Labnotes

Classifieds for bloggers

Have something to sell? Looking for a place to rent? A date? Have an open position in your company? Post it on your blog.

You’re probably asking, “if I post it on my blog, how will people find it?” We all know classifieds sites are where you go, so other people can find your listing. What if we changed that?

Imagine a classifieds listing that searches millions of blogs and collects listings from all of them. Post it anywhere and peope can find it. Selling your old couch? Post it on your blog. Have an open position and need to hire? Post it on your company blog.

You get the power of classifieds search: you can search listings from around the Internet, but also narrow it by category, price, location. And you get the power of blogging. Tell people who you are, what other great things you have to offer. Say it in your own words and pictures.

To make this happen you’ll need a way to publish listings on your blog. And your blog needs a way to show the listing, so people can read it, and classifieds search engines can find it. So there are two parts to this solution.

For WordPress users, we’ve made a plugin you can install and use to publish listings. Your listings won’t be discovered, not quite yet. This is a prototype of work in progress. It shows what can be done, but it also lets you participate. Try it out and tell us what you think, what you like, what you would change. All we know is, we want it to be simple, useful and fun.

For the more technically inclined, join the Microformats discussion and give us ideas on how to make hListing better. Here’s a proposal from Assaf Arkin, Craig Donato and Rohit Khare.

And if you’re not sure what I’m talking about, watch this screencast. It runs for 1 minute 20 seconds, and will give you a good idea of what we’re working on.

You can download the plugin here.

Credits: I want to thank Craig Donato of Oodle and Rohit Khare of CommerceNet for making this happen. It wouldn’t be possible without you.

Picture of an old couch by Will Bragg.

Feb 8th, 2006

Oodle Blog » Blog Archive » hListing — a microformat for classifieds?

[...] With hListing, classified listings can published in a way that’s easy for search engines to reference them — whether the listings are published in a marketplace platform that supports microformats or a blog. To give people a sense for how this might work in a blog, Assaf created a WordPress plug-in for the draft spec. Below is a listing created by that plug-in. This is clearly pre-beta stuff but it helps visualize where this could goâ€¦ [...]

Feb 10th, 2006

Technoogle » Blog Archive » Microformat for Listings, Brilliant!

[...] Currently there’s an alpha version of plug-in for wordpress that was developed according to the specs. [...]

Feb 12th, 2006

Nik Cubrilovic

Ye its called edgeio – http://www.edgeio.com

Mar 11th, 2006

Technoogle » Blog Archive » Microformat for Listings, Brilliant!

[...] Currently thereâ€™s an alpha version of plug-in for wordpress that was developed according to the specs. [...]

Apr 16th, 2006

Sunny

Hi, I used it, but I wonder if I need to create categories accordingly to those categories inside the drop down menu?

Sincerely

Apr 17th, 2006

Assaf

No need to create these categories, the listing itself tells whethere it’s for-sale, for-rent etc. But you can use categories or tags to classify, e.g. furniture, cars, etc.

May 20th, 2006

Startups.in

As pointed out above isn’t edgeio trying to address the same niche?

Regards,
NagB /at/
Startups.in

Jun 25th, 2006

Lonny Paul

All we gotta do is have everyone post them into GoogleBase IRT.

Oct 29th, 2006

Oodle Blog » Blog Archive » hListing — microformat for classifieds?

[...] With hListing, classified listings can published in a way that’s easy for search engines to reference them — whether the listings are published in a marketplace platform that supports microformats or a blog.Â Â To give people a sense for how this might work in a blog, Assaf created a WordPress plug-in for the draft spec.Â Â This is clearly pre-beta stuff but it helps visualize where this could goâ€¦ [...]

Nov 2nd, 2006

robert

downloaded the plugin and installed it…but the listing part is not working for me…

the “price” field, “location” and contact fields are not working…

Nov 25th, 2006

Edward Han

Thanks for the wonderful plugin. Just download and will be testing out. This will be a good trend for classifieds since everyone is moving towards blogs.

Cheers!

Dec 17th, 2006

klariska

hello
im trying to fix a problem which is, whenever i click internet explorer two pages open at once..one is ok but another is a blank page with microsoft internet explorer written at the top and it keeps pushing to the front all the time.. im running internet explorer 7 with xp sp2..any ideas would be very much appreciated..thankyou

Feb 10th, 2007

timmay

I’m having the same problem as Robert — the uPress plugin activates nicely in my plugin manager, but no listing or other classified-specific options are showing up when I’m writing a post.
Thanks for any help.

Mar 7th, 2007

timmay

Well, it’s nice to see the great movement behind this initiative….don’t everybody rush to respond at once.

I’ve at least figured since last post that my modified NoLimits theme is somehow causing the problem. Most of the modifications I made to it was to remove any comment functionality. (This is for a newspaper website where commenting on general articles is not going to be accepted).

But I have a parallel project with an un-modified Island after sunset theme, and the listing options do come up when writing a new post there. Otherwise, I haven’t been able to track down the exact problem yet.

Any help?

Mar 7th, 2007

Assaf

timmay,

I didn’t update the plugin since using it for WordPress 1.5, so it might not work well with 2.0 or 2.1. Which version of WordPress are you using?

Mar 28th, 2007

Clark

WP 2.1.2
The “Price:”, “Location:”, “Contact info:”, & “Expired:” fields are not available for entry.

Apr 20th, 2007

Billy

How long would it take you to update the plug-in for 2.0?

Aug 15th, 2007

Diane

Can this plugin work on Wordpress version 2.2.1 ?

Oct 4th, 2007

james

Any news on updating for the new wordpress version?

Nov 30th, 2007

Assaf

I’m not making an upgrade for this plugin right now, so most likely that it will not support WordPress 2.2 or later.

The code is open source if anyone wants to take care of releasing new versions.

Apr 21st, 2008

grand cayman islands

This is a very interesting wordpress plugin, makes it every easy to post something up that you want to sell. Probably won’t get as much traffic as Craigslist, but still good.

Apr 27th, 2008

WordPress Stuff

Great idea guys! Can we expect a working version for WordPress 2.5x versions?

Apr 30th, 2008

Assaf

I won’t be updating it for 2.5, but the source code is available if anyone is interested in checking it against the new WP UI.

Jun 20th, 2008

The Optimist

I had this for my blog. Once I updated it it stopped working. Is there an updated verison?

Jun 21st, 2008

Assaf

I’m not planning an update for the latest versions of WP.

Jun 30th, 2008

Lexi

Yes. It worked for me until I updated to 2.5. I actually used it in conjunction with the classified ad sites. I would send traffic from the sites to my ads locally. I sold a pitching machine (Jugs Fastpitch) and a recumbent bike.

I would love to see a 2.5 update from someone who could do it. Any takers?

Assaf, thanks for the plug-in.

Jul 10th, 2008

Peter

It rea;y does seem like a great plugin. I wonder if having the plugin would help in the whole search engine optimization for different sets of products for sale…Anyone tried it in that way?

@assaf on Twitter

Classifieds for bloggers