Well, I spent a frustrating 4 hours today battling with a classifieds plugin to replace the (buggy) one we were using - yes, I’ve ditched that one too, sorry! That one developed amnesia occasionally and ‘lost’ the ads…

It showed a lot of promise but after attempting to edit test ads and finding that didn’t work, I then tried to place a new advert and that no longer worked either. So, in the end I gave up on that one as well.

I probably should have known better when I read through all the comments that are on the developer’s site from users who were struggling as I was. Many of them were listing patches and fixes they had made to his code so it worked for them!

I still plan to come up with a free classifieds section with the site at some stage - but honestly, I don’t know if it will be worth the effort. I found a great classifieds ‘theme’ that we could use on the site and set it up separately on a subdomain (something like freeclassifieds.shoalhavenheads.net.au) but it isn’t free - around US$70. This one does have a PayPal option so that we could recoup the cost of setting it up by charging for ‘premium ads’ - say for extra features that might interest vehicle or house sellers.

What do you think - would you read and place adverts if free classifieds were available here?

What features would you like if so? I think the ability for site users to upload photos of items is a must for example. Drop me a comment below if you have more ideas.