New PH Classifieds: Update and questions
Discussion
In a bid to gather together all the questions on the new PH Classifieds site into one place, I've drawn up a quick set of FAQs. Please have a read through. We will of course deal with additional questions.
The search filter boxes don’t return enough cars according to the criteria I’m selecting. Why?
Adverts on the new site have been migrated across from the old. They haven’t as part of this process been passed through the system we’ve built to add additional specification data to the description of the car (the “PH essentials” you’ll see at the bottom of ads). Our search filters look at this data to return results, and so if it can’t see this data, it can’t return a car against that criteria.
This will change as the number of cars in the system which have been uploaded by sellers or edited grows day by day, and in 30 days all data will have gone through this process naturally. We’re also looking at emailing everyone with a car to ask them to login and press a button to complete this process, but we want to be sure that the advert management system will cope with that load first, as it would be an exceptional number of concurrent logins.
Some cars seem to be in the wrong sections.
There are always some cars in the wrong sections, where users upload them incorrectly or dealer feeds incorrectly categorise them. However there are a couple of examples of where our migration process has struggled to match accurately old cars to new sections. So “Mini” and “Mini Classic” are a bit mixed up, and “Audi Quattro” has ended up with some newer Audi models where the word Quattro is in the description.
Some cars are not what the description says they are
Again, this isn’t a new issue, but sometimes DVLA (from where the original data came from) will record different details temporarily where a private plate has been moved off a car when it is offered for sale. When you see these, just hit the report button as normal, and we’ll change it.
I can’t see the make/model drop down box.
If you’re using Internet Explorer as your browser, particularly IE7 or IE8, then we’re working on an urgent fix to this which we hope will go live today (Friday 16th).
Additionally it would be helpful if you could turn off adblockers, or if you use a script blocker, add a new exception URL for http://classifieds.pistonheads.com
I’ll update on this issue later today.
Text seems to have lost all formatting, and I can’t add it back in the advert management system.
In migrating the text over to the new site we stripped out formatting code. The site supports paragraph breaks currently, but there does seem to be an issue with this at present which we’re working on. In the meantime it might be worth refraining from trying to edit text while we do, just because we don’t want you to get even more frustrated than you are already!
Images: too small!
We know. Early in the New Year we’re going to introduce bigger image galleries. At the same time we’ll sort out some of the issues with the way in which images are cropped.
I don’t like the way individual bits of functionality work
We know that bits of functionality will need to be tweaked, and we always anticipated being able to do this in reaction to the way users responded to the site.
Now that the site is live we’ll start a process of continual tweaking of the search filters and other areas of the design. So please make suggestions, and feel free to make them as detailed as possible. We’ll be reading and taking on everything on board, albeit that we might not have time to react with a written response straight away to every post.
This is not the end of the development process, so help us to improve the site with constructive feedback and suggestions, and we'll act upon them
PistonHeads has always relied on feedback from users to help develop and tweak functionality, and it’s no different now than ever before, except that with many more developers (and one of them has a lovely blue 968CS, so he’s got the bug as badly as all of you) we can get change done far more quickly and regularly than we used to.
The search filter boxes don’t return enough cars according to the criteria I’m selecting. Why?
Adverts on the new site have been migrated across from the old. They haven’t as part of this process been passed through the system we’ve built to add additional specification data to the description of the car (the “PH essentials” you’ll see at the bottom of ads). Our search filters look at this data to return results, and so if it can’t see this data, it can’t return a car against that criteria.
This will change as the number of cars in the system which have been uploaded by sellers or edited grows day by day, and in 30 days all data will have gone through this process naturally. We’re also looking at emailing everyone with a car to ask them to login and press a button to complete this process, but we want to be sure that the advert management system will cope with that load first, as it would be an exceptional number of concurrent logins.
Some cars seem to be in the wrong sections.
There are always some cars in the wrong sections, where users upload them incorrectly or dealer feeds incorrectly categorise them. However there are a couple of examples of where our migration process has struggled to match accurately old cars to new sections. So “Mini” and “Mini Classic” are a bit mixed up, and “Audi Quattro” has ended up with some newer Audi models where the word Quattro is in the description.
Some cars are not what the description says they are
Again, this isn’t a new issue, but sometimes DVLA (from where the original data came from) will record different details temporarily where a private plate has been moved off a car when it is offered for sale. When you see these, just hit the report button as normal, and we’ll change it.
I can’t see the make/model drop down box.
If you’re using Internet Explorer as your browser, particularly IE7 or IE8, then we’re working on an urgent fix to this which we hope will go live today (Friday 16th).
Additionally it would be helpful if you could turn off adblockers, or if you use a script blocker, add a new exception URL for http://classifieds.pistonheads.com
I’ll update on this issue later today.
Text seems to have lost all formatting, and I can’t add it back in the advert management system.
In migrating the text over to the new site we stripped out formatting code. The site supports paragraph breaks currently, but there does seem to be an issue with this at present which we’re working on. In the meantime it might be worth refraining from trying to edit text while we do, just because we don’t want you to get even more frustrated than you are already!
Images: too small!
We know. Early in the New Year we’re going to introduce bigger image galleries. At the same time we’ll sort out some of the issues with the way in which images are cropped.
I don’t like the way individual bits of functionality work
We know that bits of functionality will need to be tweaked, and we always anticipated being able to do this in reaction to the way users responded to the site.
Now that the site is live we’ll start a process of continual tweaking of the search filters and other areas of the design. So please make suggestions, and feel free to make them as detailed as possible. We’ll be reading and taking on everything on board, albeit that we might not have time to react with a written response straight away to every post.
This is not the end of the development process, so help us to improve the site with constructive feedback and suggestions, and we'll act upon them
PistonHeads has always relied on feedback from users to help develop and tweak functionality, and it’s no different now than ever before, except that with many more developers (and one of them has a lovely blue 968CS, so he’s got the bug as badly as all of you) we can get change done far more quickly and regularly than we used to.
On the old site - one could do a search on the part exchanges people are interested in? This does not seem to be available anymore (and was a useful / interesting tool)?
Also I could be wrong but I think we used to be able to specify the from and to years of models you are searching on?
Can we do that rather than the more limited autotrader like functionality of a list box?
Especially useful when looking at certain models when we know a change was introduced.
Also I could be wrong but I think we used to be able to specify the from and to years of models you are searching on?
Can we do that rather than the more limited autotrader like functionality of a list box?
Especially useful when looking at certain models when we know a change was introduced.
D'oh
Sorry just spotted I just need to add the 'year' filter.
Why anyone will want to use the 'age' one then is beyond me!
Is it possible to search for part ex'es as well ? Not that that always worked as some people filled that bit with rubbish but at least we could find something where people used decent keywords and correctly spelled car models.
Note: I am not a spelling/grammar police person - just makes sense on the free text searching of part ex cars to be a little careful and not say you're interested in a Porch!
Sorry just spotted I just need to add the 'year' filter.
Why anyone will want to use the 'age' one then is beyond me!
Is it possible to search for part ex'es as well ? Not that that always worked as some people filled that bit with rubbish but at least we could find something where people used decent keywords and correctly spelled car models.
Note: I am not a spelling/grammar police person - just makes sense on the free text searching of part ex cars to be a little careful and not say you're interested in a Porch!
Gaz. said:
You can still do this, I was searching for a 1994-1998 MR2 last night on the new classifieds. 
Rakoosh said:
On the old site - one could do a search on the part exchanges people are interested in? This does not seem to be available anymore (and was a useful / interesting tool)?
Also I could be wrong but I think we used to be able to specify the from and to years of models you are searching on?
Can we do that rather than the more limited autotrader like functionality of a list box?
Especially useful when looking at certain models when we know a change was introduced.
You can use the "year" filter box to do this. Also I could be wrong but I think we used to be able to specify the from and to years of models you are searching on?
Can we do that rather than the more limited autotrader like functionality of a list box?
Especially useful when looking at certain models when we know a change was introduced.
On the part exchange stuff, it will search on part exchange in text, but we need to do a little bit of work to improve the way this works. On the list.
Ok thanks - the part ex functionality was great perhaps if it could be enforced a little when filling even (as a one 'to do' one day this!!) - i.e. let people choose from models and also allow free text when entering the ad... ?
Sorry I was a bit slow re: the year and Gaz pointed this out ... just a little hungover !!
Sorry I was a bit slow re: the year and Gaz pointed this out ... just a little hungover !!
Stuart said:
You can use the "year" filter box to do this.
On the part exchange stuff, it will search on part exchange in text, but we need to do a little bit of work to improve the way this works. On the list.
On the part exchange stuff, it will search on part exchange in text, but we need to do a little bit of work to improve the way this works. On the list.
I'm still getting "this advert is not publicly available at this time" when I click some photos (posted an example yesterday, but it seemed to be ignored - everyone else appeared to get a reply from the developers except me)
Also if you search say "AMG" then you get every car with AMG anywhere in the description, 99% of which are just tarted up diesels with AMG wheels, makes trying to find a genuine one very difficult.
Plus on both IE and iPad it's painfully slow!
Sorry to be so negative, I used to browse the classifieds every day, now it's just too much hassle, hopefully it will improve soon.
Also if you search say "AMG" then you get every car with AMG anywhere in the description, 99% of which are just tarted up diesels with AMG wheels, makes trying to find a genuine one very difficult.
Plus on both IE and iPad it's painfully slow!
Sorry to be so negative, I used to browse the classifieds every day, now it's just too much hassle, hopefully it will improve soon.
MercScot said:
I'm still getting "this advert is not publicly available at this time" when I click some photos (posted an example yesterday, but it seemed to be ignored - everyone else appeared to get a reply from the developers except me)
Also if you search say "AMG" then you get every car with AMG anywhere in the description, 99% of which are just tarted up diesels with AMG wheels, makes trying to find a genuine one very difficult.
Plus on both IE and iPad it's painfully slow!
Sorry to be so negative, I used to browse the classifieds every day, now it's just too much hassle, hopefully it will improve soon.
I'm using iPad & speed is fine!Also if you search say "AMG" then you get every car with AMG anywhere in the description, 99% of which are just tarted up diesels with AMG wheels, makes trying to find a genuine one very difficult.
Plus on both IE and iPad it's painfully slow!
Sorry to be so negative, I used to browse the classifieds every day, now it's just too much hassle, hopefully it will improve soon.
MercScot said:
I'm still getting "this advert is not publicly available at this time" when I click some photos (posted an example yesterday, but it seemed to be ignored - everyone else appeared to get a reply from the developers except me)
Also if you search say "AMG" then you get every car with AMG anywhere in the description, 99% of which are just tarted up diesels with AMG wheels, makes trying to find a genuine one very difficult.
Plus on both IE and iPad it's painfully slow!
Sorry to be so negative, I used to browse the classifieds every day, now it's just too much hassle, hopefully it will improve soon.
Apologies for not responding. Do you have a URL for one of the ads where you're getting that message?Also if you search say "AMG" then you get every car with AMG anywhere in the description, 99% of which are just tarted up diesels with AMG wheels, makes trying to find a genuine one very difficult.
Plus on both IE and iPad it's painfully slow!
Sorry to be so negative, I used to browse the classifieds every day, now it's just too much hassle, hopefully it will improve soon.
On the AMG thing, it is a text search so it will return all cars with that in the description. However we do have an AMG category, available in the make/model drop down or in the make model breakdown like on the old site.
Alternatively (and this will improve as the data improves over the next few weeks) you could try something like Mercedes with engine capacity over a certain size, engine layout or by adding in text model names.
Various ways of doing it. I'd be interested in what you find works best of these, because we could use this to create a Quick link using the best combination of criteria.
Stuart said:
The search filter boxes don’t return enough cars according to the criteria I’m selecting. Why?
Adverts on the new site have been migrated across from the old. They haven’t as part of this process been passed through the system we’ve built to add additional specification data to the description of the car (the “PH essentials” you’ll see at the bottom of ads). Our search filters look at this data to return results, and so if it can’t see this data, it can’t return a car against that criteria.
This will change as the number of cars in the system which have been uploaded by sellers or edited grows day by day, and in 30 days all data will have gone through this process naturally. We’re also looking at emailing everyone with a car to ask them to login and press a button to complete this process, but we want to be sure that the advert management system will cope with that load first, as it would be an exceptional number of concurrent logins.
Correct me if i'm wrong but i thought Trade adverts were on a 60 day cycle... or are we only getting 30 days advertising for the same price now?Adverts on the new site have been migrated across from the old. They haven’t as part of this process been passed through the system we’ve built to add additional specification data to the description of the car (the “PH essentials” you’ll see at the bottom of ads). Our search filters look at this data to return results, and so if it can’t see this data, it can’t return a car against that criteria.
This will change as the number of cars in the system which have been uploaded by sellers or edited grows day by day, and in 30 days all data will have gone through this process naturally. We’re also looking at emailing everyone with a car to ask them to login and press a button to complete this process, but we want to be sure that the advert management system will cope with that load first, as it would be an exceptional number of concurrent logins.
Mattt said:
Can someone confirm - if I add an new advert, will I have issues?
I'm thinking instead of trying to modify my old adverts, it's probably easier to withdraw them and start afresh - but I din't want to do that if there's still problems.
Best of luck modifying as I can't even get access to mine as it says I have no adverts yet there are at least four of them still showing.I'm thinking instead of trying to modify my old adverts, it's probably easier to withdraw them and start afresh - but I din't want to do that if there's still problems.
How long does this go on for until this upgrade malarky reaches the upper limit on the "embarassing and we shouldn't have bothered " scale?
Trophy200
birdcage said:
The best things are intuitive, is there perhaps a point that eight or so long paragraphs of explanations on how to use the site suggest that it isn't at all intuitive?
Explaining anything is tricky, you should see the answers i type when someone asks how to use formatting in the forums. doing is easy, explaining less so.As with most things, the reality is easier than the instructions. I've used the new site for months and you find your favourite way to search in minutes.
Most days with the old search we'd be asked how to filter out unwanted cars, and dealers wanted to ensure their car was visible to buyers not hidden amongst hundreds of others. This solves it, and as each day passes it will bed in better and better.
Mattt said:
Can someone confirm - if I add an new advert, will I have issues?
I'm thinking instead of trying to modify my old adverts, it's probably easier to withdraw them and start afresh - but I din't want to do that if there's still problems.
Hi mate, as Stuart says above it's a good idea to refrain from editing ad right now. Best to sit tight for a short period or submit new.I'm thinking instead of trying to modify my old adverts, it's probably easier to withdraw them and start afresh - but I din't want to do that if there's still problems.
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