best craigslist clone script for high traffic? bad experiences so far

Hi everybody, my first thread here. Here's my situation, Im looking for the best craigslist classifieds clone script that can handle high traffic. Here's the problem, all the scripts im finding just seem like scams. Seems like all the reviews I read are fake, They are either from the website selling the script or their competition. Im very serious about starting a professional classifieds site for a car niche that I know in and out. Im ready to build the site but just cant find a professional script by a professional website...My classifieds site is my number one priority but if there is a craigslist clone script available with advanced features so my members can have their own usernames/profiles that they can post pics of their rides along with a time line like facebook, that would be great. If not, I'll just have to settle for two separate scripts/websites to make that happen. One craigslist clone classifieds script and one social network script. Both must be customizable enough to change the screen layout, colors and design. I am paying my buddy to build the site so I don't paying more for scripts with more features because that will keep his labor cost's down. Most scripts Im finding are about $250 but I dont mind paying more up front for the script if it will keep his labor cost down. Im pulling my hair out over here so please any help will be greatly appreciated, thanks!...NOTE: my buddy is good with coding so he is capable of customizing but he said the better the script we can find with the most features, the less labor/cost on his end and the more reliable the site will be.

PHP Classifieds PHPCL script $250 from php-classifieds dot com - I read a bunch of reviews saying they are the best and that they have excellent customer service. BUT in reality, I called them 4 times this week and got voicemail. I left 4 voicemails throughout the week and still no call back. I even emailed them 4 different times and still not even an email back. What a complete joke of a business. Their voicemail says "the magic jack customer you called is not available please leave message". They are selling these scripts for $250 each but can even afford a real phone number or a person to answer the phone for potential customers. What a joke of a business so I will not do business with them now.

Wordpress classipress - Very reputable name and lots of great reviews from what actually seems like real people. Problem is that I have read way too many reviews about people complaining that their wordpress classifieds site gets slow and buggy with high traffic. I would imagine Wordpress will improve their classifieds script eventually but from the hundreds of reviews I have read, not yet.

Ultimate web builder classifieds script $250 by ultimatewb dot com - Omg, alllll the features a man could ever dream of. This site had pretty much everything I needed. They had me sold when comparing all their features to their competition, they had everything and then some. But then I tried googling reviews about this script and found absolutely nothing which I found very strange. Then I checked out their support forum and found barely any activity at all. The last time their customer support was logged into the forum was a month ago and they were dumb enough to ask questions and answer those questions from the same user name trying to trick viewers into thinking there was actually at least some sign of forum activity. Then after more digging, we found who owns and made the script and their main site looks like a 13 year old kids myspace page. A 9 year old kid could have made a more professional looking site with Wix. So far this script was the biggest joke of all. After a little digging, looks like a straight up scam. Also tried contacting them before I realized how much of a joke they are and no response from them.

 

Sorry I can't help about the script-search, just wanted to update you on the Classipress-thingy - I don't think that's a Wordpress item - it seems it's made by AppTheme or something, when Googling it? I highly doubt WP themselves creates anything like this - they're usually very strict about keeping their work to the actual WP-code, and let plugin-providers do the rest.

 

Thanks for the replies. Any recommendations for creating a good reliable efficient classifieds site like craigslist that is capable of running smoothly with high traffic? I know a lot about business and even more about cars but I don't know as much about this website building stuff as Id like. However, I do know in business that it's best to stick to what you specialize in and pay somebody else to handle the things you don't specialize in. I have read countless stories online from other website owners talking about what they would have done differently and I try learning from their mistakes. It's important to me that I do this right the first time "measure twice cut once". Again my classifieds site is my number one priority right now but I also want to build a social network website "for my car niche" with similar features like facebook but with a different lay out "template". It would be great if I can kill two birds with one stone here but I know right now I just need to work with what I got. I'd just really like my members to have the same user name and log in for my classifieds site and my social network site. If that's not realistic, then I will just have to build two separate sites. Again, any tips big or small will help me a lot so please don't be shy. Your help is really appreciated.

Note: I am willing to sacrifice one site for the other if I have to. For example, if I can't build the classifieds site I want with the resources I have then I am prepared to move my focus, time, money and energy towards building my social network website for my car niche. I believe my business plan is flexible enough to profit from one or the other. Obviously though I gotta try to see if I can make them both work together first before anything. Any recommendations for a good social network script?

 

There's no real connection between launching a classifieds and having an instant high traffic. Traffic is something you build gradually. Good script may help in that, of course, but it's not a panacea.

Try this script:

http://xzeroscripts.com/

Demo: http://demo.xzeroscripts.com/
Admin: http://demo.xzeroscripts.com/admin/
Support forum: http://xzeroscripts.com/forum/

It's highly customizable. If you know php you can do virtually anything you want with it. Note, I am not associated with the site or script in any shape or form, so I won't be able to assist you in customazation or anything else.

 

Thanks, I'l check it out and trust me I know traffic isn't just going to magically appear. I know a lot of people think they have a million dollar website idea then give up a week later once they realize how much work is really involved lol, that's not me. I have been working on this on the side for about 3 years now. I have researched whats involved in every one of my idea's then weeded out the idea's that would be more trouble then they are worth. Now I'm at the point where I just need to find the script "the foundation" that fits my websites needs the most. Then my buddy can work his PHP magic.

 

i have played with oxy classifieds, so far so good

 

I'm going to tell you something you NEED to hear but probably won't accept.

If you think some crappy off the shelf script is going to do all the work for you, resulting in a successful website, you do not know enough about websites to have one. PERIOD.

You can't rubber-stamp cookie cutter out what someone is already doing using some script that any other joker can slop out and expect to magically do better. That's why MOST if not all the off the shelf scripts are giant scams with all the business legitimacy of Amway, Mary Kay, or Herbalife. They exist to bilk people who think they can just buy their way to success with no actual work out of their money.

Same can be said for most off the shelf CMS or front-end frameworks. You just cookie cutter out another Every ***ing bootcrap site ever where's your plan for success? This is made worse by the bloated ineptly developed train wrecks idiotic halfwit mouth-breathing bullshit like Turdpress vomits up.

You want success, focus on what your content is going to be, then either learn to build from scratch or hire someone who can. If you could just plunk down $250 and suddenly have success, so would everybody else! The real world doesn't work that way.

No matter how desperately some people hope and pray that it does... and that hope and ignorance is exactly the type of things the sleazeball scam artists are out there preying upon daily!

 

Deathshadow, I don't even know what to say to your ridiculous reply. Thanks for telling me how the real world works? You just made a lot of RIDICULOUS assumptions about me and my business plan. Talking down to people is extremely arrogant and disrespectful. You should actually read my thread first before saying anything else because you just look like an ________ right now. Im here for advice about scripts, thats it. I don't need you to tell me how the real world works.

 

Assumptions based on what you're asking for in the face of what you yourself related in your post. You tried three, found them to be... wanting. You yourself suggest that at least two of them are scams, all I'm saying is they're ALL scams and the deeper you dig into these off the shelf solutions, you're only going to find it gets worse, not better.

From a company that doesn't even pick up their phone, to trying to turn an already rubbish blogging system into something it isn't, to poorly maintained overpriced systems run by teenagers... you've got the cream of the crop right there in your own post!

Yet, instead of realizing "hey, these are all crap, maybe I need to drop three months+ labor on having something built properly" you're asking for MORE off the shelf scripts to try and take the sleazy shortcut? That's what your post reads like you are asking for and yt calls into question just how legitimately you're taking building said site as an expense.

YES, I said EXPENSE! Considering a website an investment for at LEAST the first two years is ANOTHER of the fastest most easy ways to plan yourself right out of business. It's why the majority of web startups, well... fail within the first two years.

You are literally just asking for a sleazy sloppy "clone script" to meekly go where everyone has gone before. That isn't a recipe for success and you should be realizing that from the ones you've already tried -- IN FACT it sounds like you have! That realization is staring you in the face as evident in the post you started this thread with!!! It just simply seems you are unwilling to accept that, and instead keep asking for sloppy sleazy off the shelf shortcuts despite what you've seen of them so far being the pinnacle of epic failure!

Take the rubbish @qwikad linked to, are any of those a genuine improvement or significantly different from the incompetent rubbish you covered in your initial post? OF COURSE NOT. How many of these will you need to see are utter and complete garbage before you accept that the concept itself of a cookie cutter clone script is in fact the problem? If you're unwilling to see that, you might be fighting a confirmation bias much akin to the creationist or flat earth mentality...

Or even more likely the mentality of those who fall for "pyramid-like" get rich quick schemes who can be 20K in the hole, but keep pouring money in because "well I need to make back that 20k" and don't stop draining their reserves until they end up homeless. See any business that uses terms like "affiliate" or "distributor" in reference to a single person working from home, or the moment they bring up "recruiting" or "inventory".

I'm not saying that's EXACTLY what you are doing, but it sure sounds like it! It just SOUNDS like you're making the same mistakes and making the same broken plans I've seen far too many people make the past two decades, setting yourself up for SOMEBODY to plop a saddle on your back and say "Giddy-up".

If you've actually got more robust plans than that, you wouldn't be looking at sleazy fly-by-night off the shelf scripts!

 

Let the comedy stampede begin. The last person with super witty and defeating remarks wins.

@ineedrealanswers Can you, please, be an adult in this? Doesn't matter how many times you'll reply to deathshadow, he WILL reply back. Just don't want this to turn into a circus. You have been warned.

By the way did you try http://xzeroscripts.com/ or what did you try since your last comment? From my experience a good classified ads script should:

- Have good spam filters (Not keyword, but rather phrase based. Do not purchase ANY classified ads script if it doesn't have spam filters.).
- Have multiple paid options (Where you can charge for ads to be featured, made urgent, promoted to top of listing, etc.).
- Not require bootstrap or excessive jquery to run.
- Not have any ionCube or whatever protected sh*t. If you buy a script you should be able to change anything you want, at any time.
- Be more or less SEO friendly (Title, meta keywords, meta description are automatically updated depending on a page. Otherwise you will have thousands of identical pages.).

 

I liked your post because I could REALLY get behind that list. I'd add to that semantic markup and accessibility minimums OFF THE SHELF; and that's the requirement that -- much like being PROPERLY SEO friendly -- so many of these off the shelf answers fall flat on their face over. One has to remember the advice Matt Cutts gave us of "write for the user, not the search engine" -- which if you don't meet accessibility minimums, gracefully degrade, or have even the simplest of semantics you flat out haven't done!

Like that xzeroscripts one -- pixel metric fonts, gibberish semantics, bootcrap and jquery out the yazoo, no media targets, paragraphs around non-paragraph elements, contentless H1, a+img that SHOULD be H1 text, incomplete improperly formed forms, endless pointless classes for nothing, deprecated attributes that have no business on any website written after 1997... If the default theme is such an ineptly developed laundry list you're looking at ~80 hours labor to reskin it from scratch -- LIKELY in the process neutering your upgrade path 1990's phpBB style -- what good is it? More so when you can bet your sweet bippy every pile of trash off the shelf "template" for it is based on that disastrously horrible default skin... that makes one beg the question "Did the person who wrote this even understand what HTML is or what it is for?!?"

Of course, if they actually did understand that, they wouldn't have used the currant pinnacle of "herpz cans I has teh intarwebs" that is bootcrap.

Hence as I often say, if you don't know what's wrong with code like this:

		<link rel="stylesheet" href="http://demo.xzeroscripts.com/external/client/bootstrap/css/bootstrap.min.css"/>
		<link rel="stylesheet" href="http://demo.xzeroscripts.com/external/client/bootstrap/css/bootstrap-theme.min.css"/>
		<link rel="stylesheet" href="http://demo.xzeroscripts.com/external/client/font-awesome/css/font-awesome.min.css"/>
		<link rel="stylesheet" href="http://demo.xzeroscripts.com/external/client/photoswipe/dist/photoswipe.css"/>
		<link rel="stylesheet" href="http://demo.xzeroscripts.com/external/client/photoswipe/dist/default-skin/default-skin.css"/>
		<link rel="stylesheet" href="http://demo.xzeroscripts.com/themes/xz-phoenix/styles/app.css"/>
		<link rel="stylesheet" href="http://demo.xzeroscripts.com/themes/xz-phoenix/styles/responsive.css"/>
		<link rel="stylesheet" href="http://demo.xzeroscripts.com/themes/xz-phoenix/styles/photoswipe.css"/>		
		<link rel='stylesheet' href='https://fonts.googleapis.com/css?family=Bitter:700|Open+Sans'/>

		<script type="text/javascript" src="http://demo.xzeroscripts.com/external/client/jquery/jquery.min.js"></script>
		<script type="text/javascript" src="http://demo.xzeroscripts.com/external/client/bootstrap/js/bootstrap.min.js"></script>
		<script type="text/javascript" src="http://demo.xzeroscripts.com/external/client/photoswipe/dist/photoswipe.min.js"></script>
		<script type="text/javascript" src="http://demo.xzeroscripts.com/external/client/photoswipe/dist/photoswipe-ui-default.min.js"></script>
		<script type="text/javascript" src="http://demo.xzeroscripts.com/external/client/masonry/masonry.pkgd.min.js"></script>
		<script type="text/javascript" src="http://demo.xzeroscripts.com/themes/xz-phoenix/scripts/app.js"></script>
		<script type="text/javascript" src="http://demo.xzeroscripts.com/themes/xz-phoenix/scripts/photoswipe-init.js"></script>

Code (markup):

Or this:

	<body>		
		<div id="page">

			<div id="header" class="section">

    <div id="debug" style="display: none">
    <div class="container">
        <p>
            0 messages
        </p>
        <p>            
                    </p>
    </div>
</div>

    <div id="top-bar" class="demo-bar clearfix">
        <div class="container">
            <div class="row">
                <div class="demo-note col-sm-4">
                                            Demo mode. <a href="http://xzeroscripts.com/products/xzero_classifieds/buy.php">Buy now!</a>
                                    </div>
                <div class="col-sm-8" id="status-bar">
                                                                <div class="dropdown"><button type="button" class="btn btn-default dropdown-toggle" data-toggle="dropdown" aria-haspopup="true" aria-expanded="false">
      Language <i>&middot; en</i> <span class="caret"></span></button><ul class="dropdown-menu"><li class="active"><a href="?language=en">en</a></li><li><a href="?language=es">es</a></li><li><a href="?language=fr">fr</a></li><li><a href="?language=hu">hu</a></li><li><a href="?language=it">it</a></li><li><a href="?language=pt">pt</a></li><li><a href="?language=ru">ru</a></li><li><a href="?language=zh">zh</a></li></ul></div>                                                                <div class="dropdown"><button type="button" class="btn btn-default dropdown-toggle" data-toggle="dropdown" aria-haspopup="true" aria-expanded="false">
      Theme <i>&middot; xz-phoenix</i> <span class="caret"></span></button><ul class="dropdown-menu"><li><a href="?theme=xz-adapter">xz-adapter</a></li><li><a href="?theme=xz-classic">xz-classic</a></li><li class="active"><a href="?theme=xz-phoenix">xz-phoenix</a></li></ul></div>                                    </div>
            </div>
        </div>
    </div>
    
    <div class="container">
        <div class="navbar">
            <div class="navbar-header">
                <a class="navbar-brand" href="http://demo.xzeroscripts.com/">
                    <img id="logo" src="http://demo.xzeroscripts.com/images/logo.gif"/>
                </a>
            </div>

            <div class="navbar-extended">
                <ul class="nav navbar-nav navbar-right">
                    <li class="visible-xs-inline-block">

Code (markup):

Do the world a favor, back the **** away from the keyboard, and go take up something less detail oriented like macramé.

Though to be fair, I have to fight the urge to introduce boots to asses when I see even the simplest of ineptitude like this trash:

<div id="categories" class="section">
	<div class="row masonry-grid">
					<div class="col-lg-3 col-md-3 col-sm-4 col-xs-6 masonry-grid-item list-outer dir-outer">

Code (markup):

aka "how bootcrap works".

 

Whoever runs that script just recently upgraded it to this new bootstrap version. I don't like it either. The good news is it can be easily changed to something else, since the classifieds script itself is not depended on it (except maybe how it shows the pictures).

There is a lightweight versions (HTML/CSS - wise) of it on their support forum that doesn't include that latest template (under Downloads or something like that).

 

I understand, Im a newbie here on this forum and Deathshadow has definitely established credibility here. Deathshadow knows wayyyy more about this stuff than I do so I know I can learn a lot from him. I just want to make it clear that I am here to learn from members like Deathshadow, not to be disrespected and talked down on. I also want to make it clear that I am very serious about building my website and I am not here to waste anybodies time. Here is a little about me...I have been a passionate car enthusiast my entire life. I have been self employed for over 10 years now buying and selling old cars and car parts on craigslist. I know cars, I know the car scene, I know the people, I know the business. Im not just somebody who occasionally uses craigslist, this is my main source of income. Im not expecting to replace craigslist but I know the scene in and out more than anybody and I am confident I can build a website for -----> my niche <----- that is better than anything else out there. I also have about 3 years of a lot real juicy content down on paper related to my niche. I know how I want every single page on my website laid out and how each page will connect to every other page. I have a detailed business plan 3 years in the making, I have the content, I have the domain names. Only thing I am missing now, is a reputable and proven script to build my website off of, if a script like that even exists at all.

I did find a PHP script from Flynax that has every single option I need. HOWEVER, I read a lot of mixed reviews about them. Mostly their customer service issues. I tried calling Flynax to test their customer service myself and I was not happy. First time, phone rang for 2 minutes straight and didnt even have a voicemail. Second time I called, it rang for 30 seconds and a lady answered who sounded like she just woke up. I could barely hear what she was even saying. That was a red flag. If Flynax is so great, why would they skimp out on something so important like customer service. I know the car scene in and out but this website stuff is not my thing. My fear about having a site built from scratch is being taken advantage of and ripped off. I have a good friend who is good with PHP so if I can find a good solid PHP script, Im in business. So step number one is to try to find a good PHP classifieds script. If the script I need doesnt exist, then I will have to either alter my business plan around the resources I have or start looking for somebody who can build my site from scratch. Again, any help is greatly appreciated.

 

Sadly that's their live demo on their site right now... One would assume the demo is a baseline install.

SMF pulled a similar stunt; used to be my go-to for forum software even if the markup was... dated. Now that they've pissed all over it with jQuery, I honestly don't know what forum software to even try since they're all pretty much rubbish now compared to EARLIER versions of the same programs. It's sad that security updates come with 'other' changes that are typically just for the worst.

 

This is one of my biggest pet peeves.

What I do not understand is WHY everyone must FIX THAT WHICH IS NOT BROKEN which then becomes BROKEN, when all that is REALLY needed is to fix the problems WITHOUT CREATING NEW PROBLEMS.

Can you imagine how long an auto mechanic would stay in business if when you took him your car to fix a problem that he would fix that problem but create other FATAL problems so that your car would no longer work? Would you pay him for that? Not likely.

But look how many of the same people KEEP BUYING programs that USED to work fine, but which were "fixed" and are now broken. Totally idiotic in my view.

 

Is craigslist still effective? The last time I used it it requires me cellphone no. and verification..

 

How about close to a billion hits a month?

https://www.similarweb.com/website/craigslist.org#overview