Features Of Joomla Classified Ads – Create and Manage your Classified Advertisement System

   Joomla Classified Ads extension enables you to Create and manage your classified ads in Joomla content management system. Just as the classified advertisement pages in your local newspaper constitutes a part of it, likewise in this system classified advertisements consitutes of a part of your website. You can also have a Yellow Pages Section also in the same website which has classified ads. In case you want authorised users to post their own advertisements you can also enable it. User registration can be done by the administrator. In case you wish to have an open and free system where the users can register and post their own ads the system can also be configured this way.
   In the default settings the ads will go live only after approval by the administrator of the system. The setting can also be changed to permit the publishing of the classified advertisement soon after it is submitted by the user.

Overview of the Classified Ad System

   During the design and development process, we have to make sure to have a link to our classified ads at a prominent place on our website home page. In the case illustrated below the link is placed on the top menu. When a site visitor clicks the link he is taken to the classified ads home page.

   There are several sections in the classifieds ads home page. The top section displayes the latest ads that have been posted. The middle section gives a short description of our classifieds ads section, which we can customise from the Joomla administrator control panel. Below it are the links to enable authorised users to post ads and view their ads and profile. The last section lists the various main categories as well as sub categories along with a small represantative picture of the main category. On clicking the link of a category or subcategory the respective page is displayed with the ad listings of that category. We can search the particular category or sub category by using the search facility provided.

Creating and Customizing your Classified Ads System in Joomla

   The Classified Ads Control Panel is accessible from the Administrator Control Panel. We have to access it from Components > Ads Manager. The items that we can setup and customise are 1)Configuration 2)Fields 3)Categories.
   Under configuration we can decide whether to setup our system to allow any site vistor to post an ad or whether to restrict only registered users to post ads. There is also an option on whether an administrator has to approve the ads before they go live or whether the ads are published immediately on submission by the authorised user.
   We can also set the various options for the display of image like the image size, image height and width as well as a text tag on the image. The number of ads on a page can also be decided by us.

   We can also decide whether the classied ad is permanent or will expire in a set period. The default expiry period is 30 days.
   We can decide whether we wish to display the latest ads listing on the classified ads home page or not. In case we wish to display them, we can decide where to place them, at the top (which the default) or at the bottom of the page.
   Under Fields we can decide which fields are absolutely necessary and non entry of which will result in the rejection of the ad. we can choose to publish or unpublish (not to be displayed) certain fields that are not required.

Creating Advertisement Categories and Subcategories

   One of the most important tasks during the setup of the classified ads system is creating categories as well as subcategories. We have to first create our main or root categories and then the subcategories. The order of display of the various categories as well as subcategories can be fully customized. We can also prevent users from submitting ads to the root categories if we wish to.