Confused about Featured Ads

In response to a recent question regarding how ads are selected to be shown in the Featured Ads box:

I can address your questions about Trading Dock.

This is the database query that displays featured listings for category 359:
select * from classifieds where featured_ad = 1 and live = 1 and category = 359 order by rand() limit 25.

There are 44 total ads in this category and 25 are randomly selected to be displayed, so you would expect any particular featured ad to show up 25/44 (57%) of the time. In my testing this is more or less what happened; your ad came up in 40 out of 71 queries (56%). You can rest assured that the sample is random.

I am going to modify the query so that the featured ads are ordered by date, with newest at the top. Hopefully that will lessen the confusion a little. We are aware that the featured / better placement / bolding system is not ideal and creates some misunderstanding, so bear with us and we will probably be revamping the system soon..

Thanks for looking out for problems on the site!
Matt

Don't Forget to Promote Your Ad

After you place an ad on Trading Dock, you will be presented with the Internet address that can be used to access your ad. It'll be something like http://www.tradingdock.org/1234. Keep this link handy. Wise users will employ this link to promote their ad - sharing your link with others online is a great way to draw traffic. Post it online at forums and bulletin boards, blog it, and put it in e-mails.

Upload Limits Fixed

We've had reports of photo upload troubles lately. I originally set our file size limits very high - 8 mb per photo - knowing that this limit can cause headaches for people with newer digital cameras. Well, some recent server changes (switching to PHP 5) caused this limit to get reset back to 2 mb. I could repair that easily enough. But additionally, our upload handling script itself was bailing silently because of hitting the PHP memory limitation...anyway, suffice it to say these bugs are squashed and you can feel free to upload absurdly large digital photos.

Matt

Newsprint Edition

For those that like to browse boats for sale in a familiar format - printed newspaper classifieds - I've made a Trading Dock Newsprint Edition available. This page is updated with the newest ads, listed in alphabetical order. For now it shows only the Pre WWII and Post WWII boat categories. As always please let me know your suggestions.

Matt

Scam Attempts Continue

Fraudulent solicitation continues to be a problem for Tradingdock.org and other classified sites on the Internet. It seems that scammers perfect their game and become profitable on large sites like craigslist.org, and then smaller sites like ours see a trickle-down effect as scammers try their sham elsewhere. The best defense for these con artists is simply to be informed and a little street smart: beware of peculiar English, money orders, cross-border deals, cashier's checks.

Read more at http://www.tradingdock.org/scams.php.

Trading Dock A Hit in 2007

Judging by the feedback we've received so far, the Trading Dock is off to a great start. Hopefully this is just the beginning . If you have a Trading Dock "success story," please share it with us here on the blog...and tell a friend.

Database Hiccup

Over the weekend we had a brief power failure to our server and this caused a corruption in the database that drives the Trading Dock. Luckily we were able to repair it without restoring from an older backup. We are fairly certain no information was lost, but if you are aware of anything that is amiss please let us know. We apologize for any inconvenience this incident has caused. Thanks for understanding as we continue to grow and build the site.

Matt