By default, all listings have the following main fields that show when a listing is shown:
Title
Price
Date Added
Expiration Date
Description
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(Note: There are some other fields that each listing contains as well, but are not relevent to this topic)
Extra Fields allow the site owner (administration) to add additional fields to their sellers listings, beyond the standard main fields. These extra fields have several different options to give you complete control over the use and availability of them to the sellers. The most important aspect and option of an extra field is the ability to select which category(ies) that you wish to allow access of the field.
As an example: if you have a “Houses for Sale” category and a “Land for Sale” category, you could create extra fields named “Acreage”, “Bedrooms” and “Bathrooms”. You could then assign the “Acreage” extra field to both the “Houses for Sale” and the “Land for Sale” categories. The “Bedrooms” and the “Bathrooms” extra fields could be assigned only to the “Houses for Sale” category.
Now when a seller chooses to place an ad in the “Houses for Sale” category, in addition to all of the standard fields, they would also have the “Acreage”, “Bedrooms” and “Bathrooms” extra fields as well, but a listing in the “Land for Sale” category would only have the one extra field, “Acreage” available. All other categories would just have the standard listing fields.
To create or modify extra fields, login as an administrator to your site. Select the “Categories” main tab, then select the “Extra Fields” from the sub menu. There are no extra fields created with a default installation, so nothing will show in the table list of extra fields until you have created and saved one or more extra fields.
To create a new extra field, you need to click on one of the four types of extra fields shown under the Extra Fields table list. Your options are:
Select one of these and then just fill out the form which may be different depending upon the type of field that you selected. Continue reading for more in-depth explainations for each type of field.
This section covers instructions for creating a new drop-down list or check-box list.
- Field Name
- Enter a title for the field.
- Field type
- Choose either “Drop down list” or “Checkboxes” depending on what type of field you would like to add.
- Field seen in listing
- If you would like the information to appear in an ad's listing, choose “Yes”, otherwise choose “No”. An example of a field listing that you may want to create but not show up on an ad's page may be a “How did you find us?” field. It will then show up when the customer registers but won't show up in the customer's listing.
- Required
- If you want to force your customer to provide information in the field, choose “Yes” otherwise choose “No”. If nothing is entered in the field, a warning message will pop up warning the customer of the requirement.
- Field Searchable
- If you would like the field to be included in searches, choose “Yes” otherwise choose “No”.
- Please select which categories use this field
- When you create a field, you may want to associate the field with a few of your categories. Select which categories this field will be assigned to here. Hold down your “Ctrl” key to select multiple categories.
The text-option extra field button allows you to create one of the following fields: text single line, text multi line, file upload, or a date field.
- Field Name
- Enter a title for the field.
- Field type
- Choose which type you would like to use.
Text Single Line - This is a single line text field.
Text Multi Line - This is a multi line text field.
File Upload - This creates a file upload field allowing users to upload a file.
Date Field - This creates a pop up calendar for the field allowing the user to select a date.
- Field seen in listing
- If you would like the information to appear in an ad's listing, choose “Yes”, otherwise choose “No”. An example of a field listing that you may want to create but not show up on an ad's page may be a “How did you find us?” field. It will then show up when the customer registers but won't show up in the customer's listing.
- Field Default Value if any
- (Optional) You can enter a few words to use as a prompt for your customer.
- Required
- If you want to force your customer to provide information in the field, choose “Yes” otherwise choose “No”. If nothing is entered in the field, a warning message will pop up warning the customer of the requirement.
- Field Searchable
- If you would like the field to be included in searches, choose “Yes” otherwise choose “No”.
- Range
- If you have selected the field to be searchable and it is a number field then you can assign a range to the search page. It works by creating two select boxes both start at the min value and go the max value. It increments by the step value you enter. Please note: The range is only used on the search page and you still have to enter the options so users can select the correct value when placing a listing.
- Please select which categories use this field
- When you create a field, you may want to associate the field with a few of your categories. Select which categories this field will be assigned to here. Hold down your “Ctrl” key to select multiple categories.
The advanced parent child select list is complicated to set up but does give you more power to associate fields to each other.
Some examples for reasons to use this type of fields could be make → model options for cars, or state → city for realestate ads. But you can use your imagination and create these for all sorts of sites.
In this example we will be using cars with a make model choice, but again this can be changed to whatever suits your site.
We recommend creating the child fields first that way you only have to add/edit the parent one time. So create a new child option named Ford Model and enter all the Ford models. Then save and you will be returned to the main extra fields page.
Now create another child option named Toyota Model and enter the Toyota models then click submit.
After you hit submit you will again be returned to the main extra fields page with a list of all the extra fields.
From this screen get the id number of the two fields you just created. We will say these are number 1 and 2 respectively.
Now create a new parent option named Make and enter Ford and Toyota as the options. Beside each one of these you will see an input field which is where you would enter the child id from the previous screen. So in our case we would enter Ford 1 and Toyota 2.
Please keep in mind that a parent option must relate to a child and can not relate to another parent. It will only go one level deep.
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