OxyClassifieds Handbook

Transcription

1 OxyClassifieds Handbook OxyClassifieds Team Web:

2 OxyClassifieds Handbook by OxyClassifieds Team Copyright WARNING AND DISCLAIMER This book provides informations about installation and configuration of OxyClassifieds script. We made efforts to make this book as complete and as acurate as possible but not warranty or fitness is implied. THIS DOCUMENT IS PROVIDED "AS IS" WITH NO WARRANTIES, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO ANY IMPLIED WARRANTY OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE, NON-INFRINGEMENT OF INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY RIGHTS, OR ANY WARRANTY OTHERWISE ARISING OUT OF ANY INSTRUCTION, GUIDANCE, PROPOSAL, SPECIFICATION, OR SAMPLE. WE ASSUMES NO RESPONSIBILITY FOR ANY ERRORS CONTAINED IN THIS DOCUMENT AND WE HAS NO LIABILITIES OR OBLIGATIONS FOR ANY DAMAGES ARISING FROM OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE USE OF THIS DOCUMENT. This book includes configuration instructions for OxyClassifieds version 7 To see the script in action, please visit Live Demo section at:

3 Table of Contents Introduction...v 1 Administrator Panel Interface Statistics Listings Manage Listings Listing Plans Coupons Users Users List User Groups User Subscriptions Send Bulk s Saved Searches Alerts Messages Orders Order History Security Login History Blocked IPs Blocked s Change Password Forbidden Words Tools Custom Pages Database Google Sitemap RSS Import/Export Image Tools Banners Manage Banners Banners Settings Settings Settings Manage Categories Fieldsets Listing Custom Fields User Custom Fields Languages Modules Area Search Comments Loan Calculator Tag Cloud...54 iii

4 1.9.5 Browse by Location Browse by Car Make Similar Ads Meta extension News Compare listings Ratings Connect Social Networks List Dealers Page Banners location Templates Templates Editor CSS Editor Language Editor Mail Templates Info Templates Logout FAQ Extended information Search Engine Optimization Features Meta information Search engine friendly URLs - URL Rewriting Pending Approval Explained Pending approval for listings Pending approval for plans (subscriptions) Pending approval for accounts How to setup fieldsets, categories and fields - Example Steps to set up your script How to configure your site for Location Filter and Location Subdomains...72 iv

5 Introduction The script we describe in this document is a PHP and MySQL application (script) that can be installed on a Web server, allowing you to quickly setup your own Classifieds website. Installation of the script can be done in few minutes. Also our team can help, installing the script, for free. After the installation process you will have to configure the script with the aid of the Administrator Panel. This documentation describes in detail the configurations you are able to change in the script using this tool. v

6 To login as administrator use the Login link from frontend navigation bar. Same link will be used to login as user and as administrator. The difference is that when you login with administrator user you will be redirected to the Administrator Panel. Also, when you are logged in as administrator, the site front-end will show a link towards the Administrator Panel interface on the navigation bar. This link is not visible unless you are logged in as administrator user. We will continue describing each of the Administrator Panel sections. 1.1 Statistics Will show you some quick information on your system. Last Login - Last login date and IP from which administrator logged in. A more detailed login history can be seen in Security / Login History section. Listings - Some stats on current listings. You will find the number of listings for different listing classes: active, expired, pending, featured, highlighted, listings with a priority, video listings and the total hits for all listings. Users - Some stats on the users that are in the system: total users, active and inactive users, users with ads, with dealer page or bulk uploads enabled. Latest Registered Users - If there are users registered on your system, latest 6 registered will be shown here. Latest Subscriptions - If you have defined subscription based plans, here will be listed latest 6 registered subscriptions. System Info - Some information about current script version, PHP, MySQL and GD graphic library installed versions. You have also the possibility to see php settings by clicking on the link next to View PHP Info Latest Added Listings - If there are listings added to the system, latest 6 listings will show. Latest Orders - Latest 6 orders that were made in your system. 1.2 Listings Manage Listings Will show the current listings in the system. It contains some elements that help you browse selectively or in a certain order, search or make operations on the listings. Same system will be found on other pages and we will not repeat these explanations for each of them. Action buttons When selected multiple listings, the action that represents the button will apply to all selected listings. Exception makes the Add listing button which will take you to a new listing form. You can select multiple listings by selecting the left side checkbox on the corresponding row. Add Listing - Will take you to listing submit form. Please see a description below. Delete All Selected - Selected listings will be deleted 1

7 Deactivate All Selected - Selected listings will be deactivated (disabled). Activate All Selected - Selected listings will be activated (enabled) if not already active. Pages navigator - navigate through listings pages if more than one Selective browsing and ordering form Listing type - you can choose a class of listings, for example Active listings - all listings that are active, Expired Listings - expired listings or listings that have an option enabled. Order - you can choose to order the listings by: date, listing price field, listing title and the number of hits. Order direction - choose ascendant or descendant order direction Listing search form - You will need to click on the Search button to display the search form. You will be able to search by certain fields like: id, keyword, username, , ip, category, plan and date. The results will appear in the listings table. Listings table For each listing will be shown some base information including an image thumbnail, some status buttons and you will have a set of icons that will perform actions on the corresponding listing. Status Buttons - show information about the listing status Active - the listing is active Inactive - the listing is inactive. Inactive listings are only visible for administrator and listing owner, but are not appearing for visitors or other users than the owner. Pending - the listing is pending or a pending action exists for the listing. When you mouse over the Pending button, a box will appear and show you information to which case Pending button refers to. There are some distinctive cases here: Only the listing is pending: the mouse over info box will show you just Pending Listing message. In this case, you can accept (activate) the listing by clicking either on the Pending status button, or on Enable icon Other actions refering to the listing are pending - if a user chooses to add an extra option to a listing, which by system settings requires to be manually accepted by administrator, that pending option will appear here as a pending action related to this ad. The name of the action will be added to the information box : Pending Featured, Pending Highlighted, Pending Priority or Pending Video When pending actions exist, when clicking on the Pending status button you will be taken to a modal window where you will have to choose (by checking a checkbox next to the action) which action you want to accept or reject. By accepting the pending action, the option that the action represents will become active for the listing. So if there is a Pending Featured action, the listing will become featured after accepting the action. Note: The pending button will not disappear, even if the listing is active when pending actions exist. Featured - appears when the listing has Featured extra option enabled. 2

8 Highlighted - appears when the listing has Highlighted extra option enabled. Video - appears when the listing has Video extra option enabled. Priority - appears when the listing has Priority extra option enabled. Action icons Chapter 1 Administrator Panel Interface There is a set of icons that appear for each listing to the right side of the table. Here is a list of these icons: Send - will open a window with an form. Send to the listing owner using this form. Edit - will take you to Edit Listing page Edit Photos - will take you to Edit Photos page Delete - delete the listing Enable / Disable - enable or disable the listing Modify Ad Settings - will open a modal window where you can change some listing settings: category, listing plan, expire date, and you can edit the extra options Mark as Sold / Unmark as Sold - mark the listing as sold or remove sold mark Mark as Rented / Unmark as Rented - mark the listing as rented or remove rented mark Renew - will only show for expired listings. This icon allow you to renew a listing. Block Ip - You can block the ip which this ad was posted with. Select number of listings to show on page By default only 10 ads will be shown on a page. Use this select box that is positioned below the listings table to choose a different number Submitting a new listing as administrator Click on Add button on top of listings table of Listings / Manage Listings section. You will be taken to a form with 5 steps. Choose Next button when you completed the current step. Choose Ad Settings - You must choose a category for your listing, a plan and a user to post the listing for. These fields are mandatory. Enter Ad Details - Fill in the form for the listing. The mandatory fields are marked, usually with a red star. Add Photos - Upload photos for your ad. Extra Options - You can choose extra options for the ad like Featured, Highlighted, Priority or Video Classifieds if these options are enabled and if they are not already included in the plan features. The options that are included are grayed and you will not be able to select them. Finish - Your ad submission is completed. You can review your ad details or options and go back to edit them if you want by clicking on the buttons Edit Listing, Edit Ad Options or Edit Photos. 3

9 1.2.2 Listing Plans Chapter 1 Administrator Panel Interface This section allows you to set the listing pricing system. Every ad must be attached to a listing plan. Here you will define if you want your ads to be paid or free, if you want your users to choose a listing plan every time they post ads or to post more ads after they attach a plan to their account (this system is called subscription). The listing plan will also define ad characteristics, like number of photos and words allowed, time until the listing expires, wether the ad should start with some extra options (Featured, Highlighted, Priority or Video Classifieds ) or not. Note: If you have only one listing plan defined, when posting ads this plan will be always considered by default and the section for choosing listing plans will be skiped. There are 2 types of ad plans that can be added: Ad Based plans and Subscription Based plans. Ad Based plans - are plans that are either free or paid plans, and when choosing this plan for their ads, the users can only add a single listing for this plan. If this plan is paid, then the result is that the user must pay every time when posting an ad to this plan. Subscription Based plans - once a user will buy a subscription, they can post multiple ads for that subscription. Use this type of plan for users that have large amounts of listings to post, like dealers. For both types of plans you can set the ad characteristics: description length, number of pictures, days until the ad expires (set 0 if you don t want the ad to expire). You must also set the amount that the user will be charged with, or 0 if you want to make the plan free (only for ad based plans). You can also choose that the plan includes some extra options, if you have them enabled: Featured, Highlighted, Priorities or Video Classifieds. The ads posted for this plan will have these features enabled by default and are included in the plan price. Another option that you have for both plan types is to set a number of times a plan can be used. For this, use the field Allow usage. Set this value to the number of times one listing plan can be used by one user, or by one ip address (in case this plan is used by not logged in guests ). This feature is useful if you want for example to give free the first listing on your site, but the next listinsg posted you want to be paid for. In this case you create one listing plan with the value for Allow usage set to 1. This value is set to 0 by default, which means that it can be used unlimited times. For subscription based plans you must also choose: No Ads - a number of ads for the plan (users will pay once and be able to set this number of ads until the subscription becomes inactive). Set this number to 0 for unlimited ads. Subscription Time - a number of days until subscription expires (do not mistake it for the other option, Number of Days. Number of days is the time until each ad expires, while Subscription Time is the number of days until the subscription expires). Set this to 0 for unlimited days. The subscription will expire when one of the 2 values reaches the limit: the number of ads reaches 0 (if it was not unlimited in the first place) or the time expires. If you have set in Settings / Listing Settings the option Send notification to user - Before listing expires with X days, then the user will be notified before the subscription expires, and will also be notified after expiration if the other option Send notification to user - When listing expired is set. Note: Subscription based plans must have a price greater than 0. These ad plans are always paid, and you will be given a warning if setting a 0 price. Note: Subscription based plans cannot be used for not logged in guests, only Ad Based plans can be used in this case. 4

10 For both ad plan types you have the possibility to add plans for all categories, for only one category or more than one categories. To choose for which categories the plan applies, when editing or adding a plan, next to Use plan for, choose Choose Categories radio button instead of All Categories - the default setting, and choose the categories you want from the list. When a user places an ad, based on the category the user chose for the ad, the list of available plans will be built with the plans that are set for all categories, or the ones that have the current category selected within the categories list. This way you can set different prices for different categories. You can also build plans special for some groups of users only. To do this, proceed like with the categories and choose from the groups list after choosing Choose User Groups option Coupons Coupons are a way of offering discounts to your customers, and are in fact small codes that once entered in the form when submitting an ad or buying an option from your site, the total to be paid will reduced with the value of the coupon. Coupons are a way of marketing your site. You can promote your site by offering coupons so people will try your services for free or a reduced price. You can send coupons by mail to a list of s that belong to possible clients, by posting banners or announcements to other sites containing the coupon code, and so on Adding a new coupon or editing an existing coupon To add a new coupon click the Add button on top of the coupons table. In case you want to edit an existing one, use the Edit icon in the coupons table. Here is the description for the form that follows: Code - you must enter the coupon code that users will enter on your site. The code should be simple to be easily remembered by your clients. Discount type - you can opt for either a fixed discount or a percent discount. When you choose Fixed discount, the exact amount that you enter in Discount box will be reduced, for example if you enter 2, $2 or 2 or 2 units of whatever currency you use for your site will be subtracted from the total sum. If you choose Percent, then the value in percents will be subtracted, for example if you enter 50, 50% of the total will be dropped. Note: For a percent discount type, you must NOT enter the percent sign in the box, just the number! Discount - the discount value that represents the fixed amount or percent of total sum. Available for - choose whether this coupon is valid for listing related operations (submitting ads, renewing ads, buying subscriptions or adding extra options) or for adding Dealer Page option to an account, or for both. Use by - you can choose here the user groups that you want this coupon to be valid for. If you want it to be used by any group, then leave the default option All User Groups checked. If you want only some user groups to use it, then choose Choose User Groups option and then from the multiselect box that will open choose the user groups. You can choose multiple groups. If you enabled posting ads without an account by checking Enable post without user account in Settings / General Settings section, then you will see appearing as a group Not logged in guests. This 5

11 group refers to posting ads without an account, and if you check this special group, then the coupon will be able to use by a not logged in ad owner. Allow usage - you can limit the number of times a coupon is used by a certain user if you want that. If you want to allow using it as many time as a user wants, then leave 0 in this box Browsing existing coupons The existing coupon codes will be listed in a table. The operations you can perform on the existing coupon codes are Delete and Edit Using coupons When a user uses a discount coupon, the discount value will be substracted from the total value to pay. If the discount is an 100% discount, or the discount value is a fixed value greater than the total amount to pay, then the user will not be charged. The discount will be mentioned in and info texts after the operation is completed. Also, for a payment operation where a coupon is used, the coupon code will appear in Orders / Order History section of Administrator Panel, and in Order History section of user account. 1.3 Users Users List Adding a new user To add a new user account click the Add button on top of the users table. If your system has more than one user group, you will be asked to choose one on first step of this operation. Next you will need to fill in a form similar to user registration form. The required fields will be marked with a red star. Note: The fields in this from can be customized for your needs, for each of user groups. To customize registration forms you must edit user fields list in Settings / User Custom Fields. After finishing filling the form hit submit. The user will be created and you will return to Users List page. Note: When a user is created by administrator no is sent, not to new account and not to administrator. 6

12 Browsing existing users Chapter 1 Administrator Panel Interface You can see here all users that are currently in the system. Like on Manage Listings page, you will have Action Buttons, Selective browsing and ordering form, Pages navigator and Select number of listings to show on page. We are not going to explain these parts, since they are similar to those used on Manage Listings page. But we will explain the icons that appear for each user row on the table. Action Icons Info - Opens a popup window with complete account information Send mail - Opens a popup window with a send message form. Fill in the form with a title and content and this message will go to the set for this account. Edit - Edit user details - a form similar with the registration form will show up and you will be able to change account details. A similar form will appear in the user account interface. Login as This User - Clicking on this icon will log you out as admin and log you in as this user instead. You will be redirected out of administrator interface, to the frontend. Note that you cannot login as users that are not active. For those users this icon will appear grayed. Change Password - Change password for the user. Delete - Delete user account. Block IP - Blocks the IP address from which the user has registered. Someone accessing the site from this IP address will be redirected to an Access Restricted page. Disable - Will disable the account - make it inactive without deleting it. The user will not be able to login with this account. Enable - Appears only for disabled accounts and allows enabling them. Enable Dealer Page / Disable Dealer Page - Adds or deletes Dealer Page option to the account. See below more information in this concept. Enable Bulk Uploads / Disable Bulk Uploads - Adds or deletes Bulk Uploads option to the account. See below more information in this concept Some new user account related concepts Dealer Page Dealer Page is a feature that you can use as a source of income from your site. You can choose to allow users to buy this feature for their accounts when you choose for a user group settings Allow to buy for Dealer Page. It can also be enabled by default for a group and not require payment when you choose Enable by default in group settings (you can change the group settings when adding or editing user groups from Users / User Groups section, please see User Groups section). Dealer Page is similar with More Listings of this user feature, a page where user profile and all user ads are listed. The difference is that users can add a banner that will replace the top banner on that particular page. Configuring the top banner for the accounts that have Dealer Page enabled is made from MyAccount / Modify Account Info section when logged in as that user, Dealer Page Banner field. It can also be configured by administrator when editing the user profile. 7

13 As the rest of paid features, for Dealer Page feature can be set a price and a time to expire. This is done from Settings / Extra Visibility options / User Account Options Dealer Page Price and Dealer Page Availability. If you don t want this feature to expire you must set 0 for Dealer Page Availability. Since this feature is very similar to More Listings of this user feature, the latest feature can be disabled for regular users when using Dealer Page for a certain type of account. This is done from Settings / Listing Settings section, uncheck the checkbox Show More ads for this user link. If you have both Dealer Page feature and More Listings of this user enabled, then for listings that belong to users with Dealer Page enabled, only the Dealer Page link will show. Bulk Uploads - This feature allows your users to upload more than one listing at a time. Use this if you have users that upload many ads at a regular bases, perhaps on more sites than one, and they need a way to add those listings in a single operation. Adding Bulk Ads is made by uploading a csv or xml file which contains all data needed for the listings User Groups This section allows you to define more than one user group. When the script is installed you will have only one group added to this section. You must have at least one user group in the system Adding a new user group or editing an existing one To add a new user group you will need to click on the Add button on top of user groups table. You will have to fill in the following form: Name - name of the group Description - description for user group. The name and description of the group will appear only if there is more than one group added. Then there will be a pre-register page where the guest can choose what type of account he/she wants. The title and description of each group will appear on this page. You should point out here why somebody should use a certain group for an account, the benefits of choosing one group and so on. Auto Register - the groups that have this checkbox enabled will accept registration from site frontend. To groups that are not Auto Register, only administrator can add users from the administrator interface. If there is no Auto Register account, no registration link will appear in site frontend. Activate Account - if you enable this option, when users choose to create an account for this group they will be sent an after registration, to the address they registered with. In that there is an activation link. They must click on the link to activate the account. If they don t activate their account, the account will be inactive (the user will not be able to login with it). This option allows you to verify that the s users register with are valid and owned by these users. Admin Verification - if you enable this option, users that create an account in this group will remain inactive until you manually activate them from administrator interface. You will receive an when such user registers if you have enabled Send notification to admin - When user registers in Settings / Listing Settings section. Dealer Page - choose the level on which Dealer Page will be accessible to this user. You can choose one of the following: Do not allow - these users will not have the possibility to add a Dealer Page to their accounts. Allow to buy - these users will have a link that will allow them to buy a Dealer Page 8

14 Enable by default - these users will have Dealers Page enabled by default in their accounts. Chapter 1 Administrator Panel Interface Allow Bulk Ads - users will have in their accounts menu a page from which they can upload bulk ads. Listing Pending - if you enable this option, all listings posted by this group users will be made pending (awaiting administrator approval) Plan Pending - if you enable this option, all plans bought by this group users will be made pending (awaiting administrator approval) User Subscriptions If you have subscription type listing plans in the system and there are users that have subscriptions, you will see them in this section. You can perform the following actions on the listed subscriptions: Delete - Delete the subscription Disable / Enable - Disable the subscription if active or enable if not active. If a subscription is pending, then a Pending button will appear in the table. This means that the subscription is not yet active and can be activated by clicking on this button. A subscription can be pending from two reasons: Plan Pending is enabled for the group the user belongs to. The payment is set to be pending (in this case you must check if the payment was completed). You have the possibility to add a new subscription to an user by clicking on Add button on top of subscriptions table. To add a new subscription you just need to choose the username and the subscription plan. Users have the possibility of owning more than one subscription, which they can manage from their accountsubscription section. This way, if you define different subscriptions for different listing categories they can have a subscription of each type Send Bulk s Use this section to send s to all or a group of users at once. You have the following options to choose the users to send the to: Group - choose a certain user group Send to - choose between: Active users, Users with active ads, Users with active for sale ads and Users with active for rent ads. The last two options will choose only those users that have ads that are active and not marked sold or rented. To send a message fill in the Subject and Message fields and click Send button. 9

15 1.3.5 Saved Searches Chapter 1 Administrator Panel Interface If you have Enable save searches option enabled in Settings / Listing Settings section, you will find in this section all searches saved by all users. You can perform the following actions on the listed searches: Delete - Delete the search Alerts If you have Enable alerts option enabled in Settings / Listing Settings section, you will find in this section all alerts created by your visitors. You can perform the following actions on the listed alerts: Delete - Delete the alert. Enable - Enable the alert, if not active. Disable - Disable the alert, if active Messages If you have Enable internal messaging option enabled in Settings section, all messages set and received from your site forms by your users or guests will be registered in the database. All these messages will be found in this section. A similar section will be found in each user account. You can view more information on each message displayed: View complete message - In the table you can see only a part of the message, you can see the complete message by clicking on this button. View Thread - For messages that are linked one with another, following a discussion, the full thread / discussion will be shown here. Reported as spam - If a user considers a certain message as spam, he/she can flag it as spam. A red button will appear to the left of the message, and you can act accordingly if you think it is correctly flagged and block the ip using the Block IP action icon. You can perform the following actions on the listed messages: Delete - Delete the message. Block IP - Block the ip. Unblock IP - Unblock the ip if already blocked. 10

16 1.4 Orders Order History You will see on this section each operation that has been made on your site, each with the following details: the id (this is used as invoice number), processor, amount, username, status, some details and the date when has been registered. This section will hold paid operations as well as free operations. Free operations will appear with the amount 0. The Details column will hold informations on what actions are attached to this order. One order can be for multiple actions. For example, when a user places an ad and chooses Featured and Highlighted extra options for his ad, the details will appear like this: Listing id: #34 [View] Feature Ad: #34 [View] Highlighted Ad: #34 [View] You can click on the [View] link go to ad details page. The possible actions that can appear in details string are: Listing Id - a new listing was added Featured Ad - Featured extra option was chosen for the listing Highlighted Ad - Highlighted extra option was chosen for the listing Video Classifieds - Video Classifieds extra option was chosen for the listing Priority_Name Priority - Priority extra option was chosen for the listing Subscription No - a new subscription was bought Dealer Page - a dealer page extra option was bought for an account An order can have the status completed or not completed. A completed order means that the payment was finalized successfully. An order appears incompleted when the user starts an operation on your site that requires payment, and at a certain point, before clicking on payment link or after somewhere on the payment site, it stops the process. This way, the payment is not completed, but it still appears on your site as an attempt. If this order is for submitting a listing, the user has the possibility to finish the payment from the listings page, this way it won t have to fill the forms again, the listing is kept as inactive. For other orders types, there is the possibility to finish the payment for a not completed order from user account orders page. Manual payments will always appear as not completed, you will need to accept them manually. But online payments like Paypal payments will send after the payment is made a notification to your site that the payment has completed successfully or that the payment failed. The script verifies the validity of the notification and performs the needed operations: activates the ad, subscription or extra option, or makes it pending, sends to administrator and user if needed. If the payment was not completed or if the type of payment is marked as pending, then the order will show as not active. By activating an order you can accept the actions that were performed with this order. To activate an order you must click on Accept icon. Depending on the number of actions for that order, there are 2 possibilities: 11

17 1. There is only one action attached to this order - when you click on the Accept button, the action is accepted. For example, if the action is a new listing submitted, then the listing will be activated, an will be sent to the user to announce that the listing was activated. In the same time, the payment for this order is marked as Completed. 2. There are multiple actions attached to this order - when you click on the Accept button a modal window will appear. From this window you can choose which of the actions you wish to accept. The actions that were already accepted are grayed. Additional to the actions there is a possibility to mark the payment as completed. The actions that appear on the order page can be enabled from other pages, depending on the type of the action: - Ad related actions like new ad and extra ad options can be also accepted from Listings / Manage Listings section. They will appear in this section as Pending using the Pending button. Listings can also be enabled using the Enable icon in this section. All these are possible ways of enabling this type of actions. - Subscriptions - can be also enabled from Users / User Subscriptions section using the Pending button or Enable icon. 1.5 Security Login History This section shows the data registered when there has been a login attempt and has 2 views: First and the one it shows when you enter this section is Users Last Login. You will see here every user in the system, and next to the user last login date and IP address he/she logged in from. Note: This is in fact last successfull login. Failed login attempts will not show here. When you click on a username you enter the second view, where you see for that particular user the history of logins and login attempts. A successful login will be marked with a Succeeded string in the Status column and a failed one with a Failed string Blocked IPs We will start by defining some notions used in this section. IP Address - is an unique identification that is assigned to every computer on the Internet. An IP address is formed by 4 numbers between 0 and 255 separated by a dot (.) Ex: When a guest accesses your site, you can determine the IP address of the computer from which is connected. If you consider that this guest performs malicious operations on your site like spamming ( adding many listings with improper content or sending spam mails to your users ), then you can block that IP address. If you know the IP address from which he is connected, then you can enter it in this section in Add IPS box. If you don t know it and the guest has an account, then the same operation can be performed from Users / Users List section by clicking on Block User icon for that user. Blocked users will be automatically redirected to an Access restricted page. 12

18 Note: This is not a full security measure, it is possible to bypass this protection by using web proxy servers to connect to your server. This way, the IP of the malicious user will be seen as a different one and he will not be blocked anymore. Important: You should take care when you use this option not to block your own IP. Also, sometimes a single IP is used for a entire network, not just a computer, so you might block more than one person computer Blocked s This section allows you to define a list of addresses and domains that will be restricted to perform the following actions: Using the for a user account Using the to post a listing as a not logged in user. Note: This should be used together with the previous security measure Block IPs to minimize the spam problem on your site. You can block s that have been used for spam on your site. Some spammers use addresses belonging to the same domain name, for example: 123@domain.com, 463@domain.com. In this case, you will need to block all domain name. To do this, enter the a string like the following: *@domain.com, where domain.com is the domain you want to block Change Password You can change administrator password in this section Forbidden Words You can set a list of forbidden words in this section. If you enabled badwords usage from Settings / Listing Settings - Check for forbidden words, then every ad description will be checked for this words list. You can add multiple elements to the list in Add Forbidden Words box separated by comma or each on a separate row. The existing forbidden words will appear in Forbidden Words List box. To delete multiple items from a list use CTRL and SHIFT keys on PC and OPTIONS key on MAC. 13

19 1.6 Tools Custom Pages With Custom Pages you can add new links and content to your site Custom pages types There are two types of custom pages: Custom Content or External Link Custom Content - you can add a content to that custom page and edit it with a HTML editor. External Link - you can only add a link towards an external page. Usually you use this if you want to add a link to your navigation bar towards an external page. Use this in conjunction with Navigator Bar Link, otherwise there is no point adding it. There is another type of custom page, First Page Content. This custom page type exists by default, you cannot add another and you cannot delete it, and it is actually a content that will appear on the first page, on top of categories list, or, depending on the template, on other place designed for this purpose. You can choose to place a link to your custom page in your site navigation bar. You can choose between the main navigation bar, and a secondary navigation that is usually placed in the footer of the page. Set this using Navigation Bar Link field. If you will choose Not Linked here, the link for this page will not appear on any navigation bar Adding a new custom page To add a new custom page, click the Add button on top of Custom Pages table. You will need to fill in the following form: Title - the title of the browser page. This title will also be used as link title on the navigation bar if you choose Main Navigation Bar Link or Secondary Navigation Bar Link. Type - choose the type: Custom Content or External Link External Link - this field will only appear if you choose External Link type. Enter here the external link you need to add. Navigation Bar Link - choose if you want this page or link to appear in one of the two navigation bars possible: Main Navigation Bar or Secondary Navigation Bar, in the page footer. Choose Not Linked if you don t want the link to appear. Submenu for - this field appears only if you choose Main Navigation Bar for Navigation Bar Link field. Choose a parent for this link and it will appear as a drop down option for the parent link. You can have more levels of links: navigation bar children links can have other child links of thir own. Open in new window - if the previous checkbox is enabled, use this one to make the link from the navigation bar open in another window. Meta Keywords - will only appear for Custom Content type. Enter here meta keywords that will appear on this custom page. Meta Description - will only appear for Custom Content type. Enter here meta description that will appear on this custom page. 14

20 After you submit the form, if you added a Custom Content page, you will be redirected to a HTML editor. Use this editor to edit the contet of your new page. You can later come back to edit your page by clicking on Edit Content icon from Custom Pages table Managing custom pages You can perform certain operations on your existing custom pages on Tools / Custom Pages section: Changing custom pages order - can be done using Order buttons. Order is important only for the custom pages that are added to a navigation bar. They will appear after the default links of navigation bar, in the order you set here. Searching for a string - you can search for a string that exists in one of your custom pages content using the Search box on top right of the table. Action icons: View Content - view custom page content Edit Content - edit custom page content. This icon will only appear for Custom Content pages. Enable / Disable - enable or disable the custom page. Edit - edit the custom page Delete - delete the custom page Custom pages usage You can use custom pages for the following situations: custom information pages for your site added in your main navigation bar, like Contact pages, FAQ pages and so on. For this type you will choose Main Navigation Bar Link for Navigation Bar Link option. You can have sublevels of links for this type that will show as a drop down menu. custom information pages for your site added in your secondary navigation bar, like Privacy Policy pages, Terms of Use pages and so on. For this type you will choose Secondary Navigation Bar Link for Navigation Bar Link option. internal pages that appear in the content of other pages like Submit Listings Howto pages. You choose Not Linked in Navigation Bar Link for this type. You will have to take the link that appears in Link column in custom pages table and use it where you want that page link to appear. links on your navigation bar towards an external page - choose External Links type and select Navigation Bar Link option Database This section allows you to easily backup or restore the database used for the current script installation. On a script installation, all the configurations that you make to the script, excepting uploaded files and images, are kept in a mysql database. To have a complete backup of your site at a given moment you have to have the files of the script and the database backup. You can usually make backup to your database using the tools from the hosting 15

21 control panel, but we ve added a similar tool to the script to make it easier, and also with our script you can automate the process. Existing backup files. You can see in the table at the top of the page the existing backups in the backup folder. The backup files are saved in the folder db_backup and can be downloaded to your computer by clicking on the Download link or directly with FTP. Backup - when you hit the button Backup, a new backup for the database will be saved on the server and will appear in the upper table. You can choose to save the backup in the compressed (gzip) or uncompressed version. Import - If you want to reverse to a previous version that you have saved before, you can use the Import feature (this will restore the database from the file you upload). Same result can be accomplished by clicking on the Restore icon for an existing backup from the table. Scheduled backups - If you want the database backup to be made automatically, you can enable Scheduled Backups. Choose one of the options Daily, Weekly or Monthly. If you configure a number in Keep Only box, only that number of backups will be kept, the older ones will be deleted. This is to save space on your server Google Sitemap Sitemaps are XML files that have a certain format, and serve the purpose of giving search engines informations about the URLs on your site that are available for crawling. For each URL you can attach informations like when it was updated, how often the page on the link changes, the importance related to the other pages. These URL maps should help search engines index your site better. Please keep in mind that this does not guarantee that the links will be indexed by the search engine. To create a sitemap for your site you need to check the Enable checkbox, then make the changes to the settings as you think it is more fit for your site: which links you want present: categories links, listings (details pages links) and custom pages links. You can set for each the importance (priority) and the changes frequency. These informations will be submitted to the search engine in XML format. For the ads you can set a maximum number of ads links to be listed, because when your site will grow and have lots of ads, the dimensions of the sitemap file will grow considerably. You can also set a frequency for auto generating the sitemap file - daily, weekly or monthly. Once you created a sitemap for your site you should submit it to the search engine ( not only Google accepts the sitemaps of this sort, also Yahoo, Ask.com and Live, but we will only explain the procedure for Google). To submit the sitemap to Google you must follow the steps: 1. Sign it to Google Webmaster Tools ( with your Google account (create one if you don t have it already) 2. Add your site to the Webmaster Tools account 3. Under Sitemaps section for that site enter the path for the sitemap and hit Submit Sitemap button. You can get the URL for your sitemap from the script, next to Your Google Sitemap Link tag RSS RSS (short term for Really Simple Syndication) is a web format used to publish web content that is updating often, in our case, the latest listings added to your site. RSS feeds can be read with software called RSS reader or feed reader or agregator, which can be desktop based, web based or mobile based. People will be able to subscribe to 16

22 theese feeds by clicking on the top RSS icon and add it to their favorite RSS reader. When there are new listings on the site, they will be updated. To configure your site to generate RSS feeds you will need to add new RSS links. Click the Add button and you will be taken to a form. You will be able to configure: Short Title - The title that will appear on your site, next to the RSS icon Title - the title of the feed as will appear to subscribers Description - the description of the feed as will appear to subscribers FeedBurner Link - Feedburner is a web tool for RSS feeds owners. If you have created an account and added your feed there, configure here the Feedburner link. Link - the link to your site Language - 2 letters language code for your language Parameters - you can choose only some listings to appear to a feed, for example only the ones from Auto category, or ony the ones belonging to a certain plan. This way you can add multiple feeds to your site and make them different. Number of Listings - The number of last listings shown on the feed. Remember that you don t have to add them all, only the latest ads, otherwise the file will become too big to read. You can add multiple RSS feeds that you will make them differ with the Parameters field. All RSS links will appear in the top of frontend interface, with the title you chosen for it (Short title) Import/Export This section allows exporting and importing data from your site (listings and users data only) in CSV and XML formats. Some possible applications for this are: exporting your listings in a specific format and upload it to other classifieds site. import listing in these 2 formats from other sites to your site if you administer multiple classifieds sites that allow this feature, you don t want to add the listings on each site, you can instead import the listings on each site allow your users to upload bulk ads - useful when you have as users dealers that have to upload their ads to multiple sites (similar to previous point) if you want to save the data on your computer for your reference and you want to be able to view it in a spreadsheet viewer. Both these formats can be read by spreadsheet programs. A short description of each format: CSV (Comma Separated Values) - is a simple format where the values are separated by a specified sign. This can be comma, as the name suggests, but not necessarily, you can use other character like ;. Sometimes, when your values can contain comma, it is better to use a character to surround your fields values, usually the double quotes are used. You can configure this in Import/Export / Settings / CSV Settings section. An example of a listing exported as CSV (considering only the following fields: id,category_id,date_added,title,description,price,currency ): 17

23 "1","4"," ","This is the title of the ad","this is the description of the ad","10000","$" XML (extensible Markup Language) - is a specification for formatting and storing data. XML allows the user to define its own markup elements (tags) that will store the data ( an example of XML format is HTML). Each data element will be contained between a start tag and an end tag: <title>title of the ad</title> Each element (listing or user) will be contained also between start and end tags: <listing></listing> for listings <user></users> for users An example of a exported listing in XML format, including the start tags of the document: <?xml version= 1.0?> <listings> <listing> <id>1</id> <category_id>4</category_id> <date_added> </date_added> <title>this is the title of the ad</title> <description>this is the description of thet ad</description> <price>10000</price> <currency>$</currency> </listing> </listings> Defining templates. Templates are useful in the following cases: you want to export data but you don t need all the fields - then you will create a template with only the database fields that you need you want to import data but you don t have / don t want to upload all fields. When you import data, when using CSV format, you need to have a template defined. The reason is that CSV format is not self explanatory like XML format (does not have tags that explain for each element to which fields it belongs to), it is just a series of data separated by a character and the script needs to know the exact order how to assemble them back. So, the order in a CSV import file is very important and must exactly match the template. For the xml template, the order is not important You can view the format for CSV and XML for a template by clicking on the View Templates icon. Use this templates as a model how you should create your import files. There is a similar feature available to users, to allow them to import data, if you allow Bulk uploads for the group they sign up for. Using this feature they will be able to add bulk ads to your site in one of the 2 formats. You can configure which format your site accepts for Bulk Uploads (CSV or XML) in Import/Export / Settings / Ads Bulk Uploads section. You can also configure there the template for the importing ads files, and to which plan will the ads be automatically assigned. 18