AutoDirector forum

Re: V2.0

Matthew77 — Fri, 29 Aug 2008 02:35:24 GMT

I would like to see a search function that allows for pricing, vehicle type, or such.

I am in the process of writing this, but thought I would post here as a suggestions.

Re: Installed but showroom does not appear

Craig — Thu, 28 Aug 2008 12:15:46 GMT

The CSS template is specified in the script tag as a style. The URL will be something like:

http://mysite.com/autodirector/carlist.php?site=mysite&style=blue

Take a look at the integration options icon, then "basic...". Click a link and you'll see the code you need to cut and paste into your web page.

If it still doesn't work, try using another browser. Note that various Firefox add-ons can block it, especially Noscript and, under some circumstances, AdBlock.

Re: all button not working

Craig — Thu, 28 Aug 2008 12:07:19 GMT

Weird. I've been testing AutoDirector with '&' in the fields and it appears to work fine?

Could it be that you've got another unusual character in your text? Copying and pasting from Word could certainly cause problems.

Re: Installed but showroom does not appear

sevans — Wed, 27 Aug 2008 22:54:10 GMT

Update... I'm guessing the showroom isn't being displayed because the code while the code "

" is in the webpage there is no css file loaded with that ID. I had selected the blue theme but I don't think the code is loading the appropriate blue.css

As a test, (working on a copy) I went into carlist.php and changed "setup.cssfile="";" to setup.cssfile="client/blue.css"; and then the showroom showed up (although it wasn't the most attractive and listed everything down the page with no boxes around anything.

So for whatever reason after running the installer it seems like no css file is being used (although the instructions say it can be installed with just the two lines of code in to a web page.

Help

Installed but showroom does not appear

sevans — Wed, 27 Aug 2008 20:15:06 GMT

I installed autodirector 1.8. The progress failed the first time indicating it couldn't sent the roper permission on DATA/ (even though it was 755). I changed that folder and al its subfolders to 777 and reran the install and it indicated success.

I can log into the control panel and set up new users and change the preferences but nothing shows up in the Showroom. I inserted the DIV and Javascript.lines. yet nothing appears on that web page (the example that shipped with it is installed)

I manually checked that the "carlist.php?site=example..." exists (it returns a screen of code starting with 'var setup=[];
setup.cssfile="";... ' (although the hosting site appends some analytics script at the end) and the thumbs and pict directories are present and have pictures in them.

Any idea why the showroom doesn't display anything (and I mean nothing... no pictures, no text, no search).

Re: all button not working

Craig — Wed, 27 Aug 2008 18:51:43 GMT

Yep - it's being caused by:

1998 Chevrolet Blazer JOHNNY&HOLLY McCLURE
1998 Toyota Camry MARK&DIANE GASS

Remove the '&' from those vehicles and it should work. The only reason 'all' causes an issue is because those vehicles generate the error. If you view 5 cars at a time, it only occurs on page 7.

Hope that helps. I'll look into fixing the issue...

(Incidentally, the reason I couldn't see the problem in Firefox was because I use Adblock Plus and it stops your AutoDirector script because it's in an /ad/ folder. It might be an idea to rename it to something else, then run upgrade.php - that should work).

Re: all button not working

bdealer — Wed, 27 Aug 2008 14:39:41 GMT

I replaced some of the &'s and it did make some appear, but i'm still having issues with firefox. If i select the all button i just get a page full of text...here's just the first few lines.....

XML Parsing Error: not well-formed Location: http://franklincars.net/inventory.html Line Number 1, Column 33363:

model:: 2006 Scion XB
color:: black
transmission:: manual
mileage:: 44,885 miles

$12,995

thanks for your help....

Re: all button not working

Craig — Wed, 27 Aug 2008 12:22:30 GMT

Hi,

For me, IE appears to be working, but Firefox shows a blank page without any errors.

The Doctype hasn't changed, but the system's much more strict about characters that go into the fields. Certainly characters such as '&' are likely to give you problems - and that showroom appears to use quite a few. I think the ones with & in the title are failing to appear in the list, which could account for any errors you've experienced with the 'all' option.

I'll look into it but, for the moment, I'd recommend using characters such as a-z, 0-9, and basic punctuation.

The orange template hasn't changed, but the characters or possibly hidden errors could be causing spacing problems.

Hope that helps.

all button not working

bdealer — Wed, 27 Aug 2008 03:47:05 GMT

Craig,

Just updated to 1.8 and everything seems ok...few issues. One customer has the "orange" css and it seems to have made it larger and not fit as well....but the main issue are the pages...if you select more than 25 a page it errors. Does the same in firefox and IE with small differences....any help would be great! Here's the site www.franklincars.net

Is there a new Doctype that's being used??

Thanks

Re: AutoDirector v1.8 final now available

Craig — Tue, 26 Aug 2008 16:44:07 GMT

Make sure you download it from the main site - the file should be autodirector.zip and it's definitely v1.8. Check !autodirector_readme.txt to be sure.

If your installation still shows 1.7, check you've FTP'd all the new files and none got missed (see the upgrade instructions).

Re: AutoDirector v1.8 final now available

mcsc — Mon, 25 Aug 2008 19:22:18 GMT

Hi Craig,

I just upgraded and I got v1.7 instead of v1.8

Would you please let me know how I get 1.8 please?

Thanks.

Re: AutoDirector v1.8 final now available

mcsc — Mon, 25 Aug 2008 19:08:10 GMT

Hi Craig,

Thanks for that, I didn't realise you work so quickly!

I just hope I don't encounter any glitches when installing

All the best mate, and thank you.

Matt

Re: "all" button

Stooz — Fri, 22 Aug 2008 10:47:00 GMT

Once again, you suggest something and you get more than you asked for! Thanks Craig!

Re: "all" button

Craig — Thu, 21 Aug 2008 14:29:48 GMT

This is now available in v1.8:

- "all" is the last option by default

- custom page size settings can also show "all" by setting a page size of 0 (zero)

- finally, unnecessary page sizes are no longer shown. For example, if you've got 8 cars, it will show 5 and 10, but not 20, 25, 50 etc.

Re: Changing transmission drop box

Craig — Thu, 21 Aug 2008 14:27:05 GMT

Note that field renaming and removal is now easier in v1.8 - see this topic for details...

Custom showroom fields, languages, and currencies

Craig — Thu, 21 Aug 2008 14:20:11 GMT

The website showroom is primarily controlled by client/carlist.js. Expert users can alter the settings in this file to configure the showroom (remember to keep a backup though).

Changing the language
All the language strings are contained in setup.text (lines 3 to 49). For example, if you want to change "model" to the Spanish "vehiculo", edit line 9 and change:

model: "model:",

model: "vehiculo:",

You can also change the mileage units by editing mileageunit in line 13. For example, this could be set to "KMs". Note that the control panel won't change - you'd still enter your KM figure as 'mileage'.

Note that changing the text may have an impact of the space allocated for a field in the CSS template. Further style changes may therefore be required.

Removing a field
Similarly, if you didn't want to see the model field, simply set an empty string:

model: "",

This could previously have been handled within the CSS template, but this method might be easier for some users.

Note that this only works for model, colour, gearbox, mileage, and details. To remove the price, set showprice:false in line 53.

Using a different currency
AutoDirector supports US dollars, UK pounds, and Euros. If you want to use an alternative currency, change currencystart and/or currencyend in lines 54 and 55.

For example, to show Australian dollars using the format "X AU$", set:

currencystart: "",
currencyend: " AU$",

Custom price codes
By default, entering a price of "0" will show "sold" and a price of "1" will show "please call". You can now change these messages and add your own in the pricemessage array (line 56).

For example, if you wanted 1 to show "call" and 2 to show "special offer", you would define:

pricemessage: ["sold", "call", "special offer"]

Rearranging the sort types
The "order by" options can be rearranged or removed. Anyone with a little JavaScript knowledge can also add their own sorting options.

The options are defined in the sortTypes array, line 62 to 71. Always keep the last two options as the search results.

Reverting back to popup photos in v1.8

Craig — Thu, 21 Aug 2008 13:53:54 GMT

Now that AutoDirector's got a great lightbox effect, what do you do if your boss or client doesn't like it?!

The old client/carlist.js file is still available if you prefer it:

1. Rename carlist.js to something else.
2. Rename carlist-old.js to carlist.js.

AutoDirector v1.8 final now available

Craig — Thu, 21 Aug 2008 13:50:21 GMT

AutoDirector v1.8 is now available.

New features...
1. Animated lightbox effect when viewing vehicle photographs.
2. Easier showroom customisation into any language or currency.
3. Option to view 'all' vehicles on the showroom.
4. Control panel shows number of photographs per vehicle.
5. Lots of other minor tweaks and updates.

Registered users can upgrade for free (follow the instructions in !install.html).

Further information will be posted in appropriate sections.

Re: Changing transmission drop box

Impact-Players — Tue, 19 Aug 2008 12:57:47 GMT

Many thanks. Good idea

Re: Changing transmission drop box

Craig — Sat, 16 Aug 2008 16:25:28 GMT

If you're just selling caravans only and don't need the transmission field, then it's best to hide it in CSS, e.g.

#autodirector dt.gearbox, #autodirector dd.gearbox { display:none; }

You can add that to any stylesheet on your page.

Caravan Dealers

Impact-Players — Sat, 16 Aug 2008 00:28:28 GMT

Hi,

Has anyone from the caravan industry using this software?

Changing transmission drop box

Impact-Players — Sat, 16 Aug 2008 00:26:39 GMT

Hi all,

I am a caravan dealership and hoping someone would know how to change automatic to say caravan in the tranmission drop down box?

I really like this software, but if I can not change some of the terms to suit my industry I will not be able to use it.

Any help would be much appreciated

Re: "all" button

Craig — Thu, 07 Aug 2008 19:38:00 GMT

It should be possible - although you could end up with seriously long pages. Leave it with me!

"all" button

Stooz — Thu, 07 Aug 2008 15:39:23 GMT

Is there room for improving the number of cars in the "per page" display?
I have tweaked as allowable to change the number of cars on show from 5,10,20,40,200

so that hopefully 200 always allows the ability to list all the cars, but it might look "smarter" if there was an ALL button instead (or configurable option)?

I assume the database field for the site "maximum vehicles" could be used to determine the maximum, or a call to the db for "total number of records"

- then replace the result with the text "All".
display per page - 5,10,20, all

I tried hardcoding "all" but I became unstuck when I ended up with over 200 cars in the list!
hope that makes sense!

Re: Matt Cardy Specialist Cars

mcsc — Sat, 26 Jul 2008 15:18:43 GMT

My pleasure mate.

Most recently I've been using Google Spreadsheets, it's not ideal! I also used a stock listing that I made myself and it was awful.

All I can say is Autodirector is an amazing program, easy to use and I would recommend it to anyone.