Listings & moderation

Listings in the admin panel is where everything your users publish appears, and where you post listings yourself.

The listing rules

Listings → Settings. These decide how the site behaves for everyone. Set them before you have users, not after.

Setting	What it decides
Only logged in users can post listings	Whether publishing needs an account. Off means anyone can post; on cuts spam sharply, and cuts volume too.
Hold new listings for admin moderation	New listings from users are disabled until an admin approves them. Listings an admin posts are never held.
Hold edited listings for admin moderation	The same, for edits to an existing listing. An admin’s own edits are never held.
Posters confirm new listings by e-mail	A new listing stays inactive until the user validates it, with a threshold: After n validated listings the user doesn’t need to validate the listings any more. So regulars post freely while newcomers are checked.
Signed-in posters skip the e-mail confirmation	Skips that e-mail step for anyone who is signed in.
Warn about expiration	Days of notice a seller gets before a listing expires. 0 sends no warning.
Search count limit	The most matches a search page or the API counts. Past it the total shows as “1,000+”, which keeps big sites fast. 0 counts every match. New sites start at 1000; updated sites start at 0.
Price	Required, Optional or Off. Required refuses a new or edited listing with an empty price; 0 counts and shows as Free. A category set to take no price never needs one. Off hides the price field.
Photos	Required, Optional or Off, beside Attach n images per listing, the photo limit (0 means no limit). Required asks for at least n photos, which cannot be more than the limit. An edit counts the photos the listing keeps plus new uploads, so removing one counts down. Off hides the photo field.
Location	Required or Optional (the default). Required asks for the country, the country and region, or the country, region and city. A city typed by hand counts, unless Only places from the list is on.
Location field	How the post and edit forms ask for the place: one box that suggests places (default), separate country, region and city boxes, or dropdown lists. The admin form always uses one box. Needs a theme that prints the place field.
Only places from the list	Refuses a place typed by hand. Posters must pick their town or city from the suggestions, and the form says “Pick your location from the list.” if they do not. The admin form has the suggestions; the posting form has them only when the theme prints the place field, so turn this on after that. It applies to the web form, the admin, the API and imports. An old listing with a typed place needs a picked place the next time it is saved; an API edit that does not send a place is left alone. Off by default.
Title length and Description length	The most characters a seller may type. The page refuses a length outside the allowed range and shows why.
Show reCAPTCHA in add/edit listing form	A captcha on the posting form, once reCAPTCHA is set up.
Allow attached files in contact publisher form	Whether the contact form takes a file: a picture, PDF, text or office document, up to the size set in Settings → General.
An user has to wait n seconds between each listing added	Rate limit on posting: the cheapest defence against a bulk poster. 0 means no wait.
Only allow registered users to contact publisher	Whether the contact form needs an account.
Notify admin when a new listing is added	An e-mail to you on every publish. Useful early, unbearable at volume.
Enable the “send to a friend” form	A sharing form on the listing page.

The posting forms mark a Required price, photos or location, and the web form, the admin, the API and imports all refuse a listing without them.

Note

RSS shows and Latest listings shown (how many listings appear in the RSS feed and on the home page) live under Settings → General, not here. So do the site contact form’s Attachments switch and Largest attached file (5 MB unless you change it), which also limits files sent to a publisher.

Moderating

The listings list filters by status, so the moderation queue is a filter rather than a separate screen. Work through the ones awaiting validation, then the reported ones.

Actions apply in bulk to selected listings: enable, disable, mark as spam, delete.

Delete is permanent

The admin says so plainly: this permanently deletes the listing and its photos. This cannot be undone. To take something down reversibly, disable it instead.

Selling a listing

These fields exist in shop mode only. In a shop, the Price and stock section of the product form has a Sell online switch. Turn it on so buyers can add the product to a cart, then set:

Field	What it does
SKU	Your stock code, up to 64 characters.
Compare-at price	The price before a sale, shown crossed out next to the price; a higher old price marks the product as on sale. Blank: no sale.
Stock	How many you have. Each sale takes one; at 0 it is out of stock. Blank does not count stock.
Weight in grams	For shipping.
Shipping class	A name your shipping plugin groups items by, such as bulky.

The item sells at the listing price; change that price to change what buyers pay. Turn on This product comes in options for option rows (Colour x Size and so on): each row has its own SKU, price and stock, and a row with no price sells at the listing price.

Switch Sell online off to stop selling. Only admins see these fields. When Settings → General → Site is a is set to shop, only admins can add listings at all.

Reported listings

In shop mode the menu says “products” where this page says “listings”.

Listings → Reported listings collects what visitors have flagged. Each entry shows the listing and how many reports it has drawn.

Two things worth knowing:

• Reports are keyed by visitor IP. If your site sits behind a reverse proxy or CDN (a service that sits in front of your server), it must pass the real client IP through, or every report looks like it came from the same person. See the caching contract.
• A high report count is a signal, not a verdict. Competitors report each other.

Comments

Settings → Comments controls whether listings accept comments at all, and on what terms:

• Allow people to post comments on listings: the master switch.
• Users must be registered and logged in to comment.
• Require a CAPTCHA to post a comment: see spam and abuse.
• Allow signed-in users to add a star rating (1 to 5) to a comment: turns comments into reviews. Each user rates a listing once. Until you save this screen, it is on for a shop and off for a classifieds site.
• A comment is being held for moderation: turns moderation on, with a threshold next to it: Moderated comments (the number of previously approved comments an author needs before theirs appear without review).
• Comments per page: break comments into pages, with n per page.
• Notifications: e-mail the admin when a new comment is posted, and e-mail the listing’s owner when there’s a new comment on his listing. There is no separate notification for a comment held for moderation.

Comments are moderated from the Listings → Comments screen, with the same enable/disable/spam/delete actions as listings.

Unmoderated comments on a classifieds site become a spam channel quickly. Either moderate them, require registration, or turn them off. Leaving them open and unwatched is the one option that always ends badly.

Users

Users lists everyone registered. From there you can activate an account, enable or disable one, edit its details, or add a user yourself.

Users → Settings carries the registration rules:

• Users enabled: whether the site has user accounts at all.
• Anyone can register: the master switch for sign-up.
• Users need to validate their account: e-mail confirmation before the account works.
• When a new user is registered: notify the admin.
• Username blacklist: words a username may not contain, separated by commas.
• Users can message sellers on the site: off by default. When on, a signed-in visitor’s contact-seller form starts a conversation instead of an e-mail. The seller gets an e-mail that says only “you have a new message”, with a link. Both read and reply under Messages in their account, and either can block the other or report the conversation. Guests still get the e-mail form, and so do shoppers on a shop. Held and reported messages are covered in spam and abuse.
• Send browser notifications for new messages: each user then turns them on per browser from their messages page. The site must use HTTPS.

Ban rules

Users → Ban rules blocks registrations and posts matching a pattern: an e-mail domain, an address, an IP range. This is how you stop a returning abuser without watching for them. Rules marked Messages only come from a member’s report and only stop contact mail; see Spam and abuse.

Alerts

Users → Alerts lists saved searches. As the admin explains: alerts notify a user by email when a new listing matches their saved search.

Alerts are sent by cron, once a day, or once a week for alerts set to weekly. If your users say they never receive them, check cron before anything else. See setting up cron.

Clearing out old content

Tools → Cleanup removes content in bulk by category:

Group	What it removes
Reported listings	Listings visitors have flagged as spam, unchanged for the chosen number of days.
Expired listings	Listings past their expiration date.
Unactivated listings	Listings never activated from the confirmation e-mail.
Spam listings	Listings marked as spam.
Blocked listings	Listings that are disabled or blocked.
Unactivated users	Accounts never activated from the confirmation e-mail.

You can run a cleanup on demand, or save settings so the daily cron does it for you. On a site of any age, this is the difference between a fast database and a slow one: dead rows still cost you on every search.

Take a backup before the first run.