ClassiPress 3.1 Preview
It’s been a while since we’ve released a major feature update to ClassiPress but the good news is there’s one just around the corner. Version 3.1 has been in the works for a while now and will include lots of sought after features.
We actually planned on releasing it a while back but wanted to wait for WordPress 3.0 to first be released so we could benefit from its new features.
The first most noteworthy change will be the usage of WordPress 3.0 custom post types and taxonomies. All ads will now be completely separate from blog posts which makes post and category management much easier.
Other features include:
- Checkbox and radio button custom field types
- New users can create a password on account sign-up
- Tool tip icon added to custom fields on form
- Advanced search which includes radius option
- Custom ads write panel
- Facebook sign-in & account creation module
- Coupon code module
- Ability to mark ads as “sold” and keep them live
- TinyMCE option for each custom textarea field
- Unlimited ad posting for xx days option
- Email sent to ad owner 3 days before ad expires
- Main ad image will be clickable
- Adding Google maps character encoding option
- Report this post feature
- and much more!
We are feverishly working on this release and it should be ready by October 8th. See our theme release status page.
Comments (208)
Excelent !!!!
David, great work! However, will you have searching by regions included? Just take a look at olx.com and you can see on the left-hand side that I can select any city. If I choose Los Angeles, it would be losangeles.olx.com or if I choose New York, it would be newyork.olx.com. Los Angeles and New York have their own classified section dedicated to each city.
Also, what about featured ads targeted to specific cities and categories. A local company in Los Angeles would probably like to advertise on my classified website, but only in the Los Angeles section. Or, a local New York Shoe Company would like to advertise on my classified website, but only in the New York section and also only in the shoe section of New York.
David, you’re doing excellent work, but my clients and I are still sort of frozen because their is no search by regions, states or cities option. This part is the most important and pretty much needed if we are to build a successful classified ad website, that can compete on the same level as craigslist and olx. Hopefully, you’re including this by October 8.
Thanks For Your Continued Great Work!
Hi BluePrint, I would like to know what you think about the custom search bar on PostPanda.com.
Hi Garrit, how wonderful…how do I get my hands on this custom search? is it included in 3.1? Please let me know…Thanks in advance.
Hi Garrit, how have you developed this feature? Would you mind to share the code?
Hello, I am not the developer of the search bar at PostPanda.com.
I just discovered the search bar and would like to use it also.
I think all the AppThemes could benefit greatly from having a native search bar that looks and functions like the one on PostPanda.com.
What do you think?
The developer of the custom search bar is named Cecil and his site is PostPanda.com. His company (Firestorm Studio) is a Certified Partner for Appthemes.
http://appthemes.com/partners/
I see no mention of region support in this post. Please tell me that 3.1 will include this feature as I cannot launch my site without it. This is a critical feature for my planned sites. Please let us know.
@BluePrint, the sub-domain region setting can’t easily be done with WordPress and ClassiPress since it involves a wildcard name server change and some advanced coding.
Also, the majority of our customers setup local classified sites and don’t need that functionality.
With that being said, you will still be able to filter your search results based on region and other fields.
David, thanks for responding. So, is there any way for me to setup a dedicated classified ad website for each city – for example newyork.blueprint.com or losangeles.blueprint.com or texas.blueprint.com? What would you suggest is the best way to go about creating a national classified ad website where each city or state has there own classified ad website? Or, what alternative do you have in mind that would help your customers build a national classified ad website using your script?
Right now, I’m not to sure what to do. I want to build a classified ad website for all of the United States and Canada using your software, but I want it done correctly.
Thanks For Your Time
Sounds great! Look forward to the release!
Hey guys,
Any chance a subscription/membership functionality will be added? I know it has been discussed but not formally decided. If I threw some extra money in the pot would that make it more likely to happen… ;o)
@Kane, no we don’t plan on adding any membership functionality built into ClassiPress.
There will be a “dealer” pricing option though which allows people to pay a flat rate and then get unlimited ad postings for xx days.
David,
Thanks for the response. I may still end up buying the theme and hacking it up myself. For the people that have gone that route in the past for membership payment plans (paypal subscriptions specifically), do you know if they been able to do it entirely through child themes? I’d want to make the hacks as future proof as possible for theme upgrades.
-Kane
This will be the ultimate must have version! Wonder if JobRoller will be as good as this in a year’s time.
@NS, we are working on a framework that will be used in all our themes going forward. Makes updates and features seamless across all our themes. This should be done by the end of the year.
What is the ETA on this release guys? I’ve been hacking classipress to include checkboxes and radio buttons and wondering whether I can wait
@leetech, we are targeting Oct 8th.
How about just create a search form where the admin have the ability to customize it with their own search fields.
@Vincent, that’s the plan. 🙂
Awesome! Very exciting to see these features! Can you share any info on an ETA?
Quick question on the “Facebook sign-in & account creation module” — Does this mean a user will be able to create a new account if they have Facebook with just one click? What about if they already have a CP account, will there be a hook so they can link the two, and use their Facebook login from there on out?
Yes that is the intention of the facebook connect.
Seth
Is it possible to send “invite”/email to the friends informing about the classifieds site using facebook connect?
@imomin, no Facebook connect will be used for signing in and creating new ClassiPress accounts.
I currently am using RSS Grafiti and pulling my posts/ads into my Facebook’s fan page. It would be neat if something like this could be built in, so we could control more of the layout. (Thumbnail, selectable custom fields, etc.)
Cant wait for this release, great updates!
Cant wait for this too ! ! This is what I really wanted
what is the release date?
Hi David,
You do great job…. Only one think i want to propose you. If you can add register form in post ad page will be great, because ussualy peoples are not happy when they see that they need to register before adding ads. If it is possible what i say , they will be forced to add theyr name and email …
Also search form by state/city will be great if it is updated
Sorry for my bad english 😉
I too believe like you 🙂 Great work
@Pavel, we will be adding the create account & password screen on the login page just like how JobRoller currently works. This will make it much faster and easier for your customers to create ads without having to verify via the email link first.
Great work guys,
Interested to see the “Advanced Search” Feature (and everything else)…
and Hopefully the “account sign-up” process can be integrated with a 3rd party auto responder service?
It’s so important to be able to email (ALL) your members when you have a special offer etc.
“The Money Is In The List”!
– aj
@aj, there are lots of 3rd party auto-responder companies out there that it would be difficult to integrate them all into ClassiPress.
It’s best to just use a plugin instead for this type of feature.
if you are looking for coder then feel free to contact with us. – http://www.melbweb.com
Thanks. @AJ
Hello.
Will be great if in new version will apper a mod to modify all content of emails sent from clasipress plugin from wordpress wp-admin.
Regards
@Remus, we hope to have email templates available in 3.2 so you can customize them from within ClassiPress.
i’d need region support and custom post expiration (advertiser sets expiration date himself) to buy this theme
please fix the thumpnails in 3.1. They don’t work at all. When you upload a profile picture, the picture is not being showed in the little avatar, when you post a comment
@Mikkel, the comment avatar is separate from the profile picture plugin. You need to setup a gravatar in order for the comments picture to show up.
awesome!!!
If I understand correctly, this version will allow me to sell ad space by category? That is, auto dealer’s ads for auto category and real estate agent’s ads for Real Estate category.
Sounds like this is going to be released at the same time as the Vantage theme since many of the features coincide… yeah, my mouth is watering… bring it on babaaaay
cool, I’m looking foward to it. At least I’ corious on the advanced search function.
This sounds fantastic!
Are you planning any improvements on the display of the feature ads and slider?
I’m just wondering whether it’s worth coding a mod on my new site, or wait for the new release…
@Penny, we aren’t planning on any changes to the featured ads slider at this time. I saw several threads in the forum with others offering mods which you might be interested in checking out.
Great \o/
Can’t wait to see this. The earlier the better!
Can I suggest that to make the featured image slider at the top look better you have all the images landscape?
From a design point of view I think this would make the design look a lot better.
Perhaps use timthumb to resize the images for the slider?
The new features sound great, like BluePrint, we do wish at this stage of Classipress, there would be the ability to set up regions, the way that Craigslist allows one-click access on newyork.craigslist.org to Brooklyn only listings, Manhattan only version, etc. It’s quite nifty and needed for any larger city – for example, even the Twin Cities has its own distinct regions and often ads such as roommates, etc apply only to one subregion. That said the facebook integration is huge, thx David.
Also would like to add that while the “featured ads” and various pay for ads features are nice, it would be very helpful to look at how Backpage.com (clone of Craigslist run by Village Voice but with many sponsored ads functionality) is a very nice mix of sponsored ad options.
Auto Repost
Ads on the right hand column that look Google PPC sponsored ads (but with images)
We use Backpage because we hate to repost on Craigslist, and get leads coming in all of the time in response to our ads. They have a nice system that works and would be worth porting some of their sponsored features over. Thx again.
Custom ads write panel – Does it mean that my ads could have different look?
It would be also great to ad a compare feature between ads.
Also an image-text generating ad-content (to prevent site scraping) would be great!
Discussion is closed.