Featured Listing Requirement

12 posts by 3 authors in: Forums > CMS Builder
Last Post: June 25, 2009   (RSS)

By willydoit - June 12, 2009

Hi All,

Using cms to display accommodation listings, Hotels etc I am looking to add the facility to provide clients with a featured listing option which would ensure that featured listings apeared at the top of the page so in effect the page is divided into two, just seperated by a horizontal line, with any/all featured listings above the horizontal line and standard listings below it, I do however have a couple of criteria whech needs to be met;

1) At present the list is generated randomly which works fine and changes on each refresh which is how we need it so random listings need to remain.

2) If a listing is a featured listing it needs to appear at the top of this list, but we need to cater for any number of featured listings, all of which must appear in the list before a standard listing and above the horizontal line.

3) The featured listings section must also be randomized on each page load so that each refresh gives a different listing order to both the featured and standard sections.

4) As we havent offered a featured listing facility yet we would only want the featured listing section to display if a featured listing existed in the table so hopefully the page would display as normal if no featured listings have been purchased, if a featured listing exists then the section would be added with suitable text headlining the featured listing section.

An acceptable alternative would be to be able to add an animated gif option to display in the listing of any featured account if this would be easier, but again we need to ensure that featured appeared at the top of the list and randomly within other featured listings.

I feel sure this has already been done but need to check to see if it can be done while retaining the random element to both sections as this is important to our clients and our only reason for upgrading from listings manager.

As stated in earlier posts, we have no php coding knowledge but are pretty good at cut and paste so any help would be appreciated.

Thanks in advance

Re: [willydoit] Featured Listing Requirement

By ross - June 15, 2009

Hi there.

Thanks for posting!

What you could do there is setup two viewers for the same page. One viewer would have a "where featured = 1" option in it and the other would just be your regular viewer. Of course, they would both have the sort by rand() option.

Then, you just use the viewer code from the one that only has featured listings display first then have the regular one go second. You can use an "if" to make the <hr> only show when there are in fact featured listings.

Let me know what you think :).

Setup a mockup first and then we can start going over things in some more detail.
-----------------------------------------------------------
Cheers,
Ross Fairbairn - Consulting
consulting@interactivetools.com

Hire me! Save time by getting our experts to help with your project.
Template changes, advanced features, full integration, whatever you
need. Whether you need one hour or fifty, get it done fast with
Priority Consulting: http://www.interactivetools.com/consulting/

Re: [ross] Featured Listing Requirement

By willydoit - June 16, 2009

Hi Ross,

Sounds like this is going to be beyond my cut and paste abilities, I am not sure whether the featured listing is likely to cause us more hassles than it is worth, particularly at a credit crunch time when advertisers are trying to reduce their costs as much as possible, so it's implementation is likely to be decided upon creation costs. Could you let me know how much we are likely to be looking at to create the required coding so that we can just cut and paste it into other sections.

Thanks in advance

Re: [willydoit] Featured Listing Requirement

By ross - June 16, 2009

Hi there.

To get the ball rolling on us doing that for you, could you email through consulting@interactivetools.com? Perhaps just stick a link to this forum thread in there and then a link to your HTML mock up.

Thanks!
-----------------------------------------------------------
Cheers,
Ross Fairbairn - Consulting
consulting@interactivetools.com

Hire me! Save time by getting our experts to help with your project.
Template changes, advanced features, full integration, whatever you
need. Whether you need one hour or fifty, get it done fast with
Priority Consulting: http://www.interactivetools.com/consulting/

Re: [ross] Featured Listing Requirement

By willydoit - June 18, 2009

Hi Ross,

sent an email but havent received a response, have sent it again this morning if you could keep a look out for it.

Thanks

Re: [willydoit] Featured Listing Requirement

By willydoit - June 18, 2009

[font "Consolas"]Hi Ross,

[font "Consolas"]Further to your email, [font "Consolas"]I already have a featured listing checkbox set up which can only be amended by an admin user which is featured_listing I would like to try to get to grips with a bit of the coding but appreciate that it's not your job to teach me but would be happy to have a go if you think it's basic enough to be within my limited ability.

Re: [willydoit] Featured Listing Requirement

By ross - June 18, 2009

Hi there.

Thanks for the update!

What you'll need to do is have two different viewer blocks on that page. One will display your featured listings and the other will display your regular listings.

One thing that would really help is if you could attach a copy of your template to a post so I can use the same code as you.

Thanks!
-----------------------------------------------------------
Cheers,
Ross Fairbairn - Consulting
consulting@interactivetools.com

Hire me! Save time by getting our experts to help with your project.
Template changes, advanced features, full integration, whatever you
need. Whether you need one hour or fifty, get it done fast with
Priority Consulting: http://www.interactivetools.com/consulting/

Re: [ross] Featured Listing Requirement

By willydoit - June 19, 2009

HI Ross,

I have attached one of our templates, we use different ones for each section, serviced. self catering, caravan parks etc but they are all based on the same layout so I am sure If I can get one working I will be able to transpose the code to the other templates, hope this helps.
Attachments:

serviced_list.php 13K

Re: [isdoo] Featured Listing Requirement

By willydoit - June 20, 2009

Hi Isdoo,

Thanks for that information, we are close to releasing the new version of the site so may not get around to rectifying that at this late stage but really appreciate your bringing it to my attention.