Filter

The Filter Plugin is a convenient and quite powerful extension for classifieds sites allowing your users to quickly filter ads on different pages by numerous parameters and rather focus on available listing options than on coming up with proper search criteria.

Since classifieds sites contain a large number of ads, a user needs to have more or less accurate search criteria in his mind in order to locate a desired item. In reality, users’ search criteria are often vague and unclear, and a standard search sometimes fails to present a user with needed items due to a limited number of search fields. The Filter Plugin was developed to help users refine their search by offering them more flexible and varied filtering options. The use of this Plugin will allow site users to promptly locate desired items even when they don’t have specific search criteria. Aside from saving time on searching, the users will also be able to view similar listings based on selected criteria.

The filter consists of a box of sliders, ranges and dropdowns normally appearing in the left sidebar, but you may choose other positions from Filter settings. Users may find and use the Filter on the following pages:

• A listing type page;
• All categories of a listing type;
• A particular category or a list of categories;
• Search results;
• Field-bound Box pages.

The Filter offers a straightforward and intuitive interface. To start using it, the visitor either needs to click on a certain field and view the listings based on the selected option or move a scrollbar in order and apply the parameter to view all the listings in the selected range. Even if the search did not return desired results the user may easily roll back the selected filter parameter.

Admin Setting

Aside from the multiple user benefits, the Plugin also offers an array of flexible settings for the Administrator. To create a filter, you need to navigate to the filter settings and add a filter. You can add filters to the pages mentioned above.

Since the Filer is presented in a box in the front end, you are free to choose where to position it on the pages mentioned above. This gives you quite a few placement options for a filter box.

Keep in mind that the filter may be built only for a specific listing type. At that, you are in no way limited in the number of filters that you may create, and you may build individual filters for different listing types and categories.

Once you add a filter by selecting a filter box, listing type, category and location, you will need to build it. The process of building a filter happens much in the same way as populating the form with fields; that is, you drag and drop filter-related fields onto the form. It is worth noting that the Filter Manager contains a set of fields on the right, all of which may be used for building a filter. When building a filter, you may choose the following modes of displaying fields:

• dropdowns
• checkboxes
• sliders
• ranges
• links
• categories

Once the selected fields have been added to the filter, you’ll have to configure them. Each of the field has a gear icon, which represents a mini-manager for a selected field. The Plugin enables you to choose how the field will be displayed in the front end and set other parameters, for instance when adding a price field you may choose how you want to display it: as a slider or as a price range.

The Filter may work together with the Currency Converter plugin, and if the latter is installed on your site the plugin will convert prices into a selected currency while the Filter will show a price range in a selected currency.

The Filter can be also applied to pages created by the Field-bound Box plugin. Knowing that boxes and pages created by the Field-bound Box Plugin present a powerful SEO tool, which may help you promote your site, we have turned it into a specific feature. To give an example of how you may use it, let us take a real estate script where you may create a box containing a list of the most popular cities in a country, which your site is targeting. Visitors will navigate from this box to another page, for instance, property sales in London. While this is a good page in terms of SEO, it is of little value to a visitor as it contains no more than an unfiltered list of properties for sale. This is where the Filter Plugin comes in handy. It’ll help visitors refine multiple properties in London on the page and single out only those relevant to their search preferences.