Creating registered user benefits

We want to add a classified ads service to our existing club web site, but we need the ads package to provide some kind of benefit to club members over the general public, so, to be able to post an ad you have to already have a membership subscription to our club (club subscriptions are handled by a separate manual admin process but we assume that we can add a code or reference to the 68 Classified signup process so that users of the ad system can indicate they are club members rather than general public).

We haven't fully worked out what the benefits to club members could be though, it's hard to envisage without first hand experience of 68 Classifieds. For example, would it be possible for classified items only to be visible to logged-in members for the first 7 days, and then to guests for the rest of the time? Or at the very least, prevent any guests from buying an item until they are registered as club members, or charging a small fee to non-members, etc. - other suggestions welcome. Would it also be possible to pull out a list of half a dozen "classified items ending soon" to add to an existing web page to entice people to hop over to the ads section?
Thanks
Martin

[Mike-N-Tosh +]

In the admin of 68 Classifieds, you can control which user groups can view what. On my site, I don't show any seller information whatsoever to a Guest or anyone not logged in. They also can not contact the owner. I put text in there that says, you must be registered and logged in to view seller information or contact the seller with a link to log in.

Hope that helps!

-Mike

Thanks that sounds good. What about the possiblity to pull out a list of top / ending soon ads, can that be done?

[Lhotch +]

Originally Posted by Unregistered

Thanks that sounds good. What about the possiblity to pull out a list of top / ending soon ads, can that be done?

There are plugins (single line you add to a template) to show most popular ads, new ads, featured ads etc. I dont think there is one for ads about to expire however but it would be fairly eay to use one of the existing plugins as a start and just modify the database query to turn it into an "almost expired" plugin.

Great, sounds like all boxes ticked, many thanks.
Cheers
Martin

Originally Posted by Mike-N-Tosh

In the admin of 68 Classifieds, you can control which user groups can view what. On my site, I don't show any seller information whatsoever to a Guest or anyone not logged in. They also can not contact the owner. I put text in there that says, you must be registered and logged in to view seller information or contact the seller with a link to log in.

Hope that helps!

-Mike

Having now got a copy of the software, I'm looking at this point again and seeing that you can control what user groups can *view*, but not what they can *do*. For example I was wondering if we could lock out certain types of user from being able to sell, but only to buy. Is this possible?

[Lhotch +]

Yes, you can by wrapping the links of items you want to restrict with smarty code to only display these items to users of certain groups. For example.....

{if $smarty.session.level==6 || $smarty.session.level==1}
you menu item here
{/if}

The above code would only allow users in the group 1 or 6 to see the page details between the {if} tags.

OK - I have absolutely no knowledge of smarty templates so I'd need some help with this. Essentially this is (I think) how we will set this up: Anyone can register on the site, but by default, all "place an ad" links are hidden. As part of the registration process they have to enter their (real world) club membership number in an additional information field. All new site registrations would be moderated so that the validity of this number can be manually checked on an external system. If approved, the members will go in to a user group within the 68 application, which then displays all the "place an ad" links.

The idea being that sellers have the largest possible audience for their items, but folk who have some stuff to sell have to join the real-world club first. In how many places would I need to change templates, to facilitate this - is it a big job?

Also, unless I am missing something, am I right in saying that there is no "Buy Now" function that closes the item and contacts the seller with payment details? The buyer and seller have to make their own purchase agreement by email or phone, and the seller manually closes the item afterwards?

Thanks in advance!

[Lhotch +]

Originally Posted by Martin Kay

OK - I have absolutely no knowledge of smarty templates so I'd need some help with this. Essentially this is (I think) how we will set this up: Anyone can register on the site, but by default, all "place an ad" links are hidden. As part of the registration process they have to enter their (real world) club membership number in an additional information field. All new site registrations would be moderated so that the validity of this number can be manually checked on an external system. If approved, the members will go in to a user group within the 68 application, which then displays all the "place an ad" links.

The idea being that sellers have the largest possible audience for their items, but folk who have some stuff to sell have to join the real-world club first. In how many places would I need to change templates, to facilitate this - is it a big job?

I think just two places in the layout.tpl template.

Originally Posted by Martin Kay

Also, unless I am missing something, am I right in saying that there is no "Buy Now" function that closes the item and contacts the seller with payment details? The buyer and seller have to make their own purchase agreement by email or phone, and the seller manually closes the item afterwards?

Thanks in advance!

Correct, they is no "buy now" function. 68C is a classifieds software designed for the listing of items that are for sale. Providing the means to accept payment etc opens a whole new can of worms.

OK thanks on both points. I am guessing that there are other packages out there that offer the "close the deal" functionality but as you say that gets a whole lot more complicated (and thus the software more expensive) - the alternative being an auction package, but we didn't want to go that way.