Hi all i am hoping for some good input on geodesicsolutions enterprise software http://www.geodesicsolutions.com/products/classifieds/classifieds_enterprise.htm
I am planning on starting a classified website from scratch, I hope it goes well and dont mind spending the money for a program that can grow with me or me into it. I am no designer or programer at all so need a program that dose not need a lot of help.
Thanks in advace for any input.
JT
P.S. Also any info you can give me on banner adds would be great
If you know nothing about designing a webpage or any html you might find it a bit difficult to just jump in the deep end of the pool like this and start off with such a huge project. (if I understood you comment correctly)… Anyhow keeping that in mind, You might want to try the new dreamweaver MX 2004 or Frontpage 2004. Personally I prefer frontpage, I find an easier interface when it comes to these kind of editors. But alas its sorta like Pespsi and Cola either or works best for people… I don’t know if microsoft offers a free trial demo of frontpage but I know macromedia offers a free trial of dreamweaver soo you might as go give it a shot and see what you can do… 
-Nat Marcano
Hey Limoman,
I used Geodesic Enterprise to power my classifieds. I researched several classified programs for a while before purchasing. I highly recommend them to anyone wanting to add an advertising resource to their site.
The program offers a good deal of flexibility, with the template system. As nmarcano mentioned, I used Frontpage to do the HTML design. You can create different templates for every area of your Classifieds. For example, an Automotive section uses one template, while the Real Estate Classifieds uses another. Then you can specify even another template for when a user goes a second page deep (Automobiles Cars). Finally, you have the flexibility of generating unique templates that display the advertisements themselves, for each and every category.
They provide you with twenty blank pages in the program, so you can create unique pages that still use some of the designs resources (Logged in/out, register, place an ad, etc…) This offers some flexibility as well. Adding features to a page is simple as going to the administration panel and attaching a module, than slapping a small tag on the page template, where you want to feature to appear. For example, if you want the category specific search engine to appear on the front page of a category, but not the second page, you can do it with ease as mentioned above.
There support is reasonably modest, judging from past experiences with Internet software companies. They listen to consumer feedback through a private forum area. Moreover, they are very quick at adding an modifying the program as the community requests.
On a personal note, I feel they stand behind the reputation much more than many developers would. They conduct business on a professional level, and never leave you stuck alone. They have even went through trouble of providing assistance to me, when users of my site had questions or support concerns. This I thought was most admirable, as it demonstrated they stand behind their products. I never purchased an application where I even got a direct support response, let alone the developers stepping in to help answer my customers support issues.
I give them an A+ for their application, service, and customer care. The combined effort and service they provide is worth much more than the price they ask for the Enterprise application.
Ok based on the information above I have just purchase Geodesic Enterprise, note the date of this post.
I must say that the Geodesic website is very impressive, gives a feeling of confidence to potential consumers and will entice one to part with the dollars. The offer of a free install service SEEMS great but is in place for a reason.
Basically, I’m having a few problems here. Now, not to be unfair, I’ll not say anymore right at this moment as Geo are addressing this problem but, I shall keep this thread posted and suggest that anyone interest in Geodesic Enterprice keep an eye on it also as I shall be following up on this matter.
Jezella
I am also looking at this program after reading this string. It certainly looks impressive.
Any update yet ?
Graham
Graham Yes is the short answer.
Things are not looking so good at the moment. As I mentioned above the install of this product is free. Now the reason it’s free is because no proper install program has been produced so far. This is not to say that it can’t be installed as it can, but by the software produces.
If you read this very soon, you will see by following this link www.sell-the-car.co.uk/index.php that obviouse problems exist.
Now this is not to say that the software does not work, as I’m sure it may. However, my consern is from a user and admin point of view where if I’m having problems now, on what is to be a commercial site, what happens when the site is up and running.
I have been in contact with Geo, and as mentioned above by another user, they are very helpful indeed. But, this is not sorting the problem.
What I would say at the moment Graham is this. If you pay your money and things do not work out, they will refund without problems. I can say this as this is the case with me.
I think that it was last saturday that I ordered the software Via Paypal and due to the problems I have been issued a refund already.
To sum up on this. I would say that the software has the potential to be great but really these upload problems ought to be sorted before the software hits the shelf so to speak.
I would still like to use the Geo product, honest but am concerned with possible problems later.
One other thing is that I am having a timeout problem whilst in MySql plus I have not been able to login as administrator.
Hope this helps.
Ashley Jezella.
I shall keep all informed.
Ok we’re on the move now and I must be honest and say that I had loaded a file into the wrong folder which did cause me some problems in login.
However, I do not consider this to really be my fault as a full install program has not yet been developed for this program and the less experienced will have problems.
Basically, I’m sure that when Geodesicsolutions install the program for you there will be fewer problems. But still it remains that one ought to be able to install this with much greater ease. Additional files should not be required at a later time so to enable the initial install.
My concern is What happens if the software is install by Geo and you need to do an emergency install yourself.
So what next. This is and interesting thread and hopefully one that may be followed by others. With this in mind, it is my intention to keep the readers informed as to how I feel about the program in general.
BFN
I take your point about the possible need to reinstall at a later date but if they are prepared to do the initial install for free then I would let them do it.
I am interested in this package because it looks as if it can be used as a combination of classifieds and a shopping ‘mall’ which is what I am ideally looking for. The only problem is that the demo on their site does not really show this aspect of it. Guess I will have to write to them.
Graham
Graham, if you are serious about starting some kind of business then you must realize that backup and reliability is very important.
Now let’s say that what you propose works well. You do not, after much hard work and expense want to have your software break. Let us presume that your business idea results in an income of £100 per day. Your system goes down or is unable to cope for whatever reason. Your screwed. Even worse, you have to change your system after a number of months. It’s going to cost you dear in the end as you will have to convert an old system to that of new.
I’ve found the following that may help you. Give it a good read. In the case of Esvon, you can get a full working 30 day download. You may have to chage your hosting service for this one thought. If you do let me know, I think I may have found an ideal source.
Anyway good luck Graham.
Analysis of the products offered on the Web, similar to Esvon Classifieds.
We do believe in healthy sense of paranoia. Not the paranoia, which makes us feverishly try to distinguish ourselves from our competitors, but the paranoia, which makes us feel the iron hand
of competition and gives us the stimulus to constantly develop and improve.
It is difficult to survive in the media, where everybody claims he is the best and where somebody is indeed better than you. It prompted us the idea of carrying out a kind of analysis of the products offered on the Web, similar to Esvon Classifieds. In no shape of form, we are going to judge or criticize the web applications, listed below.
The search engine has brought us to the following software products:
http://www.interactivetools.com/products/realtymanager/
The first impression is that Realty Manager is quite a professional solution. Scanning the pages, and studying this product more carefully we learn that the script is realized using Perl and text files and its functionality is really worth being paid for. PHP/MySQL and Perl/text files solutions don’t have any distinction in kind when it comes to their functionality. But PHP code is more consistent and modular and it runs faster. The advantage of PHP is also the ubiquity of web server platforms supporting PHP and MySQL. Fact: Over 25% of the internet’s web sites are running PHP and nearly 63% of the internet’s web sites are running the Apache web server, so give it a thought.
Those, who have encountered the problem of a script running slowly, probably know, that the faster grows your database of users, the slower your script works. In the end, it just breaks. (it happens because it is based on text files). Thus, such solution can be used only when the web site you are going to build is simple.
Moreover, with their license you are not allowed to edit scripts; it can be a disaster for you when you want to customize your solution.
The web site itself is very informative; it seems to give the overall description of the application. In general, this software script is enough if your web portal needs don’t go far. Yet, it is quite simple and friendly but has much fewer functions than Esvon Classfieds does.
http://www.mojoscripts.com/products/mojoestate/index.shtml
The web site layout and the product presentation resemble a bit the previous one. The application is Perl/MySQL solution, which however costs less. The price, as we have already indicated, is not a No.1 factor for making decision. But $199 seems nevertheless too little for a powerful script with “tons of features”.
MojoEstate includes a lot of features: internal mailbox system, saved search system, multimedia file gallery, advanced admin and member panels, powerful search facility, detailed who-is-online display, auto-generated thumbnails for uploaded images, etc.
We won’t enumerate all the product features, described at the web site. When a visitor reads the content, it is often enough for him to know what is described. But developers and more competent users know that it’s just a surface. When it comes to the product in action, they might face with the problem of handling extreme amounts of traffic the database queries, which can bring your server down. Some customers just may skip this peculiarity.
The product is also presented in a well-structured manner and seems to be a good cost-effective solution for budget-minded people.
http://www.smartisoft.com/products.php?product=phpBazar
We see that the script manufacturers have preferred PHP code in this case. As we have already mentioned, we also consider it to be better for such kind of applications in view of its open source technology and the fact that it is firmly implanted in the LAMP family (Linux/Apache/MySQL/PHP) of open source web development platform technologies.
The given page describes the product features. It is a long and detailed five-scroll list. The demo is actually well presented, yet has an erotic shadow. If you are looking for a PHP script to build exactly this kind of web portal, then you are all set. But if you are in search for a program, say, for a real estate site, such demo confuses a bit… Driven by common sense you get back and click “I am not over 18”. I was a bit taken aback when I was redirected to a disney web site.
http://www.e-classifieds.net/products/index.html
We should surmise that this solution looks professional. The abundant choice of editions is a good prove to it. Still, the researches show, that the bigger the selection is, the more difficult it is to make a decision. And it is really so. Say, you decide that you need one solution and proceed to the following edition to make sure you did not skip the features that are necessary to your online business. And it turns out that you did. You change the decision. While you proceed to the third one, you might discover that it has the features of the second edition, but lacks for the features of the first. You feel frustrated.
Yet, you can see the demo of every edition directly without filling in any web form before it. It contributes to the web site popularity and makes the product more available.
The script is also realized using Perl and text files and the customer support of the manufacturer costs $75 - $100 per hour. Maybe this rate is the confirmation that the company really guarantees an irreproachable performance of their product, and you won’t have to refer to them too often; but support is required more often than you might think, since the situations differ.
http://www.esvon.com/products/cl/
Of course, we do pay attention to what the program looks like, but its internal mechanism does play a great role. The Esvon specialists have seen to this. You can’t see it, but you can be sure Esvon Classifieds script runs well and allows you to avoid the typical problems, the web applications owners might encounter.
The well thought out and powerful script, its modularity and flexibility are the best qualities distinguished by our customers. It is difficult, however, to judge ourselves, thus, we will enumerate the features, which were marked by our customers as practically unique in comparison to other similar solutions:
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Static HTML pages generation allows you to have the fast web site, indexed in search engines by more keywords and much more accessible to web surfers.
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The script allows you to handle much more site traffic/visitors queries, then other existing applications; the fast running PHP code is also marked as an important peculiarity of the program. Just as an example, Esvon Classifieds has unique category tree building engine: it is very fast, with only 2 SQL queries to build an unlimited-level category tree with ads amount per category calculation; it will ensure you that your server won’t be brought down by amount of database queries executed!
While we were preparing this article, we received one more email from our customer, where he compares our product with GeoClassifieds (http://geodesicsolutions.com/products/index.htm), and marks the following features as award winning in Esvon Classifieds: template system, Gd or imagemagick thumbnail images, very good support, reviews writing and voting, blocks engine, absolutely custom database fields settings.
http://geodesicsolutions.com/products/index.htm
GeoDesic product features are very attractive. Here it is: the case, when you should go deeper. A typical user can claim that it doesn’t matter, what’s inside; it just should work and do what he expects from it. But the deeper approach reveals, that the script is not able to process properly growing database queries, its templates are not very flexible, it runs slow and it is unable to generate static content.
Using such script you take risk to be very soon removed from the shared web server, since your traffic might exceed the maximum allowed server load limit very quickly.
Thus, be meticulous while choosing the script fro your online business.
We hope, that this analysis has contributed to your knowledge of what you are looking for on the Web. In the end, you decide, we just help you to see deeper; we hope that we do.
About the Author:
Daria Winkler is Co-founder and Principal of Esvon LLC (http://www.esvon.com/),
information technology company, providing cost effective software development and
outsourcing services to our clients and professional classified ads software for
website owners.
od read. In the case of
PS
I’m trying the Esvon System now.
Graham, you sent me a private message but I can’t reply cos your not setup to receive private messages.
No matter. I tried the Enterprise version so the top software.
But now I’ve given up with it as lots of the html files were missing. It’s a real shame as I thing the software has potential but at this rate its going to get slaughtered.
Ashley
What version of Geodesic did you try? I’ve been running the basic version for awhile now without too much trouble. I would like to have had the top line version of it, but its a lot of $$ to spend on a begining website. Did you get your site up and running, or are you still having probs with it?
Jezella… you have confused me now. in one post you are saying that you are going to try esvon but in the post above you sound as if you work for esvon…
I looked at a lot of the classified programs ( and haven’t decided which to go with yet ) so I may be getting some of them confused but the esvon one ( if I remember rightly ) was a basic program which charged you extra for just about every extra feature. this may have worked out quite well but it put me off a little. the static pages sounds good though.
I have been debating which way to go ( I am not in any great hurry ). I want to end up with a sort of ‘mall’ with lots of shops in it but I prefer to have the niche products this will concentrate on listed by catagory ( ie manufacturer ) on the main page rather than have to search lots of shops ( just like a classified ads site would work )
geodesic seems to offer both aspects of this, classified ads listing but regular advertisers can have their own storefront… sounds good but as I said, you cannot see this on the demo.
i will have to have another look at evson.
Graham
I just found thris thread through a round about search I was doing, but I had to join (rejoin?) SitePoint and comment. I think I used to be a member years ago and dropped away, but maybe I’ll be back now!
Anyhow, the reason I’m posing is that I have a service that is related to this topic, namely outsourced classifieds. We developed our own in-house soltuon in 1994 for EP.com classifieds, and later developed a simple co-brand version of this for our affiliates. Soon after, we were asked if we would sell our program. It was not designed to sell, and it was very complex. Instead, we developed a way to fully outsouce classifieds for others (thorugh AdConnect.com). Instead of having to install a script and go through tedious setup, we have made this a lot simpler.
Since there is no software to install, you can be up and running very quickly. As examples of our service, you can see the classifieds we run at http://classifieds.broncograveyard.com or http://classifieds.mycoupons.com
With regard to International customers, we do have potential support for alternate currencies (Pound, Euro, and a few others). I only say this because we have yet to run into a client who required this. I would be willing to forego the setup fee ($349 for the fully branded version) as compensation for helping us debug this version. Since we host and outsource, the credit card server is ours, and we pay you 80% of the collected money (less a $1 per transaction fee).
There was also a question about banners. I don’t know what was wanted, but we have a different service (AdJungle.com) that lets you manage and sell banners on your site.
I think that is enough of a commercial for now. Hope this helped out.
Brad Waller
http://EP.com - Classifieds and Auctions
http://EPage.com - Content Syndication
http://AdConnect.com - Fully custom outsourced Classifieds and Auctions
http://AdJungle.com - Manage & sell your site’s banners
Hi there,
I am also considering and evaluating esvon vs geo classifieds enterprise.
Any actual website owner comments that will help shed some lights to the two’s pro and con points would be appreciated.
For my dilema, Both seems to have a good range of features.
For esvon, they had organized their codes quite neatly into “blocks” (think PHPNuke/PostNuke)
which are actually templates you can edit to change the html (and associated php front-end script) for any look&feel. However, most of their core lib php codes/classes are zend-encoded, so if you want to mod php, you can only do it to the limited front-end pages. You can also create unlimited extra pages (that can contain php codes) and unlimited custom fields in each categories.
Pages “seems” to run faster than geo classifieds, perhaps because of their php pages can be converted and cached as html pages.
Their price plans can be defined to cover Ad-plan as well as membership plan, and seems to have a option to even define read, browse, reply access per membership but with very little documentation. They are a bit pricey though, but have a lot of optional add-on scripts module including a very useful ‘Regions’ module that automatically filter input/output by country, state and city in search, registration, forms, browse, etc pages.
For Geo, I can only tested it on their hosted site - pity as they did not offer a download. (Anyone that had seen the actual codes might want to coment on the code org structure and ease of php mod).
They have a concept of separate price schemes for seperate group of users, but currently a user cannot yet choose a Ad-type plan and a subscriptiont-type plan at the same time. Their admin interface can control so many major and minor features that it’s duanting.
To create a page, you need to first create a template to attached to the page, and to use any modular features (e.g. featured items block), you have to go to admin interface to “activate” that modules for that template – this is very flexible but just wondering if there is a direct way to do this…I am just imagining if I had to do these manual configuration page by page again whenever I migrate my server. Also not sure when a user browse a page, does the script need to make extra calls to MySQL first to determine which template to use, and then which modules is activated for that template, before actually parsing the page for browser – which may “slow” website a bit or it had a cleverer way to cache these info.
Also, their extra pages seem to be fixed in the admin interface to 20 blank pages, and php mod is fixed to 5 blank php module blocks (extra pages do not parse php codes) which you can input your own content. Not sure if I can add more directly in the scripts, but it would be restrictive if these numbers are fixed.
Cheers.
Danzo
This is a reply to a private message I received where basically the question was Esvon vs Geo.
Hullo Danzo,
Must say sorry for not answering in full. First off I would suggest that you steer clear of Geo Enterprize. I can’t comment on the other Geo products as I have no experience of them. On the surface Geo seems fine but from an admin point it’s a nightmare. One ought not have problems with sofware costing $800 when you can get similar if not free software. Having said this Geo Enterprize does offer some nice features but only if you can get the program to work. Wher I mention free, one must not dismiss free to use software as many are very good and only require a licence where used commercially where for the sort of software we are talking of one would think that it was always used commercially.
Really you need to read the thread fully. Also, I do wonder about the examples supplied by Geo as to what other users have done with regard to customization. They are so highly customized I do wonder if they are in fact still really Geo.
As to your Esvon question. Yes I am now using this and have paid for the licence. On the surface Esvon may not have the same degree of customability as Geo but it works and can be loaded without problems. Once inside the program it becomes evident that Esvon can be customized to a very high degree indeed using the supplied htm templates. However, and I hope that Ezvon read this, it would be helpful if a listing was given as to what each template is used for. This would be so simply to impliment. Any vBulletin administrator will tell you this (vBulletin - forum software).
Esvon classifieds can be either cheaper or more expensive than Geo Enterprize as you purchase only the modules you require. What maybe a down side is that Esvon requires the zend compression something or other to run so your hosting company will have to supply this. In the case of my hosting company, they were unable to do so! Hence, I’ve changed hosting but this has not been a bad thing.
I am unable to give a full review on Esvon at the moment as I’m basically playing around with it for a time to get a feeling for the product and gain a better understanding as to how I can customize it.
Ashley
Jezella… you have confused me now. in one post you are saying that you are going to try esvon but in the post above you sound as if you work for esvon…
No I don’t work for Esvon Graham but the writer of the above does. I simply copied and pasted what I hoped would be of help to you.
Basically, what has happened here is that I read the start of this thread and was impressied with what I read about Geo Enterprize. I went to the Geo site and was impressed with that. I then bought the Geo licence and was not impressed with it.
These forums are a place where people can exchange ideas, information and experences with each other. That is what I am doing. If a product is good, it is good. If it is bad then it is bad. But what is good to one is not always good to another. The start of this tread gave the impression that Geo Enterprize was great. I disagree. Perhaps the person who gave the Geo Enterprize such praise is the guy who developed the software.
After enough input you and others will have to decide for yourself which classified software to purchase.
I’ve done some resarch on classifieds and thought I would add to the discussion. Did most of the research Spring 2004, so some terms, conditions, etc may have changed in the meantime.
This seems a little misleading to me. As noted, interactivetools scripts are perl and flat file or text database. The perl script generates static pages for the server to load. A php script (quickly) generates the pages fore every user. Some php create cache files like perl. interactive is also working on mySQL based scripts and I understand it will be a free upgrade for current owners per their standard terms. Unix/Apache servers support php, perl and mySQL. Perl and php are not separate and exclusionary services on a *nix/Apache server. Consistency and modularity of a scripts code are dependant on the programmer. These are not php only qualities.
Flat or text file based site are more limited as far as number of ads and/or users. These limits are normally in the thousands. A site with 2000 classifieds may or may not be “simple”, depends on your perspective.
In comparing the interactive and esvon software licenses, the esvon does not appear significantly less restrictive than interactive’s.
OTOH esvon offers a $500 script with over $2000 worth of possible options including a $150 option for 3 months of email support with a 24 hr max response time.
I would agree Hagen’s e-classifieds products are not my favorite. The terms seem unfriendly to me. Extra $$ for support. Extra $$ depending on payment method to purchase the product. Did not care for the license terms or required link back.
This is beyond the level of my skills, but a knowledgeable friend basically agreed. I would note that this is a php/mySQL solution and the lack of modularity consistency are a product of the programmer, not the technologies used.
Haven’t really looked at the esvon product.
FWIW, I purchased activewebsuite’s classifieds pro as my needs and budget were limited. Great product, great support. Unfortunately, it was later purchased by hagen.
Hi, been reading the threads here. Great conversation and lots of great points. Helps people research products better. The one thing that bothers me is the information pasted in this thread from Esvon and their “non-biased” evaluation of the classified products on the market. This information has been posted all over the internet and according to the companies who I have contacted regarding the statements have just laughed as the information is completely made up and was not obtained from any evaluation of the competitors products. I am a frequent software purchaser for sites that I manage and this article fascinates me. However, I am very frightened and almost appauled that company will comment on software of which there is a direct interest and base comments on nothing but opinion and then attempt to pass them off as a true evaluation with no bias. The author belongs to the organization Esvon and although this is not hidden the article is written as if an un-biased opinion is given. Esvon may or may not have good products but I would not buy from anyone who would stoop to this level. Very shady business tactic and only corrupts the information on the internet for consumers to evaluate and choose what might best suit them. My 2 cents and best of luck to all of you.