Trading Dock Sorting

[Mark Christensen]

I noticed the trading dock dates are all over the place in terms of sequence. This makes it difficult to see what's new. Is there a way to sort putting the most recent entries first? it appears as if it's the old problem of 07/30/2007 goes before 7/30/2007, not sure though. any ideas Bill?
Mark

[Bill Basler]

Mark, I think I have the answer you seek. There are always 10 "Featured Ads" on TradingDock.org, (the ads in the shaded area), that are randomly pulled from a database of ALL Featured ads. Each time you refresh the home page, you will see a different set of 10 Featured ads.

Below the featured ads, you will find the "Most Recent Listings" This always presents the top 30 most recently placed ads. These appears in proper date order...without exception, I believe.

Finally, if you use the browse ads links at the very top of the page, for example clicking on Pre WWII > 20-Feet and Under, you will always see the boats in that sub-category in a proper, date sorted order.

EXCEPT!

There are as on these subcategory pages that that were placed by an advertiser who chose the "Better Ad Placement" option. This option costs $2.00 and places their ad at the top of the listings.

Honestly, we will be changing this fairly soon. FYI, there are three types of upgrades that a person can choose when placing an ad.
1. Bold Listing $2.00. This makes you ad title in a bold font, but does not offer you any better ad position.
2. Better Ad Placement. This option costs $2.00 and puts your ad at the top of the list in the ad listings.
3. Featured Ad. $5.00 This puts your ad in a rotation on the TradingDock.org home page, and automatically includes your ad in the next Brass Bell.

About 90% of the people who choose to upgrade their ad choose all three. For this reason, we will probably be eliminating the "Better Ad Placement" option. It is not serving much of a purpose, and it is definitely creating the illusion that the sorting is screwed up. By offering only Bolding and Featured Ads, we will be able to present the ads in a manner that eliminates the confusion.

Good catch. This is probably a good case of less is more.

[DeanS29]

Once again I have to say that SEARCH works great. I was going to do a post that asked Mark's exact question, but I thought I should do a search and see if it had already been asked. Search took me right to this post. Great Job Bill.

I agree that the "Better Placement" option on Trading Dock should go. It would be nice if you could click on Title and have it sort by year, or click on Price or Date and have it sort by those columns. Kind of like on Outlook when you sort by sent by, recieved from, date...

I understand that Bill Gates had a little more support and resources developing Outlook than our Bill has for Trading Dock. That said glad to hear it is on the to do list. Hopefully well below, the family, the boat, the business, the boat.

Dean

[Bill Basler]

Perhaps there is more functionality on TradingDock.org than one might think. If you go to the Search field and type in, (for example) "Deluxe," you will see all results for that search word.

You can then click on the header captions and sort by description, price, or date. By default the search results are listed by date sort. But this can easily be overridden by choosing a price sort, for example.

[DeanS29]

Thanks Bill that works great. The confusion I had was that I was not searching for a specific item, I just wanted to peruse the latest ads by date or title. I understand now that I can use the search without entering a Key Word and it will allow me to sort the ads in the category I want. Thanks for straigtening me out on that.