Classified Ad widget

Would like to add a “Classifieds” page to our website where members can post items they have for sale, and other members can easily see a list of those items for sale posted by different members. Should have a basic customizable form for users to fill out to then ‘publish’ their ad to the website.

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Thanks a lot for sharing your idea, @Garth66, and welcome to the forum!

Do I understand it correctly, that users need to be able to fill out the form and have it published on your website through such a widget right away?

I would like a template/widget to easily add and manage classified ads on the non-profit’s website so members can list and sell items to one another.

  1. At the most basic level, it should provide a nice interface with admin definable categories and user selectable view (list vs. grid) as in the Classified WP theme (Electronics – Classified Listing).

  2. Users should be able to Post/Submit an ad. Therefore there would need to be form users complete to submit their item for sale. I imagine it could be complicated to add member login/verification before posting, so merely a form to submit that a site admin must then ‘approve’ for it to post would be good (so no restriction on who can submit an ad), and then it goes into the widget template. At minimum I suppose the form could provide the necessary info for an admin to manually copy/paste date into the widget, but I don’t really want to have to manually enter and delete every ad. Could become an administrative nightmare.

I really like the ‘categories’ and ‘filters’ in the Classilist example linked above. Looks very similar to an e-commerce ‘store’ with categories and products, but don’t need a shopping cart or checkout function as we don’t want to be involved in these transactions.

It would be nice if a user could set an expiration date for their ad, and/or create a password for their ad when created/posted so the user can return and delete the ad at a later date once the item is sold without site admin involvement.

Users should be able to upload/include pics with their classified ad, contact info, price, and maybe even add some custom fields, for example if there was a ‘pets’ category and a user has a puppy for sale or free to a good home, it would be nice if the user could add a ‘gender’ field. Just a thought, but that’s a nice to have feature.

Another nice to have feature might be an option to generate a sharable link to the ad so users can email it to friends and family or post to FB, Instagram, or their favorite social platform.

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@Garth66 thank you so much for such a detailed description, I do see your idea!

It seems like a very convenient widget, but I must say that it looks like a very complex and time-consuming project, so I’m afraid I cannot promise we will consider it in the near future :frowning:

But anyways, we’re very happy to hear from you and know your use cases, it does help us come up with better ideas even for our current widgets.

Many thanks for taking your time to share your ideas, it’s very much appreciated!