Board has 2 modes: moderated and free-post. User registration has also 2 modes: Email verification and register free. Both settings are configured during initial setup and may be modified via "Admin Preferences" page. 

Regardless of the mode, all users need to open an account before they can post. Email becomes a primary user Logon ID. There are not much information required from the user to start posting to classify board. The mandatory are Email, Location, User Nick and Password as well as Terms of the Use agreement. The Philosophy: there is no need to require from users more. Everyone should fill free to list other personal information within ad body if they choose to do so. User Email is never listed within ad body unless they wish to do so. All ad replies are made from online Email form.

Account creation/Logon

During Email verification mode a verification code is Emailed to user (in register free mode user can post as soon as account is created). Once user verified, the account is activated automatically. User can be activated, suspended or deleted by an administrator at any time via User Manager. Once user verified and logged to the system, his/her user nick is displayed at the bottom navigation bar. Users may update any of their information at any time. However if they changed an Email in Verification mode, the account status is changed to "Not Verified". Users can logon to the system and verify Email, but they cannot post until new Email is verified. As admin you can suspend any user at any time. Once users are suspended they cannot logon, and the message let them know account status -  "Suspended". 

Via User Manager Admin can change users Email List status (meaning whether or not user will receive News Letters), view all ads posted by a particular user, filter users accounts to display and search for a particular account by Email or Nick.

Note: The user password cannot be viewed by anyone including you. Password is stored one way MD5 encrypted. If user forgets the password, a new, generated password would be sent to user. You can however logon as any user to the board if you click user Nick within User Manager.

There is a new feature added in this version - "Remember me". This will store user logon state permanently in cookies if users choose this option. This means users will be logged to the board automatically without submitting email/password next time they visit your site.

User Optional Fields

You can assign up to 7 optional fields to user account. The optional fields would appear at the account registration form. Within the Admin Preferences page specify optional field names. Optionally assign appropriate "Option sets" to the field and/or make it searchable. For details about creating/modifying "Option Sets" see: Options Builder

Moderators

You may promote any user to Editor/Moderator status from User Manager. User-Moderator may assist you with ads management - edit/approve/delete. But moderator cannot logon to admin page and access any of the admin pages except for the pending ads. A link to pending ads will appear next to User-Moderator nick at the bottom nav. bar, once they logged to the system.

Multiple Accounts Detection

In previous versions of Rapid Classified, users could create multiple accounts as long as they used different Email Addresses. This is not beneficial if you're running your classified in Pay Mode and give some amount of free credits to all new accounts.  A person who has a few Email Addresses may create a new account each time he/she has used free credits limit. Although there is nothing can 100% guaranty from multiple account creation, this version of RC has some features which to some degree may detect such an abuse.

The system will not prevent multiple accounts creation but rather tries to detect it and notify you if such an event took place. This is done by monitoring IP address of the user who create an account and logon to the system.

To enable multiple accounts notification logon to admin page, go to "Admin Preferences", check "Detect multiple accounts" box and save changes. The IP logging is done regardless of the "Detect multiple accounts" check box status. However when multiple accounts notification is enabled, the admin will receive an email with the list of accounts in question. The IP detection works as following.

Each time user create an account or log to the system, user's current IP address is logged and stay in user accounts properties (you can view the last Logon Date and Last Logon IP address from User Manager if you click on the button with user account number). At the same time user's current IP address is compared to ALL other IP addresses recorded for ALL users in database. If the match is found, the notification Email is sent with all matched account ID's and Email addresses. It is essential to understand that most of the users on the internet assigned a dynamic IP addresses from the providers. Therefore the same user might have different IP address each time user access the internet. Moreover user can simply create a new account from different computer or simply use a public proxy server. That is why there is no guaranty that all abusers will be caught by the system.

The catch is, that a fresh IP address logged each time user logged on. Eventually user might logon to the second account on the same day with the same IP address exposing himself to the system. Notification will be sent to you immediately. The advice is to NEVER delete a second account. Simply suspend it from User Manager effectively preventing this Email Address to be ever used on your board again.

Tip: Before suspending user account, conduct an investigation. Some providers such as an AOL are using proxy servers to connect users to internet. So that 2 different users might appear to be connected from the same IP address. I such a case, first make sure the IP address is a proxy server IP. From the command prompt resolve the IP address to host name either by "ping -a IP_Address" or do "nslookup". The host name is usually gives you the clue about the host being a proxy server. You also may want to look at the other of users properties such as nick, city, posted ads pattern and so on. In other words suspend user if you're absolutely sure user have more than one account. But then again it's up to you how to setup multiple account policies or whether or not to implement it at all.

Note: If you logged to the system as an Administrator and logon to some user account at the same time, the IP address will not be recorder in that account properties.

Once users established an account, they can post ads to your board. In moderate mode all ads posted do not automatically displayed on public pages. Instead they become pending, until approved by administrator or by a user-moderator. However, the user who posted the ad (if logged), may see it immediately by following "My Ads" link on top navigation bar. During pending mode user can modify ad.

Ads Duration/Locked Categories

Ads Duration can be controlled by creating "Duration Schemes". Payment Processor and ads Durations page would allow to create an unlimited number of schemes. Each scheme can have up to 5 ad durations. Essentially the create scheme would built a drop down box at the ad posting page allowing client to select desired ad duration. Each scheme can be linked to any category at any level. This means theoretically each category can have a different ad duration scheme. Created Schemes can be linked to categories from Link to Categories page (the page link is at the top Payment Processor and ads Durations page). If you link a scheme to a Main category, all subcategories bellow would inherit the scheme settings. But you can override the inheritance to subcategories by linking a different scheme directly to subcategory.

Each scheme has "Lock" setting (except for the "default" scheme). If "Lock" is enabled, then categories to which this scheme is linked to, will not appear at the list of available categories while client is posting ads. The "Lock" works only at the Main category level. If you lock a main category, but then linked a different scheme (with "Lock" off) to the subcategory under this category, then this subcategory would still be locked.

Note: Moderators can still post ads in locked categories. This is convenient if you'd like to have an exclusive posting rights to some categories.
 

Submitting

The only mandatory fields for the ad post are subject and body of the ad. The rest of the information is optional. The category and subcategory of the ad cannot be changed after the ad is posted. 
Your users can attach up to 10 images to the ad by uploading images to your server. The default limit is 50kb in size, 400x400 pixels and 5 images per ad. You can however change this limit from "Admin Preferences". The picture automatically scaled with the correct height/width proportion when displayed on ad view page and displayed in full size in a popup window when clicked on the thumb. When ad is submitted, two Emails are sent out: confirmation to the user and notification to the Admin. If user edits the ad after submission and that ad was already approved, the ad will stay approved, but administrator will receive a notification regarding ad modification.

Compare to previous versions of Rapid Classified the images in current version can be modified either by administrator or by the ad author. In Pay Mode ad author may change attached images but will stay within the limit of initially selected images. This means if a user initially selected and attached 3 images, then no more than 3 image may be reattached to the ad (in case of image replacement). However, if user selected 3 images to attach but actually attached 1 image, he/she can still attach remaining 2 images later on after the ad has been submitted  by navigating to "Images" management page from ad view page.

If your web server is equipped with ASPJpeg component, then all attached images will be processed. Processed means - compressed, the desired text will be placed over the image and images exceeded the specified dimension limit will be resized (for ASPJpeg configuration see config/img_config.asp page).

Note: Administrator by him(her) self cannot post an ad unless created and logged with a regular user account.

Activation

Ad can be activated via "Pending Ads" link on the main admin page (if there is at list one pending ad, the icon "new" will flash next to the link) by an Administrator or by a moderator (clicking the link next to their nick at the bottom). Ad can also be activated right from the ad display page when opened from pending ads list. IP address of the poster is also displayed on that page for admin or moderator. When ad is activated an Email is sent to the user about the ad status change. 

Note: While ad is activated the submission date is reset to the date is was activated and expiration date is extended to reflect a proper ad duration.

Within view ad page administrator can extend or decrease the ad duration. 

If you as Admin decide, that ad is not appropriate for your board, you can immediately delete it. No Email is sent to users when ad is deleted for one or another reason.

In free-post mode, no activation require: Ad is posted right away.

Note: Once Admin is logged, the delete, and edit links are available next to every ad on the board on every page where the ad is displayed! Furthermore, when viewing the ad page and clicking on the name of poster, Admin is taken directly to User Manager, where properties for that user are filtered from the rest and displayed.

Expiration

All ads are automatically expire and taken offline but not deleted. Automatic Expiration of the ads occur as following. If for instance there are 6 ads due to expire on a given date. All 6 ads will expire and be taken offline, then first 6 users hit the default page on that day. One ad per user. The process is controlled by cookies. When first user navigate to the default page after the midnight, the hit is counted once, session cookie is dropped, and the expiration list for that day is checked. If there are ads to expire in the list, then no more than 1 ad will expire with the hit. This is because if you have too many ads to expire, the first user may be affected by the delay while page is loading. The same happened when second user visited default page... and so on, until all ads for that day is taken offline. When there are no more ads to expire for that day, the scheduler is triggered for the next day (this value is stored in the server cache (Application Object). 

Users whose ads are expired receive notification Email and advised to Repost. At this point the ad can be Reposted by the logged user or by administrator. Users may view their expired ads via "MyAds" link. Administrator may view all expired via "Expired Ads" link on the main admin page. From there admin may repost/delete individual ads, or choose to delete old expired ads, which are older that selected, from the drop-down box, period of time.

Disabling

Ads can be disabled by Administrator/Moderator or by User who originally posted the ad. The Disable/Enable link is viewable at view ad page while Administrator/Moderator/Ad Owner is logged on. This feature is useful when user has sold the item or it is no longer available and user wish to take the ad offline before expiration date. Disabling the ad makes it invisible for visitors and ad is not counted in category/subcategory ad list. If for some reason users wish to enable disabled ad, they can do it by logging to the account, clicking "My Ads", selecting disabled ad and enabling it by clicking "Enable". 
Disabled ads are not expired by default although they can be viewed in the "Expired & Disabled Ads" off the admin page. However if the disabled ad has been enabled after the date it supposed to be expired, this ad will be active only till the end of the day, when the expiration agent kicks in and expire the ad.

Note: In this version user is able to delete ads.

Moving

Administrator is able to move ads between categories. The Move link appears at the ad view page then Admin is logged on to the board.