(quoted from Yclas site)
Yclas is a revolutionary platform that enables anyone with little or no knowledge at all in website design to create their own marketplace website in less than two minutes.
The self-hosted version is called "Lite". In the Pro version you get support and the license to remove the foother credit link. I don't see any other differences or limitations between the Lite and the Pro version.
This weekend i will install the lite version and post my findings here.
I installed and tested for a few hours Yclas self-hosted lite (free) classifieds script.
I visited their website and clicked their link to get the script. After a while I got an email, but the provided link didn’t work (there was a custom error displayed). I emailed them back and very quickly I got a new link that worked just fine.
The installation was smooth and without any errors or problems. After the installation I was presented with a login page and a strange notice on top:
Error
You do not have permissions to access Home index
Not sure what that means and searching for the cause of that notice, I found nothing at all.
What I liked:
- Emails worked right, no problem in that area (that is very important).
- A renew option is available to all users.
- The admin dashboard is modern, with a LOT of options and features.
- Countries and whole “Geo” options are very well set. Algolia Places also supported!!
- Basic SEO was also correct.
What I didn’t like:
- The two free themes included are nothing to write home about. That means more money to buy a good one.
- There is no email verification for new users, so everyone can sign in and post an ad (that can be moderated before becoming public). How did they miss that?
- There is a copyright notice and a link on every footer of the site. That link can only be removed when you buy some service or product (starting 30$ per month cloud-hosted or 350$ for full source and do whatever you like). Still I’m not exactly sure how you can force someone to keep a footer copyright and link on a GNU/GPL licensed script. Anyways this is an other story.
- There is no forum or community of any kind for some basic support. Even user to user.
- There is no “debug to a log” mode option, like in Wordpress or Osclass. I always like to run a new script (or an updated script or plugin) in debug mode for 1-2 days, in order to check for errors.
- Last but not least, Yclas installation cleared my .htaccess and put in utter junk. I had all kind of stuff in my .htaccess and they are all gone. Most scripts or plugins I know and use, make at least a BACKUP of .htaccess before any change. That way, you can revert back. Also why all that junk (compression, IE7, godaddy fixes, cache control, security stuff!!!!) was put in? They must be kidding ….. There is even a link in .htaccess pointing to “http : // forums . open-classifieds . com/” that doesn’t exist anymore! Go figure. Exactly how old is this code?
I removed Yclas from my development server and didn’t do any more tests. I was not impressed.
Do you have a different story to tell? Please sign up and write about it.
Or download Yclas and test it yourself. See if it works right for you.
I have tried this script a few years back, when their name was Open Classifieds (i think). At the time i compared it with Osclass, and Osclass was "years" ahead. And still is from what i see.
Yclas could be still an option for some people.
What puzzles me is that there is no mention of any limitations (number of ads for example) in the free-lite version. Does that mean "unlimited" ? Because in their paid cloud plans there are limitations in the number of ads posted.
What puzzles me is that there is no mention of any limitations (number of ads for example) in the free-lite version. Does that mean "unlimited" ? Because in their paid cloud plans there are limitations in the number of ads posted.
I haven't seen anything about the number of ads and limitations on that. I saw that only in the cloud-hosted options they offer. Not in the lite version.
- The two free themes included are nothing to write home about. That means more money to buy a good one. --- We make a business from that.
- There is no email verification for new users, so everyone can sign in and post an ad (that can be moderated before becoming public). How did they miss that? --- We have Ads moderation and email verification for ads. Works the same, user can not post and ad without confirmation... so..
- There is a copyright notice and a link on every footer of the site. That link can only be removed when you buy some service or product (starting 30$ per month cloud-hosted or 350$ for full source and do whatever you like). Still I’m not exactly sure how you can force someone to keep a footer copyright and link on a GNU/GPL licensed script. Anyways this is an other story. --- This is the only thing we ask, you can of course remove it but will go against our will and yours of helping us out ;)
- There is no forum or community of any kind for some basic support. Even user to user. --- We had a forum but decided to remove it, we had 2 employees only for this and we could not afford it. Now after 3 years without this we see was the correct move. I am sorry but we can not give support for free at this time. That's why maybe other projects have died in the past.
- There is no “debug to a log” mode option, like in Wordpress or Osclass. I always like to run a new script (or an updated script or plugin) in debug mode for 1-2 days, in order to check for errors. -- We have a debug mode you can enable in the code and also a log system.
- Last but not least, Yclas installation cleared my .htaccess and put in utter junk. I had all kind of stuff in my .htaccess and they are all gone. Most scripts or plugins I know and use, make at least a BACKUP of .htaccess before any change. That way, you can revert back. Also why all that junk (compression, IE7, godaddy fixes, cache control, security stuff!!!!) was put in? They must be kidding ….. There is even a link in .htaccess pointing to “http : // forums . open-classifieds . com/” that doesn’t exist anymore! Go figure. Exactly how old is this code? -- The code is updated really often you can check it on our github. It uses a MVC framework called Koseven. The .htaccess its written only in the installed folder. Not only the .htaccess will be affected your index.php and a lot more. Create a folder or a subdomain. If you check the .htaccess file were says open-classifieds.com are comments on the code on what exactly that line is doing and why is there. Nothing else.
- What puzzles me is that there is no mention of any limitations (number of ads for example) in the free-lite version. Does that mean "unlimited" ? Because in their paid cloud plans there are limitations in the number of ads posted. ---- In self-hosted we do not have put any limitation since depends entirely on your hosting space. In cloud we do have restrictions since you pay for "storage" let's call it.
Thanks for visiting and spending some time to explain and clear-up a few things.
I wish to you and your business all the best.
Nice to see you here. My quick review was a totally honest one as an experienced webmaster (for Wordpress and Osclass). We sell or promote nothing here and we are not affilated with anyone.
Thanks for pointing out a few things i missed, i only had limited time to spend with Yclas.
Still some points of mine are valid but there is no reason to expand in that here.
Good luck with your project.
cheers