Sponsored and Premium payment does not sum up for addtional categories

[santocki]

For INDEXU 5.0.1,

When I upgrade a listing assigned with 2 different categories in Admin Control Panel to Sponsored, it will show up as Sponsored Listing at the browsing screen in both categories as expected. I am very happy!

But when I try to upgrade a listing assigned with 2 different categories (let's say $100 for each category) to sponsored as a ordinary user at the My Account screen, the value will not sum up to $200, but it will only charge for the main category that is $100...

I am confused.... Is this normal?

If this is normal, then INDEXU's payment system is useless...
If I have missed and misunderstood something, please tell me what to do...

[dody]

Yes, it's normal, it will appear in its category as sponsored listing. You can change it to only displayed in the 1st category by hacking the sql query here:

browse.php line 248-258

    // display sponsored_link

    $query2 = "select * from idx_link where (link_id = {$lid[0]} ";
    $i=1;
    while($i<count($lid)) {
      $lid2 = $lid[$i];
      $query2 .= "or link_id = '$lid2' ";
      $i++;
    }
    $query2 .= " ) and (category_id = '$cat' or cat1 = '$cat' or cat2 = '$cat')
		             and suspended = 0";

[santocki]

Dear Dody,

Okay, now I understood, thanks for the answer and support. I know that you already know this but I think the system supposted to be able to charge for all the categories the user have assigned and let him decide the category he wants to upgrade.

My suggestion is that we can offer one category listing for free. Any other additional category listings should be treated as an item for sale. Not just 1, 2, or 3 categories, but unlimited categories. For example a user can purchase 1st sponsored listing at the top level category for $100, purchase 2nd listing in a sub-category as premium for $30, purchase 2 more extra ordinary listings for $5 each....(of course, we also need to be able to set qty limitations at the settings.php for each kind of ads and for the total ads for each listing, so it would not be overwhelmed with the same ads all over the site). The system should also warn the customers if the ad is going to expire soon so they can anticipate the ad payments.

I noticed that there is a very nice "bid" field so you can put higher values so it would be listed first. I think it would be nice to put this feature into another new premium ad feature, so it will be listed first at the standard Web Links. This way INDEXU will have 3 kinds of ad system instead of just two. I am saying this because althought the "bid" is a very clever thought, I can't think of a way to exploit it or charge from the customers.

It would be nice also to make it possible to show up at the Main Homepage area (the most expensive ad listing) which can be limited to 3 or more listing spaces, instead of just showing the blocks of "New and Updated listings" that does not generate any revenue for the main homepage space. And because of the main page's space limitation, it should be able to put the purchased listing into the waiting list and show up by purchased order and period purchased. If the demand goes high, we will raise the ad fee for new subscriber's with pleasure... with this kind of ad, now INDEXU would have 4 kinds of ad features...

Usually the potential customers won't even bother to pay for extra 1 or more categories, and would happy to buy for extra categories that cost less, this way the webmasters can earn 2X or 3X more for the listings, which makes quite a different for earnings for the same effort and time we put into our websites.

If a webmaster earns $1000 per month, he might need another full-time or part-time job for the income, but if he can earn $2000 or more, he can devote all his time with his web site, make it better, and can earn much more than $2000 making his life very happy by doing something what he likes, as a webmaster just like me !


I really love the features that INDEXU offers but only the payment system (the most important feature) I think is somehow crippled.

As stated in other thread about the payment system, please make it as number 1 priority in your to do list. I know that the other webmasters are also starving for this feature, even you charge extra fee as an shopping cart add on. As a suggestion, maybe you could create different INDEXU versions like basic for no shopping cart, standard with simple shopping cart, premium with full feature, gold for extra banner rotation and text ad system like Google Adsense, but all integrated into one management system so it will look professional.

Just one more question, is the user able to edit the sponsored list after the payment? What happens if he changes the "category" field? Will it be treated as ordinary listings so the Admin can accept or reject it? Just to make sure...

[santocki]

I really love the features that INDEXU offers but only the payment system (the most important feature) I think is somehow crippled.

I think Dody went for a vacation or something...

Anyways I solved the problem about charging 2 or all 3 categories the user have assigned for his listing.

Just edit the select_payment.php file at the ShowFormSelectPayment() function section. Anyone who knows a little PHP can make the changes, because the codes are very basic, and you only need to duplicate the existing codes for other 2 categories.

Create and declare extra variables for Prices and Categories as Global, get the extra 2 category ids from idx_link table then retrieve the price from idx_category table, sum up the prices to a total variable, then finally pass these variables at the Displaytemplate() to the select_payment.html template file.

At the select_payment.html template file, you only need to verify the price for each category with <%if%> to only show the ones with "price > 0", so the category path string and prices will be listed like a spreadsheet with total on the bottom.