How to use the Dealer Car Search ebay posting tool. Overview. Creating your settings

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1 How to use the Dealer Car Search ebay posting tool Overview The Dealer Car Search ebay posting tool is designed to allow you to easily create an auction for a vehicle that has been loaded into Dealer Car Search. Creating your settings If this is your first time using the ebay posting tool you will automatically be directed to the settings page. This is where you will enter your ebay account information and set your posting preferences. This page will allow you to authorize the posting tool to send information to ebay on your behalf. The authorization is done by creating a special token (an encrypted phrase) that is exchanged during the posting process. From time to time this token may expire and you will have to re-authorize your account. When the token expires you will be redirected back to the settings page. You cannot post a vehicle until your account has been given a valid token. Figure 1: The Settings Screen Authorizing your account There are several steps to authorize an account. First you will need to enter your ebay seller account and click the Authorize on ebay link. (This will launch a new window as seen in figure 2.) Figure 2: Signing in to your ebay Account

2 After you have entered your username and password and signed in, you will need to press the I Agree button as pictured in Figure 3. Figure 3: The ebay Authorization Page After you press I agree you will see a screen with a Close Window button. You will need to press the Close Window button and return to the previous screen. Viewing the vehicle list on the inventory page This page lists your entire inventory. As you move your mouse over the grid you will see a thumbnail image of your vehicle and a summary of the auction if the vehicle has been posted to ebay. (The summary will be empty if you haven't posted the vehicle.) Clicking on a vehicle will take you to the page where you can post your vehicle and review your vehicles posting history. This list can be searched and sorted. Sorting the list The list can be sorted by clicking on a column heading (and sorted in reverse order by clicking the same column again).

3 Searching the list The list can be searched by typing in the search row. You can type all or just part of a word to find it in the list. When the list is "filtered" you will also see the "Clear" button which will allow you to clear your search and return the full list. Paging through the list In order to maintain speedy performance, the entire list may not be displayed all at once. You can move through the list by choosing the page you want to view at the bottom of the list. Posting to ebay To post an item, simply click on the first column of any item that hasn t already been posted. This will take you to the publish screen. All of the matching information for the vehicle will be filled in. The system will attempt to match both make and model (there is no trim level). In some cases an exact match may not be found. In these cases, you will have to compromise and use the next best possible match. This list is controlled by ebay and cannot be modified. This issue will usually crop up when the vehicle is an older model. For instance, Ford LTD is not available so the you would have to choose something like Fairlane and then just make sure that the vehicle title contains the right make and model. In general most of the fields will be filled in except for vehicle warranty and vehicle type.

4 Most of the time, you should be able to post a vehicle by filling in these two fields and clicking Post Vehicle to ebay. After you click post you will be returned to the list page Viewing a posted vehicle or re-listing a previously posted vehicle Once a vehicle is posted they will need to login directly to ebay to modify the auction or make changes to the vehicle. If the auction on a vehicle should expire then it can be relisted from our posting tool. The actual post on ebay can be viewed by clicking the Go to ebay link in the list. Custom Templates Note: This is an advanced feature. If you are not familiar with HTML then you should be using the standard templates provided by Dealer Car Search. If you have selected the advanced mode in settings you will have access to the Templates menu. This will allow you to create your own custom templates. Creating a custom template is simple if you know html. You will need to review the custom template tags, but you can enter a custom template into the system. The following parameters need to be entered when creating a custom template: Template Name This is the name for your template. This name may not include any special characters or spaces. The template name is limited to numbers and letters (both upper and lowercase). Width This is the width of the page. We do not recommend a width larger than 800. Height This is the height of template. We do not recommend a height above 800.

5 Comment Length If comments appear on your template, this will limit the length of the comments. On some templates a large block of comments can cause the page to be stretched and may result in images that are cut off. A setting of "0" is assumed to be no limit and all of the comments will always be displayed. Number of Photos This is the number of photos that this template requires. Html Template This is the coded html template. This is the Html code and our special tags which are filled in from current data on a vehicle. Template Preview The preview button allows you to preview your template. You can choose the size of your preview image and then click the preview button to see a sample image using your template. (The preview uses the first item in inventory with photos.) Custom Templates - How it works The template system is based on standard HTML. The system recognizes a specific set of tags (listed below in Appendix A) that it will search for and replace with data that is already in the system. The system would find a template tag like "[Year]" and replace it with "1999' or whatever the actual year is on the selected vehicle. After the system replaces all of the tags then it generates a new html document. This document is the one sent as the Description for ebay. When you develop your template you should create the template with all of the text and images in place and then go back and replace the appropriate potions of the template with the template tags (As pictured below). View of the Finished Image View of the Raw Template

6 When you have finished the template you may add it to our system by copying and pasting the template code into the field provided. Template Fields The template system works by identifying special template tags which are replaced by data from the system. The following list is the tags that are recognized by the system. These tags should be typed EXACTLY as they appear here. Tag [DealerName] [DealerPhone] [Price] [Title] [Year] [Make] [Model] [Trim] [VIN] [Transmission] [ExteriorColor] [DriveTrain] [InteriorType] [InteriorColor] [DealerStreet] [DealerState] [DealerCity] [DealerZip] [Location] [StockNumber] Description The Dealership name The Dealership Phone The retail Price of a vehicle. This can be changed on each post, but it will default to whatever is in the database. A special field that is the combined value of year, make, model and trim of the car. The vehicle year The vehicle make The vehicle model The vehicle s trim level The vehicle s vin The transmission type of the vehicle (i.e. "Automatic") The exterior color of the vehicle The vehicle Drive Train (AWD, 4wd, RWD, etc.) The vehicle Interior type The interior color of the vehicle The dealer s street address The dealer s state The dealer s city The dealer s zip code The location specified in the Craigslist settings The vehicle s stock number

7 [PrimaryContact] [Comments] [Website] [WebsiteUrl] [ ] [Image1,x,y] [Thumb1,x,y] [TitleColor] The dealership s primary contact The comments from the vehicle The website address The website URL. This is the website pre-pended with the This tag would be appropriate to use in an "<a href>>" The primary contact s address for the dealership This tag is a little bit different than the other tags. You can specify images 1 through 60 and the image width and height. This normal image size is 640x480 so we do not recommend setting a width or height above the normal size as it will reduce the quality of the image. You should be careful to make sure the width and height specified on your images are proportional to the normal image size or your images can become stretched. For example if you want to use the first image at a size of 320x240 then you would use the tag "[Image1,320,240]". This tag is also a little bit different than the other tags. For every image on the server there is a corresponding thumbnail image. The thumbnail images are best to use when you need small images in the template. You can specify images 1 through 60 and the image width and height. This normal image size is 120x90 so we do not recommend setting a width or height above the normal size as it will reduce the quality of the image. You should be careful to make sure the width and height specified on your images are proportional to the normal image size or your images can become stretched. For example if you want to use the first image at a size of 120x90 then you would use the tag "[Thumb1,120,90]". While the label says "Title" this doesn't have to apply to the title. It's simply a color that can be set by anyone using the posting tool before the template is created. If you want your template to be able to change colors automatically then this is one of the 2 color choices you can use. [BackgroundColor] While the label says "BackgroundColor" this doesn't have to apply to the title. It's simply a color that can be set by anyone using the posting tool before the template is created. If you want your template to be able to change colors automatically then this is one of the 2 color choices you can use.

8 Appendix A - Supported Tags HTML Tag h1 h2 h3 h4 h5 h6 strong em u b i strike sup sub font blockquote ul ol li p address pre div hr br Supported Attributes color, size, face dir, class, align, dir align, id,

9 a span img table td tr style head body html title meta href, target, name align, src, alt, title, border, width, height width, border, cellpadding, cellspacing, align, style, bgcolor, class class, width, align, bgcolor, style, valign, colspan, height, width, align, bgcolor, valign, rowspan, height bgcolor, leftmargin, topmargin, marginwidth, marginheight http-equiv, content