1) Noah’s Owners Forum has been taken down

I guess the owners were getting too uppity. they were asking questions like “what does version 5.0 have in it? And “how much does it cost?” The Owner can’t stand for that, he would have sliced the forum off in a huff.  He’s been aggressively pruning the open forum, he recently deleted a thread for someone just asking for a bit of community support. Judging by his comments, it would appear that the whole concept of Noah’s Classified as an application you can buy is under threat. I won’t reprint it here, he probably thinks that would be breach of copyright, but you can read it here until he takes that down as well!

2) The launch of Noahs Neighborhoods

Another US National release of Noah? Well actually no. The software underlying Noah’s Neighborhoods is nothing to do with Noah’s Classifieds at all. It’s built on SPBAS http://www.spbas.com/home which is kind of an enhanced toolkit for building web based software. If you take a look around their site the pricing model makes it quite attractive, you can get a 1000 user licence for less than $200. So if you are a PHP coder looking to build classified ad software to fit a client specification it sounds like a good choice.  Maybe that’s why Noah’s chose it?

http://www.joomclan.com/

Take a look, the software is fully featured. I mean it does practically everything you might think about doing with classified ad software. Or at least it says it does on the features list. There is no demo site and the software is new, so you run the risk of paying for development.

However, I have a friend who has bought and installed it. OK so he’s not put it in to a production environment yet, but it’s looking very promising and could easily be a contender. The vendor is even communicative and keen to improve the software.

JoomListings costs 45 USD for a 6 month update and support licence. Which is cheap enough, but you just worry that the vendor is going to try to raise the price up to the 150 USD a year mark other classified ad programmes run at. Oh please someone release some open source software!

I must admit, I’m not a Joomla advocate. I gave it a go, but quickly got fed up with trying to explain the fussy and non-intuitive admin UI to my customers. But Joomla 1.5 seems to run much faster these days and the functionality list of JoomListings is drawing me back.

This apparently has got stuff for embedding video and other somesuch “stuff I don’t need”. It also includes the bugfixes that were stopping the site I am developing going live. Specifically the ability to charge by field value for featured ads.

The install was actually reasonably straightforward, despite having ioncube encoded software and demanding PHP5. I uploaded my mods after and it all seems to be working.

I should be happy, but this ongoing delay has made me look like a complete clown to my customer and I had to whinge like an Aussie cricket commentator all over the Noah’s forums until the only active developer took pity on (or got bored with) me and expedited my case.

What a way to run a railroad.

I expect community support from Open Source software. I expect forum based support from major software with developers and support bods pitching in. I really don’t expect commercial software to rely entirely on community support and for the owners to have such a bad attitude.

I still have no real idea what I get from Noah’s for the software licence I bought in April. When I bought it, I thought I was buying unlimited upgrades and some support. Now it seems I only get bug fix upgrades for my current version, when the owner can be arsed.

Forget support.  Zoltan, was the only guy giving me any real support and he doesn’t work there any more. Steve told me untruths and, from what I have seen, doesn’t seem to understand the software and communicates like a petulant 15 year old. Rick, the guy in the forums isn’t fully informed either.

Noah’s Classified is quite good software. But I don’t think the support is worth buying and without support on commercial software, you are stuffed.

Noah’s have changed their business model to so say compete with the “big dogs”. there aren’t that many dogs out there and they all appear to be charging $100+ USD per year for the software licence and support. Some are even dearer.

There are a couple of plugins for Joomla and for WordPress, which let you have the full CMS experience, but these are also released on a commercial licence, all be it much cheaper than the “big dogs”. The WordPress theme/plugin even offers unlimited upgrades. (I hope they never follow Noah’s classifieds example and screw their users over for updates).

When I think of the big dogs of Internet software, I think of things like Joomla, WordPress, ZenCart and OSCommerce. All of which are released on a free Open Source licence. The functionality and architecture of all these urinates from a great height on all the commercial licence software I have ever seen.

One of the things that gets me about the recent Noah licensing change is the withdrawal of support for those of us who are still in their first year of licensing. We are now being encouraged to get community support within a new Owner’s Forum. What’s even worse is that there only appears to be one Noah Developer active in that forum. He is as helpful as he can be, but he still exhibits the same like it or lump it attitude towards missing features the “community” is crying out for. I still haven’t got the upgrade that fixes the bugs that stop my site from working. I’m beginning to suspect I’m on some sort of blacklist.

Within the Open Source community, you expect to get support from a forum and you  really do get good support. The software is usually built towards being easy to understand and change. I’m damned however if I am going to hack the code in Noah to the extent I need to and submit it towards the code when someone else intends making money out of it. Noah’s code is so Object Oriented it’s bloody difficult to find out where the bit you want is and even more difficult to change it. Zoltan the original developer is Hungarian and so the comments are all in Hungarian too, which is obviously OK if you speak Hungarian (I don’t').

An Open Source Classified Ad software with the ability to charge money for ads would be a real junkyard dog. I know someone with their own classified ad software in PHP/MySQL. I am going to try and persuade him to release it on the GPL. All it would need then is a PayPal shop integration. Why would he do that when he can try to sell the code? Well, for a start he would get unlimited free development and support for the product, so he wouldn’t have to pay anyone to do that. The new features would develop from the community and he would get massive traffic through his site which he could then monetize with advertising. Plus as the author of the software he would get great kudos, which even if you can’t spend it  in Tescos, would get him more work, doing custom installations and themes and other work based on his new reputation.

So Dean, if you read this. Release the code, get rich from the proceeds with no additional investment. It’s a no-brainer.

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.

Testing quickly revealed that a key feature was not working. The “set field to value “payment rules was not functional. It didn’t work. Basically it was the rule that said if you ticked a particular field button you got charged £5 extra, essential if you running a featured ad as I was.

I opened a support request, which got no response and checked the forums. Eventually Rick who works for Noah admitted it was a bug on the forums and that it would be fixed in the 411 release. There were other bugs in 410, like the fields not cascading down properly in order to create a featured ad per category.

Then the 411 release was announced. Noah’s had decided to change their business model and move to effectively an annual licence. At least that’s what I think it meant.

There had been an announcement the previous week asking for email addresses for the 411 licence. The blog post read as follows (since edited on Noah’s):

Hi All. We have released Noah’s Classifieds 4.1.1 We will have a sign-up form for the upgrade on our site Monday September 7 for this.

Please have your Transaction ID or Receipt Number ready for the form submission.

(we no longer accept – I lost it or my computer was stolen, my dog ate the receipt right off my computer screen etc… We get too many emails daily with such claims by even non customers bucking for our commercial versions).

Direct emails will not be responded to for this upgrade/update.

(Optional) Our New Support Policies require a -Support Package- and we will no longer accept phone support or Support Tickets unless a specific Phone Support or other Package is purchased.

All bug reports (if any)4.1.1 moving forward will have a proper place to post/report. The public forum is okay to post if you are sure its a bug and just not a feature that is not in Noah (this happens a lot).

Negative Forum -drag-the mood-down-comments will be deleted from here on out-. No direct emails will be accepted.

For those who do send us posts that need too be knocked out.deleted etc… Thank you in Advance -as always-.

These new policies were set to go with the 4.0 E-Commerce release and the Forum Riots caused this delay, but is now a firm standing.

Office Hours: Monday Through Friday 8am to 4pm (We will work Paid Support 6am to 6pm)

Support Hounding. So many of you have been great to talk with and help with issues and this will continue, however, for those who call many times a day or expect a return email within 5 minutes with resolve, we now are implementing -Office Hours- It is realized how important support is but the “I demand it now” thing has just got to stop.

We provide both the Public Forum and the Owners Forum, so for those who do not get any support package, please use these forums.

Hacking Noah and posting, some items will be accepted, but those who go on to assist in trying to elevate the Free Version with Commercial features will be deleted -every time-.

We have a new EULA License, -what this mean is accepting the new 4.1.1 upgrade/update will invalidate the prior license and invoke our new License EULA.

Okay, The New Stuff!

(Optional) 4.1.1 moving forward…A new Validation Key is required to get updates and upgrades ongoing. This is a $10.00 monthly fee please remember this is optional. (Existing Customers)Waiting five months thinking a build of the collective updates will cost $10 will actually carry a 5 month price etc..

(Patches/Bugs Fixes will always be free).

We added the following Features in 4.1.1.

What’s New -Flagging of ads

-True WYSIWYG Editor

-Picture now included in RSS feed

-Ability to use the reCaptcha plugin

-Users can now CC themselves when replying to ads

What’s Fixed

-Blank screen when trying to sort a field on the ads detail list.

-Blank screen when trying to configure Ecommerce.

-Sub categories not displaying when setting up credit rules.

-Credits not being deducted when using the “Set Field Value” credit rule.

Note: with 4.1.1 When updating or installing new a new license key needs to be set in the install field box.

-And-

New commercial Template (Step it up) www.noahhosted.com/noah

-And-, The Oodle Partnership is finally and totally in Place, we have some great things starting up to help all Noah Customers get massive aggregation, great traffic increases and some other very detailed -cool- factors. News will be hitting the wires in about a month from now.

We Dropped the V8 RSS product and now only have Noah E-commerce The new 4.1.1 Free Light (far more robust than 4.1.0 Free has replaced the old Free Version.

To be honest I don’t really understand what that means. I think it means unless I sign up for a new annual or rolling monthly licence, then I won’t get any updates or support. The stuff about support hounding was particularly galling. I only want to know what’s happening. It is after all commercial software for which I have paid and which doesn’t work.

Duck Fat I thought. Or similar words. I’ll sign up for the licence, get the fix, get my customers site finished, get paid and spend some of the money on some other classified ad software. So I followed the instructions. Signed up, got some sort of receipt and since then nada, nothing. No emailed zip file, no response to my queries about it and no software that works.

Surely changing my contract half way through can’t be right anyway? I bought the software because it had free updates.

The 411 release appears to be a bit of a nightmare anyway. The forum is littered with tales of it not installing properly, having ioncube encoded software which not all hosts support. There are also lots of users who didn’t read the blog and didn’t know they had to sign up for 411 and lots who did and haven’t received the zip file (like me).

Then it seems to get worse. Steve posted this on the Noah blog:

Also, all the 4.1.1 Free upgrade requests we think are in. Either way, we have stopped after a week of it and will now have to purchase if that boat was missed.

One other item of note, The phone in-bound will no longer be available. So if arrangements for a call need to be made, please make sure you add your phone number is a support ticket.

Please note, All phone support (-unless a Noah purchase and Installation help is needed-) will have to have a Support Package.

What in the name of Dio does this mean? Have I now been cut off? How can they cut off support for those under the original licence? And they have switched off the phone. Of course the forums went ballistic. Not a surprise. Steve wrote a particularly unpleasant forum post about being in business and not being bothered if customers rotted on the vine. It’s been heavily edited since, but it made me spit coffee in righteous indignation when I saw it.

Then it got even more confused. The current blog post announces release 412 as a Free release including some pointless add-ons like video and google maps. Take a look, tell me what it means: http://noahsclassifieds.org/blog/41_noah_4_1_2

I’m beyond caring by now. I’ve got a customers website to finish, I don’t want to have to deal with all this. All I want to know is where I stand in terms of getting the bugs fixed. Then I want to know which software to move the site to. In fact that’s probably all I want to know. I consider the Noah’s licence fee as $15o wasted on software that doesn’t work from a company that doesn’t care about their customers.

The price looked good,  the features included e-commerce and variable expiration dates. The software licence offered free upgrades.

It took me some time to build the site, I found Noah’s difficult to customise heavily it was really hard tracking down the variable names in order to move the layout about, but I eventually got there.  My customer was unhappy about the e-commerce integration, it was a bolt-on PayPal form which required manual administrator intervention to change things one payment had been received.

Noah’s were promising an e-commerce version in July that integrated with PayPal “properly” so we decided to wait for this.  When we eventually got it we ran in to a problem. The e-commerce integration did not seem to allow charging by expiry dates, despite the software saying that it did. I raised a support request on Noah’s system and got the following reply on 4th August.

Hi,

Setting up payment rules for various expiration times is not yet supported, but we will release a new version this week with several credit/payment rule improvements that will include it.

Best regards, Zoltan Nemeth, LiveTransactions

Great. That’s OK then. When I didn’t get any news by 13th August I dropped another reminder. Meanwhile the old support system had been replaced by a fancy ZenDesk support system as announced on the forums, so I added the request to the  new system.

Issue 6480 “Support Req (John Dickens) – ‘E-commerce’”

Is there any update on this. My customer is desperate for this. We
managed to fudge it using the old PayPal field, but the e-commerce
release completely blows away any prospect of charging by expiry date.

And I got this reply from Steve Taylor at Noah’s:

Hi John. I have just sent off to Zoltan for discussion to see where he is at
on this issue. So it is in play. Thanks. Steve.

OK, seems fair enough. Maybe it’s taken longer than expected. The next thing I know there is a blog post by Noah’s (don’t go looking for it it’s been deleted) saying this:

Also, to note: Zoltan is no longer with Noah’s Classifieds. It was a strange and immediate disappearance by him…

The good news here is that our new core team (all 8 of us) are making improvements, optimization and we will have an update in the next week or two, so no more waiting around for months on updates/upgrades or sluggish/lack of support responses etc…

So much for my support request. I’ll add the rest of the support transcription here un-annotated:

Hi John. Can you better define [ charging by expiry date. ] for me please. I was not aware of what Zoltan told you. He is no longer with the company and am learning he said lots of things to many users. Thank you. Steve.

My customer wants to charge for adverts on their site by the length of the advert. For instance 7 days $10, 14 days $14, 21 days $20 etc..

This is a fairly typical setup for any classified ad business.

The e-commerce rules do not allow you to apply a rule to the expiry date of the advert. I can not even set up a field that allows the customer to choose from a list of expiry dates.
Steve, I’m thinking of porting the site to another piece of software. Is there any chance of a refund?

Hi John. What is the feature issues with Noah that have you considering a software move? Is it only the ec version does not allow charging by expiry date? or are there other issues. Please understand when we put updates and upgrades, intentions are always there in a timline, but also, being that they are free updates, they sometimes get put on hold for higher priority issues if they arise.

Some people also say Noah has bugs when the reality is it does not, the reports are usually features that just do not yet exist in Noah.

Please let me know. Steve.

Hi Steve,

being able to charge by the display length of the advert seems like a fundamental part of any classified ad system. The fact that Noah’s doesn’t support this makes it pretty much impossible to finish the site I have been working on.

The workflow worked with manual intervention with the paypal form field but is now completely broken with the e-commerce edition. My customer was waiting for the e-commerce edition before going live because they didn’t want to have to manually intervene.

I would rather be able to finish the site this week on another software system than have to wait any longer. I choose not to get *funny* about the support issues, having worked in software for ten years I feel for your problems and this zen ticket system is a big improvement.

If you have a look at the admin demo of say http://www.68classifieds.com/demo/ you can see that their pricing structure is fixed by advert type and expiry date. If you went to put a classified ad in to a newspaper they would ask you three questions: category; type of advert and *number of weeks*.

Hi John. With the credit rules this is available. This is where I am curious about what you said Z mentioned as an update. Steve.

Steve,

the first line on this support request asked how to do this.

If it is possible, please tell me how to do it.

I’ve attached a screenshot, expiration is a fix field using date format and is not listed in the credit rules.

John

Hi Steve,

any chance of an update? Is this possible? How can I do it?

John

HI John. Please see this link. Thanks. Steve.

http://owners.noahsclassifieds.org/index.php/the-norum/topic?id=4#p335

I have replied, please look at the picture I submitted. Expiration is not listed as an available field.

Please see this attachment. Expiration date is not listed in the drop down list.

I would really appreciate some support on this. At the moment it’s not working and I am in danger of not getting paid for my work.

Hi John. The directions for this is right in the E-comm Settings. Are you making a field to collaborates with this feature? Also, Are you setting a default time for Ads in general to expire?

Where are the instructions?

Can you post them here?

I don’t understand “Are you making a field to collaborates with this feature?”

Why do I need to set a default time. Please give me some help here another day has passed.

Steve,

Is there anyone else you can refer this support request on to?

I feel you do not understand the issue and I really need it resolved. If it works, tell me how. If it doesn’t I would like a refund.

John

Hi John. To start this is one of the weaker elements in Noah as a feature. In other words we thought this would be the last thing folks would want to do so we did not focus on it really. I am cropping up a method.

John. A little late for that, I will say though you certainly seem like it will be the death of your site if you do not have this feature. I am puzzled. I have many emails from you on this and really, we have a line of folks handling things as quickly as possible. All your extra emails just make it even longer to address answering these extra ones you are sending. Steve.

Steve

18th August you wrote “Hi John. What is the feature issues with Noah that have you considering a software move? Is it only the ec version does not allow charging by expiry date? or are there other issues.”

There has only been one issue, I need to allow the customer to be charged for a limited amount of time. Once the expiry date arrives the ad will no longer be visible. All this with minimal intervention by my customer.

20th August you wrote “Hi John. The directions for this is right in the E-comm Settings.”

I am unable to find them here please can you let me have the instructions on how to do this if it is indeed possible.

Sorry if I have caused confusion but as you appreciate I have a rather unhappy customer who is also working to a timescale.

John

Since then. Nothing. Steve kept sending me stuff that didn’t answer the question. All I really wanted to know was if this was a bug, missing functionality or whatever?

I crashed around on the forums for a bit and met a couple of other Noah users with the same issue as me. Between us we managed to figure out that this wasn’t supposed to work in this version of Noah (410).

Charge by expiry date should be classified ad software 101.

Zoltan may have misled me by saying there was a patch being released, but Steve either failed to understand or tried to fob me off. The correct answer should have been. “This is not a feature of Noah’s  E-commerce”. Which is crappy, but I guess fair enough.

Good practice would have been to let me know if the feature was on the product roadmap and when I might expect it.

I had to get my wife to write the last update to the support request as I was so hacked off I couldn’t answer without getting abusive.

I needed to move on, so I managed to persuade my customer to go live with only two payment rules: 14 day ad and 14 day featured ad in the hope of getting a free upgrade at a alter date.

I can assure you it is not a good experience. I hope other Noah users with similar experiences will use the blog so we can help each other get the best out of Noah and put some pressure on to get better support and service.