Osclass: Survival Guide for a Dying Classifieds Script

… maybe a better title could be “Requiem for Osclass” or “Osclass forums are down” or even “Osclass is Dead and Buried” ? Nope, there is still some hope left, please read on …..

Osclass was released on January of 2010 (Osclass version 1.1) and the last release was version 3.8 on July of 2018. As you can see it hasn’t been updated for more than a year now. This was not a major problem since all development and updates of Osclass script were done in full secrecy (for some reason I never understood, since Osclass is an open source script).

But other signs also were coming from various sources, developers were leaving Osclass forums or totally abandon Osclass script. People at the forums were anxious and started to post their concerns about it. And guess what: all their posts were deleted after a while.

Then some members started to post links to Github or to other forums they created and those posts were also deleted. A few members were banned, while others just left the forums. The Personal Messaging (PM) of the forums was disabled and signatures were censored and forbidden.

In August 2019 we were informed via an email that Osclass Market will be officially closed. That created a lot of confusion about the future of the script. No other information was given related to Osclass. Nobody knew what the forums will become, the geo database, the updating service etc etc. Some members even emailed Osclass company but never got any reply back. Go figure.

Osclass Market was shut down a few days after the 5th of September. Then problems started for anyone running Osclass script. Slowness of the admin dashboard or even freeze and in some cases fatal errors appeared, depending on the hosting service each site used.

The last week Osclass.org was showing an error and now for 2-3 days now the whole domain and subdomains have disappeared, probably because the server and the DNS are offline for some reason.

That created even more problems of slowness and errors to all Osclass sites. Nobody knows if and when Osclass.org will be again available. But in any case the signs are there for sure and we must be prepared for the worst. Not to mention that we must search for an alternative script, before it is too late.

Luckily some work has been done to solve all the above problems for the moment, until we know for sure if Oslcass.org will continue to exist or not. And right now the goal is to completely remove any connection between websites (running the Osclass script) and Osclass.org services (Market and Update).

And that can be only done by changing some related files of Osclass script. All the information below is for Osclass 3.8, so if you run an earlier version you must update (manually via ftp) to 3.8.

1. A full stock version of Osclass 3.8, already stripped from Market and Updates can be downloaded from here:

https://www.valueweb.gr/forums/osclass/full-osclass-3-8-stripped-from-market-and-updates-with-bender-theme-3-20/

2. The latest version of Bender theme 3.20 for Osclass can be downloaded from here:

https://www.valueweb.gr/forums/osclass-free-themes/osclass-bender-theme/

3. GEO Osclass data files can be downloaded from here.

4. If you already run an Osclass 3.8 and you want to strip it from ANY Osclass.org dependencies, here is  detailed guide and files:

https://www.valueweb.gr/forums/osclass/for-osclass-3-8-remove-all-your-website-dependencies-from-osclass-org/

Those changes are tested and run well under PHP 7.1.x and 7.2.x. Those PHP versions are also the suggested ones for your running Osclass site. While some claim that PHP 7.3.x is also working for them, this is not always the case. Do not use PHP 7.3.x with Osclass 3.8 because it has NOT been tested.

5. Finally a promising fork of Osclass is available here:

https://github.com/navjottomer/Osclass

still not ready for a production site. A lot of work has been done, we will see if this will ever be a proper release.

(UPD NOV 2019: Osclass 3.9 has been released and you may want to try it out)

6. You may want to protect your installations with Osclass firewall.