V4.1.x Gauging interest level

Greetings all,

I am trying to gauge interest in a product offering that I am considering. As I specialize in the customization of 68 Classifieds sites, I have been keeping quite a library of what I call re-usable code as I get several requests for similar items frequently.

The product that I am considering is a Smarty Plugin Enhancement Pack. This would be in the form of one module that would contain several smarty plugins. The smarty plugins would be able to be used/called from within any template file as any smarty plugin can be used. In addition, smarty plugins can used multiple times within the same template file.

Here's what the "Smarty Plugin Enhancement Pack" would contain:
Feeds
The feeds plugin would allow you to place an RSS or Atom feed (e.g. news feed) in your template. As an example, you could put the latest blog articles on your home page. This is what you see in 2 instances at the bottom of your Administration dashboard page for the 68 Classifieds "Announcements" the latest listings from the "Classifiedmods.com" site. This allows you to put as many feeds as you want. Of course supports all of the expected settings, such as how many articles are displayed, whether the links open in a new window, options to limit the number of characters in the title as well as the article too (e.g. truncate). It also uses the cache folder to reduce extra unnecessary traffic and requests.

Extra Fields Pro
Similar, but much more powerful than the default "get extra fields" plugin that comes with 68 Classifieds, which simply gets the value of the field for the listing.

This plugin is very smart and puts you in complete control of the output. This is extremely useful to customize your showlisting template(s) (this is from search results and browsing a category) and the viewlisting templates which shows the individual listing.

The plugin gets both the field name as well as the value! If the value is empty, it outputs nothing (no more of Field name: and blank! for a non-required field!). This supports different output styles as well. Want it in a table row so it matches the default in the viewlisting template? <tr><td>field name:</td><td>field value</td></tr> DONE! What about those checkbox fields that outputs those UGLY "|" (pipes) plus an extra one at the end? value1|value2|value3|| GONE! Instead let's get something readable, like this: value1, value2, value3. Or perhaps you'd prefer a list? It does that too.

What about a text area field? Output it to a block of text similar to the description. Like this:
Field Name:
Here's all the text that the seller put in the text box field.....

Category List
Ever see the way that eBay classifieds or Gumtree shows their categories on the home page? You can do that with this plugin instead of that ugly table output in the default home page. Put in the Category id and it outputs the Parent category including the category pic if you have one (optional, of course) then puts all of the subcategories in a nice list underneath the parent category.

Listings Gallery
This plugin is used to replace the "Featured Listings" that displays on the home page, but again can be used in any template file. Supports all of the parameters that the default listings plugin offers, BUT also much more. Including proportional resizing of the thumbnail images, CSS output in divs, no ugly undefined table cells, truncating of the title, "Smart" price field (you can not show price OR only show it if it's not 0 per listing automatically)

So, does something like this interest you? Would you like to see this offered? Is there something else you would like to see offered with this? What would this be worth to you?

Thank you in advance for any comments, input, questions and suggestions.

Regards,
Mike-N-Tosh™

I am moving off the thread topic a bit but after the next poster can come back

Metrony: you are running a property site and there is a way to do this properly. Most real estate agents have back office systems that deliver XML feeds of all their properties. There are probably 20 or 30 different formats in common use across those agents. At least 5 major back office systems.

Republishing RSS feeds is just junk and will do nothing for your search engine rankings if not harm them. The issue is that there are many different structures (import needs) and these need to be customized to your site (categories and extrafields). It can be done but it is labour intensive to start (setup) and requires reasonable knowledge of the module software to do it when the format of the feed is different (i.e. agents produce different xml feeds depending on the back office system they use - probably 20 or 30 in common use). I used to do this on one site with 15 different feed types but now I decided to work just with two agents only and not maintain all those different structures.

We can talk about it but it is a business requiring investment and lots of time. The investment is substantial and maintenance is ongoing. It also requires custom work every time you come across an agent using a different back office system producing a different feed. The major property portals have most of these already and that is why the agents use them.

Thinking maybe I should rename this to "Smarty Pants"

I'm still trying to decide if it's worth the time needed to finish it up for release. There has only been 4 replies, one of which is a solicitation trying to sell something else in my thread. So, I'm still undecided at this point.

I only posted again in an attempt to bring focus back to the thread. The interest gauge has barely moved.

Anyone else have any interest???

Thank you to those that did respond in this thread regarding the possibility of the development of this module. I do appreciate it.

Unfortunately, due to the lack of positive response, I have decided against spending additional time to develop this as a module as I don't really see enough of a return of invested time to continue with it.

For any that may be interested in the possibility of purchasing individual Smarty plugins that I listed, feel free to contact me directly and I'm sure we can work something out. The only one that I don't have available is the "Listings Gallery" as I have not added the additional features to it that I was planning on developing.

Thanks again.

I have closed this thread.