One of the possible options to replace Noah’s that I am looking at is the commercial Classipress theme/plugin for WordPress. http://wpclassipress.com/
This sells for $59 USD and offers a highly featured plugin and theme to offer classified adverts on a WordPress site. It includes things like featured ads and PayPal shopping cart style integration and free upgrades.
I like WordPress. The back end of WordPress is silky smooth and user friendly. I’ve done about half a dozen WordPress sites this year and rarely fail to find the right plugin or theme to fit the site.
Now the bad news. I can’t set up rules by expiry date, one of the key features for my clients business model. There is however strongly rumoured to be a major upgrade coming in October this year and this is likely to be one of the key features. I will check with the developers and see if it really is coming before making my decision on purchase.
There are other options, but I am strongly inclined towards WordPress, for instance, I find the back end of Joomla confusing and difficult for users and I have had sites hacked in Joomla in the past. WordPress lets you do a one click upgrade and new versions are flying out.
If you have used Classipress, then I would really like to hear your comments.
Another option is the Joomla component from http://www.joomclan.com I’m really holding out for this one as it seems it will offer most of the features of Noah. Any lack of functionality is offset against the additional functionality offered by Joomla, including banner tracking, and all the familiar Joomla extensions.
As of the time of writing, a bug-fix is about 1 week away but based on what I’ve seen so far, it will be a sturdy competitor in online classified software.
In relation to Joomla, there’s some pretty good anti-hacking software available including the jSecure plugin – there’s another at http://ninjaforge.com/index.php which I have on a few sites. It’s merciless if it detects hacking behaviour but if you go down that road, RTFM.
As for user access, I’ve found that restricting them to a certain level works wonders by taking their sticky user fingers away from the tweakables.
I am told by the developer at Classipress that a new super duper version *including* the ability to charge by expiry date is going to be released by the end of this year.
That’s good news for me. Lets hope they keep the same business model and don’t try and screw us over for an annual licence.
The biggest problem is that until you get hold of commercially released web software, you just don’t really know if it will be fit for purpose.
Keep an eye on the Solostream team, they are creating a wordpress Classifieds theme that I believe will blow away the competition and usher in a truly excellent classifieds theme for wordpress users.
They have multiple themes out and they are SUPERB!
Solostream.com
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I am using Classipress plugin am quite happy, but personal messaging is missing