We already have plans laid out for several classified sites and I will be using 68 classifieds for those as well!

Would you like your site showcased? Click here to find out how

ClickHeat - Javascript Clicks heatmap

ClickHeat is a visual heatmap of clicks on a HTML page, showing hot and cold click zones.

A very cool web application I found over the weekend is ClickHeat. By installing ClickHeat it will generate a page preview and show the area that have had the most clicks and where people are clicking.

One of the advantages to this system compared to Google Analytics is you can see the actual place a person has clicked. For example if you have two links pointing to the same file then GA treats it as the same where as ClickHeat shows the actual location of the click.

Here is a screenshot of an example:

Installation

Installation of ClickHeat is very simple and easy. Just upload the files and follow the onscreen directions. It did have some confusing options in the security section but other than that it was dead simple.

After you have it installed then just add their javascript to your page. If you are installing for a 68 Classifieds site be sure and follow the directions here for adding javascript to the template files.

New Documentation Section

Today we are releasing a new documentation section to our main 68 Classifieds website. Instead of using the knowledge base system we are now moving to a wiki. Specifically Dokuwiki.

Commenting

New to this system is documentation commenting. So you can login with forum credentials and ad comments to documentation pages. This will hopefully be used to share tips and tricks with that section.

Editing

Since this system is a wiki once you login with your forum login you can edit the wiki pages. Only moderators and administrators can add new pages but if you see spot something that doesn’t make sense you can freely change it.

Layout

I have converted all the documentation over to this wiki and it is currently setup in 6 sections:

• Installation & Upgrading
• Administration Control Panel
• Templates
• License Question and Answers
• Troubleshooting
• Developer Documentation

Future Plans

In the future I have plans to add links from each individual page in the administration to it’s documentation page. That way if you need help with a feature it is just one click away.

We are always looking for ways to improve and if you have any ideas to make it even better please do not hesitate to let us know.

Site Showcase - Closeout Floor Samples

1. Can you tell us a little about your site.

We designed Closeout Floor Samples to cater to small business, or to anyone who makes a product. Our site allows people to list their items or services and add a link to their website. We want small business or anyone with a great product to be successful. We also want to show the consumer that they can get a great deal from their local businesses.

Many people don’t realize that small business is the backbone of our country. Yes, large corporations have a lot of clout, but if we were to take a look at the whole business community, small business owners far outweigh the corporate name brand companies. What this means is that there are a lot of local shops in your back yard with great products and services. Closeout Floor Samples wants to help the consumer find the best deal around from businesses in their local area. This allows the community to grow stronger through a network of interrelations. We want the best for the small business owner and their community!
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PHP 4 End of Life - Server Upgrade

PHP has recently released v4.4.9 and that is going to be the last release of the PHP v4.x line. Our current server is still running on PHP 4 and we are planning on upgrading it on September 1st.

This means if you are hosted customer running any other scripts besides 68 Classifieds you need to make sure they will work with PHP 5. 68 Classifieds is designed to work with PHP 4.3 all the way through the latest PHP 5.x release. So you will not have to worry about our script continuing to work.

Hurray we are finally coming out of the dark age.

911 Classifieds

What made you decide to create a public safety classifieds site?

911 Classifieds is an online classified advertising service for public safety professionals. My mission is to give public safety employees (Police, Fire/Rescue, EMS) on the local, state and federal level, a valuable tool for getting rid of their unwanted equipment. As an actively working police officer, I know that working in a public safety career can be very expensive. Every day new equipment, technology and gadgets are being presented to public safety employees. Often we will buy the new gear so we can maintain that operational advantage in the field. The problem I was experiencing, and I know many other public safety professionals experience, is what are we supposed to do with the gear that has been replaced? From my experience, it typically ends up in a closet or in a box somewhere.
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