3.0 User Dashboard and Ad Editing Preview
For the last couple of days I’ve been working on the new user dashboard and ad editing pages. Now that I’ve just about wrapped those up, I wanted to give you a quick preview of what they look like. As you’ll see, the new user admin area is much more complete and includes a sidebar so your customers can easily navigate around. It also gives them more of a “membership” style feel since they essentially have an account on your site (site registration is now mandatory in 3.0).
You will also notice the addition of tag and image editing. It will show a thumbnail image for each of their ad images, a checkbox to delete an image, and additional image upload boxes. There is a new option in CP 3.0 where you set the number of images allowed per ad which controls how many upload boxes will show up.
3.0 is also setup to automatically block non-admin users from accessing your WordPress back-end (i.e. /wp-admin/ section). This means you no longer need to rely on plugins like “IWG Hide Dashboard” or “Role Manager”.
Anyhow, enough talking….I’ll let the video tell the rest of the story.
Comments (40)
is this the same for a ‘user’ as well as the admin that we see here?
Yes except for the “WordPress Admin” link in the sidebar which takes admins to the WordPress back-end. That link won’t be shown for normal users.
David, thank you for the continued hard work on creating version 3.0. I love this video. But, I have two questions that I asked on your previous post.
1. Will a directory style option be available? A directory style setup like olx.com is something many of your customers including me will want if we plan to have many categories and catering to many cities and states.
2. Will we a have paid categories option? I would like to charge for certain categories.
Thanks for all the wonderful work!
Yes and yes. With the current version as well as 3.0, you can set prices per category and even have free ads.
“they essentially have an account on your site (site registration is now mandatory in 3.0)”
So, if I got you correct, from 3.0 on it would we impossible to publish a
classified while not being registered, even if I – as a site-owner – would
like to allow it ?
Correct. Keep in mind that registration takes only a few seconds (name and email). The benefits to your customers will be having their own dashboard to keep track of all their ads, a profile page to edit, and they won’t have to fill out the same fields each time they want to post an ad. Just login.
On the admin side, there are a ton of benefits. Just to name a few: cuts down on spammy ads, creates a community, and builds a customer list you can market to.
Hi Dave!
Thanks for the preview.
You have really worked on the interface, congrats.
I have two questions for you.
1. I would like to launch my site in another language. Is it possible to translate the whole site, and how should I do this?
2. I would love to be a Beta-tester! Can you include me in that process?
Thanks David!
Thanks iPablo.
1. Yes, it’s very easy to translate ClassiPress into another language. You can read this post on how to translate a wordpress theme to give you a better idea on how it’s done.
2. Sure. I’ll make an announcement once a beta is ready to test. Beta testing is only available to current customers, however. If you’re already a customer then great!
David, as usual great work. But as usual I have a few questions for you, if I may 😉
1. Country/State/City: You’re using custom fields to store these values but is there any relationship between them? i.e. If we created a search UI for example where users selected Country, and in turn this would show associated states/regions for that country, and then if we selected a state/region it would show us the associated cities/towns?
How would that work exactly?
2. Tags: I wouldn’t necessarily regard that listers being able to tag their ads as being a ‘feature’ worth having 😉
It’s prone to typos and redundancies not to mention the tag table in the database being filled up with endless trash.
That’s OK if you only have 5 members, which most sites using CP will probably have (if they’re lucky), but with potentially hundreds of people using a site it could cause major problems. Better to give them pre-defined tags that you can manage and would actually add some meaning and value to the users of the site.
Presumably, we can remove the tagging functionality when we create our forms? Or better still, replace it with our own pre-defined custom taxonomies?
3. Images: I like the basic idea here, good job. But I noticed there’s no provision for the lister to enter any captions. Not only would this be useful for site’s user, it would also be highly beneficial in SEO terms with the image alt tag.
4. Account Statistics: A good idea would be to show the date they first joined the site, which could also be displayed publicly on the front end in their ad. It gives the user a bit of security seeing the lister has been on the site for a while. This is not a great concern for new sites, but as sites mature it would be beneficial for the user to know that.
5. WYSIWYG editor: Is it possible to remove this? Again, I can envisage problems with this. Also, is there any provision to limit the amount of text entered in the body by way of a character countdown? That would be super useful – you can see this method in action if you have the All In One SEO plugin installed.
6. Excerpt: Is there the possibility of allowing listers to fill in the excerpt field, again with a character count limit?
7. Social Media: I see from your screencast there’s Twitter and Facebook profile links for the lister. Will these show up in their ad too? If so that would be cool. Even cooler would be the ability for them to send a specific tweet directly to their listing or profile 😉
8. You Tube: Will there be provision for the lister to embed a You Tube video in their listing? Again, this would be another good idea.
9. Google Maps: I didn’t see any provision in your screencast for the lister to add a Google Map but maybe this is done when they join and create their profile?
On the subject of which, will there be any provision for the lister to geo tag their ad?
All good questions Carlos. Let me see if I can answer them all. 😉
1. There are no relationships between custom fields. All you would need to do is select and then order your custom fields in a CP sidebar search builder (yet to be built but the framework is there….most likely 3.x). They would all be drop-downs and visitor can select items. Then the database query would be built on the fly to return the results.
2. Tags are a part of WordPress and are optional if you don’t want to use them. When building your custom form, just don’t include that field.
3. Image captions and descriptions will be 3.x
4. You’ve got a good eye. The account statistics sidebar item will most likely be postponed until 3.x. I’ve got a lot of cool ideas but just not enough time to get it done by March.
5. You can turn on or off the wysiwyg editor option so it’s only a text box with no html allowed.
6. Nope. The excerpt is taken from the main description and trimmed down to 150 characters (I think)
7. User profiles include a couple new fields like twitter and facebook so they can enter their info. It’s optional though.
8. This ties into the allow html option or not. If you turn it off, they won’t be able to include any embed code for youtube, etc.
9. Google maps are keyed off the address, city, state, zip, country fields. If you don’t include them on your forms, Google map won’t work very well.
No geo-tagging at this time.
Ok, my fingers hurt from answering all your questions. lol Hope that takes care of them all for now.
When you leave the version 30 as we will have access to the update, if everyone has access to the forum, and there is an area reserved for Premium users, and apparently it does not appear there is any kind of control of licensed users?
ClassiPress will be moving to a members-only site which will be much better for everyone. You’ll be able to login and download the latest version or easily upgrade and download it right away. We’ll also be migrating to vbulletin which is a much more complete forum solution and will be setup to prevent non-paying customers from having access.
David, I like.. I like, after looking at the quick video above I think you should add. * How to delete image *.. (A quick line stating : To delete image check box near image and click update)
Also you should give an example for the format for the Price.. (ie. 29,999 or 29999) which way they should enter it…
Kirk
Kirk, there already is text down at the bottom stating this. It’s small but it’s there. 😉
The price field will strip out anything that is not numeric (i.e. $, commas, etc). Since there are global countries using ClassiPress, it needs to be flexible enough to fill many different currency formats.
I can’t wait to get my hands on this! 🙂
“they essentially have an account on your site (site registration is now mandatory in 3.0)”
So, if I got you correct, from 3.0 on it would we impossible to publish a
classified while not being registered, even if I – as a site-owner – would
like to allow it ?
I totally agree with Daniel.
If only registered users are allowed to post an ad, that means, we must start with an empty site. We all know that we must post ourselves few hundreds of free ads taken from other sites in order to present the potential visitors with a functional website and not with an empty site.
No one is going to pay attention to a website without any ads on.
Another issue that must be looked upon is the auto populating contact form.
Once a user introduced the name, address, phone number, email and url, those should stick and appear each time the user will post and ad.
It is very annoying to have to fill in your phone number, address, and url each time you post an ad. There are a lot of potential let say real estate agents with hundreds of properties ready to be posted.
Everyone starts with an empty site. You as the admin will need to submit a bunch of ads to get things started.
Once a visitor registers on your site, they will not have to enter in their name each time. Some ad owners don’t want their personal info like phone and email listed on the ad. If they do, they can either use a custom field you setup, or they can paste it into the post body.
Auto-populating the fields can become a privacy issue which is why it’s best not to do it.
Hi David,
1. is it possible for you to integrate Google Real Estate into the real estate category, so when a user post a real estate listing/ad, this listing is also published on Google Real Estate (or Google Base I think its named)?
This would be really cool to integrate. I think Google Real Estate/Google Base demands a XML file with the listing/ad information to be indexed.
Read more: http://maps.google.com/help/maps/realestate/
2. Also, would every ad published through the Classipress 3.0 version be indexed by Google, Yahoo etc. automatically? So users can find their ads on Google too?
Thanks again 🙂
Hi David! Great work!
Is there any way to mark a Ads as “favorite”, including a way to manage “My favorites ads”? I think it’s interesting, to agile the navegation when the user come back to the site, to find out some information in selecteds ads (atributes, contact info, etc.).
Thanks! 🙂
Thanks Alex. There will not be any “my favorites” feature with 3.0 but eventually I hope to add that.
Add to faves would be a great feature, and one seemingly not that difficult to accomplish as you can see in effect here: http://www.cssmayo.com ( A WP powered site )
Would it have an option to include the address and it automatically creates the map like the previous version?
Cheers
I mean… Google maps integration. On the previous version you could include the address and it automatically generates the map. Will it be available on the 3.0 version?
Cheers
Yes. As long as you include the address fields on your ad form and people enter their location info, the google maps will work.
Thanks David
That’s awesome!
I am looking forward for the release.
Cheers
Why can’t I fast forward to Mid March already? I need a time machine…. 😉 Really waiting for this to go live. Keep up the great work!
Thanks and I wish I could fast forward too. 😉
Hello,
For a french developpment, I’m very interessed by WPC…
And I see the 3.0 will bu soon here.
Can you tell here the most probable date for that ?
I’m sure lots of webmaster are interested by this information too !
To soon,
Lionel
I believe I mentioned the date in the screen cast but I’ll say it one more time. Beta testing starts next week. Then there will be 2 weeks of testing and bug fixing which means if all goes as planned, 3.0 will be released mid-end of March.
David, thank you for answering my questions but they don’t all take care of everything for me, I feel there’s still some serious shortcomings.
Here’s my response:
1. Custom Fields: Not a good idea at all to advocate the use of custom fields to store geographical values. Categories should be used for this as easier to maintain and manage. Besides, it’s more natural as it allows for a hierarchical structure will allow you to easily create filtering functionality any which way you want.
2. Tags: Yes, I know that tags are a part of WP. But tags are a misused feature and of little value to the end user with too much redundancy. Presumably you’ve seen Google’s Matt Cutts’ take on tags vs categories?
Anyway, can I ask you why you have resistance to using custom taxonomies? Is it because you’ve already committed yourself and CP to custom fields?
I think you may have boxed yourself into a hole here because this wilo be very difficult to implement for existing sites running off previous versions of CP.
WordPress 3.0 will support custom post types and this will make custom taxonomies even powerful.
Many of your CP customers will not want to be restricted to using custom fields for certain values where custom taxonomies will give them more control and efficiency, not to mention ability to create filter controls for their sites.
Also, as a site admin, why can I not create a list of pre-defined tags so the lister can select via check boxes?
In terms of tagging & categorisation in relation to filtering etc, you might want to look at the following site, it runs off WP 2.6!
http://propertyhounds.com/search/los-altos/holidayrentals
I feel a lot can be learned from this site and I’m pretty sure the developer would welcome custom taxonomies with open arms!
3. Image captions/descriptions: they would be very easy to implement now and would give some SEO benefits straight away. If you do this later then some listings will be without captions compared with the ones post CP updates.
4. Account stats: Thanks, I do have a good eye (and many good ideas!)
5. WYSIWYG: Glad this can be switched off as I dread to think the trouble it could cause a well designed site.
6. Excerpt: The option for the lister to enter a short teaser about their listing would be great for SEO as it will give an extra dimension for creating on page SEO.
7. Twitter/Facebook: OK, thanks.
8. You Tube: I was thinking more along the lines of a specific field to contain the YT embed link, which would then display the video (rather than a link). There’s countless examples of this in the WP world.
Allowing listers to use html & wysiwyg editors for their YT videos is just asking for trouble 😉
9. Google Maps: I’m not sure anyone in their right mind would want to publish their home address on the web! A better option would be to show partial locations, i.e. a radius on the map of their general location.
Remember, with WP3.0 you will easily be able to create a new post type, assign the default post features AND custom taxonomies, all in a custom write panel. It will also be easy to create custom meta boxes linked to the new post type.
Finally, unlike other commenters here, I’m in no hurry to use CP3.0 until WordPress 3.0 is officially released.
Nice to see the new version. Will we have options to remind advertiser when their ads going to expire?
More interesting developments are planned for WP 3.0, including custom menu system built into the core:
http://wordpress.org/development/2010/02/menus-merge-patch-sprint/
wonderful david cannot wait for this version
Hi David,
like classipress very much and bought dev-version 🙂
But in my eyes there´s one thing still missing also in 3.0 – we´re all waiting for. It concerns user registration.
It´s very good, that they are mandatory now. BUT: There should be an acitvation mail for getting an “double opt in” User registration. Like in most forums or communities -> So after registering on the page the user should get confirmation Mail including unique activation-link. This data must be saved to proof registration in case of friction.
Can you please implement this for 3.0, so user fills out registration form, gets a mail (as actual with username and password) and must activate account through activation-link. So email-adress is verified. So called “double opt in” (registration IP and timestamp / confirmation IP and timestamp) is necessary for legal security (at least here in Germany).
Thanks for your feedback and good luck with further development and sales 😉
webmango
Glad to hear it webmango. ClassiPress uses the built-in WordPress user registration which doesn’t include a double opt-in. I’ve seen a plugin out there which does something like that but 3.0 will not include it out of the box.
Hi David,
thanks for information. I did some research and found a solution for my problem 🙂 To share knowledge an close this request here is the link for the right plugin. Hard to find but doing a good job – It´s free:
http://www.emediamark.com/econfirm
BR webmango
Cool. Thanks for sharing. I found the other plugin I was talking about. It’s called Sabre which has many spam features built in including the ability for your user to validate his registration by clicking on a link sent by mail.
I have not tested either plugin with CP so I’m not sure how it will work.
@David – I didn’t realise that CP doesn’t support double opt in. This is an absolute must in my opinion.
@Webmango – Thanks for the plugin link. Reading the plugin author’s post he’s right to be surprised that WP doesn’t have this built in.
Hopefully his plugin, or the other one David has mentioned, can be implemented in CP, and hopefully WP build it into the core.
David, first of all, I want to say that I have been watching the progress of the new version and it looks great and very exciting Congratulations. On another subject, I have a question that matters a lot to me as a user of CP and I am sure also to other users as well as those that will be listing on sites running on CP:
Regarding this specific post, and the new feature that allows users to view and control their ads inside their account, I have a specific question about how ads that have expired will be handled in version 3.x versus version 2.x (the last version you have in the live demo before the 3.x release). FOr purposes of making my question clear, I am refering to the text found in the live admin demo of version 2.9.3 (below):
Admin Dashboard > “Configure” (“General Configuration”) >
“Ad Pruning” (2 options to select from, if selected “Yes”): “Removes the classified ads from your site after a certain number of days.”
“Prune Status”: (2 options to select from)
“Draft – Changes the ad status back to draft. Good option if you want to keep a history of all your ads (recommended).”
“Delete – Completely erases all expired ads.”
My question is if in the new version (3.x), now that users will have a page in their account to manage their ads, will they be able to see expired ads back in their list with the option to renew instead of those ads be “Deleted” like in version 2.93? It is a very useful feature for most site owners running ClassiPress to allow ads to be renewed over and over (i.e. in a classifieds site, if the item did not get sold), especially for those using ClssiPress to run a directory/listing type site (i.e. a website directory, whether it is paid or free, running listings for 1 year, owners of the site will want to continue listing it, however not redo the entire listing all over again). Nobody wants to have to go through the entire process of listing the same ad all over again, causing possible loss of petential revenue to site owners in renewed ads just because peole felt lazy about redoing it even if interested in it (renewing it is fast and convenient for anyone).
So, in the admin panel, under the “Prune Status” dropdown options, the “Draft” option could instead allow the users to renew it (change into “Published” in WP lingo), or maybe offer it as a 3rd option while leaving the other two perhaps?
Discussion is closed.