Let’s start with the basics. This post is just going to explain what Classipress theme is and what you need to do to set it up in order to start your Classifieds ad site. Specific strategies to optimize or modify will come in later posts.

What is Classipress?

Classipress is the first and only professional classified ads theme for WordPress. Others call it the Craigslist for WordPress. You can use it for Jobs site, Classifieds site, an online store and anything you can think of.

It has a lot of features that include PayPal integration, five color schemes, multi-language support, AdSense, and much more.

Here’s a teaser video of the upcoming release of Classipress version 3.0,

Take note of the highly configurable custom forms and fields feature.

Classipress Version 2.9.3, a general bug and security patch release is now available. There are no new features added as version 3.0 will be released soon (which is due out towards the later part of January).

Classipress Version 2.9.3. fixes and changes are;

It is a known fact in the internet marketing world that search engines love content. Users love content too and so we have to give them what they want if we want our site to grow. One way to add relevant content to your Classipress site is to describe the category with a few pharagraphs. You can add category description by going to your dashboard then choose Categories. From there you can simply type your category description.

However, Classipress does not display yet the Category description  and so here’s how you can do that just like the sample image above.

Proper ads placement matters most if you want to maximize your earnings (which is specially true with Adsense). One of the best ads placement in Classipress classifieds site is in the main listing where the ads are more conspicuous together with the ads postings. Visitors on your site are more exposed to the ads since they form part in the listings. See sample below;

And so here’s the code to do just that;

This is a part of a series of tips collected from the officiall Classipress forum and presented it here with its own category just for your browsing convenience. Yes, it is somewhat a daunting task to look for answers in the forum for a specific topic with its jungle of information.

And so here’s the first one and with a scenario to improve your Classipress classifieds site and lure first time visitors to register. That is if you want a large banner be it an animated flash or a static image inviting the visitors to create an account but you don’t want it shown to the logged in users.

Here’s a peek of Classipress wordpress classifieds theme latest iteration (Version 3.0) which is estimated to be released on the later part of October.

Here you will see images have been moved up to the top and clicking on the thumbnails will replace the larger image.

Private messaging feature is one thing that Classipress is lacking. Currently, buyers can only be contacted by the seller through email and or through the other posted contact information such as phone numbers and etc. This is not a Classipress limitation but rather of the Wordpress platform.

Wordpress just does not allow your users to communicate with each other. Though you can use some forum plugins to add private messaging functionality but they are quite heavy specially if you don’t need a forum yet on your site. Also the updates might not be focused on improving the messaging features at all. Now, the lack of private messaging option has been answered by the Wordpress User Messages plugin.

Previously, I wrote tips on using the old post warning plugin called the old post alert. As I have stated on that post, this kind of  plugin is somewhat necessary if you have your Classipress Classifieds as a free service and you don’t want to prune the user submitted ads for SEO purposes.

Though the plugin works just fine but its limited and no configuration option at all makes it difficult to customize according to your needs. For instance, you cannot change the old post notice text unless you have to tinker with its code. Also, the alert notice is placed after the comment submit button which does not give prior warning to the reader that the post or ad is already old.

With Classipress classifieds site, you have the option to automatically delete an ad after a specified period but it will not be good in the eyes of the search engine and SEO as a whole. This is so because, your deleted ad would still come out in search engine result and once clicked the searcher will then be directed to the 404 error page. Also, if you opt to have the ads deleted, your content will also be diminished and again not good for SEO.

For this reason and since my classifieds site is a free service, I choose not to delete the ads. I just inform my classifieds site visitor that the particular ad is already old. And for this, I use a plugin called the Old Post Alert Plugin.

Most forums nowadays have a buy and sell section. What makes them more interactive is that you can make a reply on a particular topic/thread and embed images and even videos on it. Though you can edit your original forum post but you can also make an update on your thread by simply adding a reply. This is what makes a forum based classifieds more upbeat.

And so I want to have this kind of interactivity on my Classipress classifieds site. Isn’t it good for you and your user to be able to update their ads/postings with images by simply embedding it on the comment thread?