Search by acreage, larger pictures by categories

[ryanreed71 +]

I think I will be ready to buy two more packages in a few weeks. One of the sites will be for real estate. Can you create a way to search by acreage? For example: I would want to choose a range of properties that I am looking for. If I am interested in around 50 acres, I would want to search for everything between 40 and 60 acres or eveything over 50 acres.

I would also like to place larger pictures to represent the categories and have the category name appear below the picture. Is it possible for these modifications to be done prioe to my purchase.

Thanks,

Ryan

[Lhotch +]

Originally Posted by ryanreed71

I think I will be ready to buy two more packages in a few weeks. One of the sites will be for real estate. Can you create a way to search by acreage? For example: I would want to choose a range of properties that I am looking for. If I am interested in around 50 acres, I would want to search for everything between 40 and 60 acres or eveything over 50 acres.

Programatically speaking the problem with this kind of offering is that in order to effectively search for something you have to have control over how data is entered.

For example, lets say you have an extra field defined to hold "acreage". Customer A comes along and in the acreage fields puts in a value of "1.24A". Customer B comes abong and puts in "1 and a quarter acre" and customer C comes along and puts in a value of "1-1/4 Acre"

Now a site visitor comes along and does a search, what doe he enter in the search field? and what will be returned?

In situations like this the best thing to do is control what the ad poster can enter and in turn what the site visitor can enter to search. This way you can make sure the ad poster and the ad searcher are using the same "values". On the front end, things may not seem as pretty BUT in the long run it makes the site much more usable and the searches will actually provide accurate data.

With the above in mind, what I would do is simply create an extra field with a drop down option box for acreage and then create a bunch of predefined acreage values for the ad poster to chose when they place the ad.

Then when a visitor hits the site they will be presented this same list of values and their search will have meaning and be consistent.

Originally Posted by ryanreed71

I would also like to place larger pictures to represent the categories and have the category name appear below the picture.

In all the time I have been here I have never heard any one ask for a larger category image. To modify this all you should have to do is make one number change in the script that does the category creation so this would require you to buy the developer version. As for changing where text displays is relationship to the category image, this should involve only a simple template change.

Originally Posted by ryanreed71

Is it possible for these modifications to be done prioe to my purchase.

Thanks,

Ryan

These requests are not something that I think would benefit the community as a whole so likely wont be included in the public release of the script. This means that you would have to make these modifications yourself or hire someone to do it. This is of course just my opinion and 68C may think otherwise.

[ryanreed71 +]

Thanks for the help. I like the drop down box idea. I was thinking of something similar, but I like your idea better.