SA Dealers News and opinions about topics in general

I have had to, unfortunately add even more limitations on the ad creation process on www.sellstuff.co.za. This was due to the amount of spam/fake ads that were being created every day.

I have been logging in a few times a day to disable the user accounts and remove the ads, but I do sometimes miss one or two. If you spot an ad that looks suspicious please let me know, I remove suspicious ads as soon as I see them/get notified of them.

Also I think it is quite obvious that not everyone placing free ads is legitimate, so please be vigilant, not only on www.sellstuff.co.za but on ANY classifieds site you visit.

I am working hard to keep the classifieds clean and free from the trash that seems to afflict so many other classifieds sites so I do really appreciate it when people let me know about dodgy ads!

Here’s hoping you browse safely…

Posted under Classifeds Sites Updates

I have made further changes to the ad creation form on www.sellstuff.co.za, so now if you try and create an ad and it fails on the PHP validation, your form will redisplay with the values you entered in, which is nice.

Also when your ad is created successfully your newly created ad is displayed, which it should have done, but I had a bit of a bug in my code

Added to that I now check for email addresses in the ad fields in PHP as well, you see some people just don’t listen when you ask nicely, then everyone is impacted.

Lastly I moved things around on the form a bit so that the first thing you see on the form is the actual form and not all the warnings that I will de-activate your ads and account etc. I think this looks better.

Posted under Classifeds Sites Updates

If you tried to create ad ad on www.sellstuff.co.za recently you may have had a bit of trouble getting it done.

I have, for quite some time spent a large part of each day removing suspicious looking ads, as well as ads that do not fall within the guidelines for www.sellstuff.co.za.

I also added text to the ad submission page specifically requesting that people do not ad their email addresses in the description field, but many people seemed to have ignored this completely, so I did something about it.

Last week (I think) I added extra validation to check that no email addresses had been added in any of the fields on the ad submission form, then tested it and it worked……. problem is I tested it when I was logged in.

You see the same form gets used whether you are logged in or not, and when you have not registered, or logged in there are additional fields for your username, and … email address. So my validation worked so well when you filled your email address in the email address field, it told you no email addresses are allowed, not nice , remove your email address from that field and you cannot submit the form really really not nice.

Thankfully a user took the time to send me a mail letting me know about the problem, which is now fixed.

So in closing, if you have any issues at all on the site, let me know! I won’t ignore you. Thanks to all those people who have sent me feedback it is appreciated!

Posted under Classifeds Sites Updates

I received a category suggestion for a new category and have added it, you can see it at http://www.sellstuff.co.za/Categories/All/184-Paintings-&-Art/index.html

Posted under Classifeds Sites Updates

I have added code to cache the title's and other potions of ads on www.sellstuff.co.za.

Before I did this though I added a small section at the bottom of the pages on the site to show how long the code ran for and how many queries were executed to generate the page. The difference in the number of queries run has been substantial, the total execution time has also been affected but not quite as drastically.

I work out the time with the following bits of code;

This is added in the file I am calling

and then in my footer I have the following bit of code

I then just disply $totaltime in the footer. Easy hey!

Posted under Classifeds Sites Updates, PHP Web Development

It saddens me that I had to do this, but I have now written in validation to block certain phrases and words in ads on www.sellstuff.co.za.

This was due to the large amount of spam ads that I had to de-activate on a daily basis.

Obviously I will have to keep adding phrases to the list but at least it means that once added I won't have to worry about it again.

I am hoping this makes browsing and advertising on www.sellstuff.co.za a more enjoyable experience for everyone who visits it.

Posted under Classifeds Sites Updates

It may seem like I have been neglecting the site (ok I have , a bit ...), but I have made a few changes that I just never actually announced.

First off I added a search feature which is quite quick and dirty, but works. I would like to extend this in future but don't seem to be getting the time!

Secondly I have added a few conditions to new ads being placed. Why? Because the site was being filled with so much duplicate ads and irrelevant ads that I have had enough, so now any ad placed for an affiliate web site etc. will be de-activated and continued attempts by a user will lead to thier account being disabled and all their ads removed. The same goes for ads placed in the wrong category, or ads placed in multiple categories.

I also noticed a disturbing trend where people add thier email address in thier ad, this is a VERY BAD IDEA! The largest majority of the traffic to the site comes from search engines, which means that your information is indexable, which in turn means that anyone who writes a script to go through webpages and find email addresses can pick your address up and start spamming you. I added the contact form specifically so to avoid this, in addition I get cc'ed on the contact through the site, meaning that if someone finds a way to send spam through the site I can figure it out an block that too.

Posted under Classifeds Sites Updates

At the request of a visitor I have added a category for DVD rentals and sales on the classifieds site.

View it here http://www.sellstuff.co.za/Categories/All/181-DVD-Sales-and-Rentals/index.html

This time an email was included so I could let them know that the category was created. Whoohoo!

Posted under Classifeds Sites Updates

I got a suggestion to add a category for Horses on www.sellstuff.co.za, so I did!

You can see it here http://www.sellstuff.co.za/Categories/All/56-Outdoors-and-Sports/180-Horses/index.html

Unfortunately no email address supplied so I could not let the visitor know that their category has been created, shame.

Posted under Classifeds Sites Updates

In an attempt to make www.sellstuff.co.za more user friendly I have changed the layout slightly,

First I widened the layout from 800 pixels to 99 pixels

Secondly I increased the font size, so everything should be more legible now

Lastly I added pretty ICONS! These are used to highlight specific areas of the site that are important, where to login, to create a new ad, etc. etc.

Once you have logged in you will see more.

I am still trying to make the site more attractive in future, so keep checking back!

Posted under Classifeds Sites Updates