One of the most powerful features of Auto Manager is the flexibility
of its database. It comes with 75 fields for storing listing data and
50 fields for storing homepage data. Each and every one of these fields
can be modified to store whatever information you want. So, if you have
something specific in mind which you'd like to appear on your site,
no problem!
Step 1: Creating the New Fields
For the sake of this tutorial, we're going to create three new fields:
- Undercoating (Yes / No)
- Additional Features: Tinting, Spoiler, GPS
- Private Comments
Let's start with Undercoating. Open up your favourite web browser and
go to your Auto Manager. Here, click on Setup Options. This section
contains the administrative section of your Auto Manager installation.
Scroll down the page and click on "Setup Listings Fields". This page
shows all the fields in your database; by default there are 24, but
you can use all 75 if you desire.
In a free field number (let's choose #30) enter in the following information:
Field Name: Undercoating(,Yes,No)
Field Type: Dropdown
And make sure you check "active field". Now when you click save, whenever
you or one of your agents logs in and inputs a new listing, they'll
see this new Undercoating dropdown with three options: blank, Yes and
No. (To remove the blank option, just remove the first comma before
'Yes').
Now let's add the other two fields. At field number #31, enter in:
Field Name: Additional (Tinting, Spoiler, GPS)
Field Type: Checkboxes
And at field number #32:
Field Name: Private Comments
Field Type: Textarea
Again, make sure they're both activated (place a check in the corresponding
checkbox). Now - just to make sure - click save and go to the Listing
Editor. Try adding a test listing; here you should see your newly added
fields.
The last field "Private Comments" was included for illustrative purposes.
At this junction, you've provided a means for you and your agents to
enter and save this new data, but it doesn't yet appear online. This
is important. In order to make it appear online you need to do one more
thing: update your templates. So, the "Private Comments" field allows
you and your agents to enter in private information about a property
without having it appear on your website. It's entirely secure, and
is only visible to people who log in through Auto Manager.
So now let's add those other two fields to your website pages.
Step 2: Updating your Published Pages
Using an FTP client (we usually recommend
CuteFTP), log into your server, and download the following file
to your desktop:
/templates/_auto/_publish_listing.html
This file is used to create each and every detailed listing page. We're
now going to edit this template to include your new data. (Also, if
you wish to edit your listing index page - you'll need to make these
changes to your publish_listing_index.html page, too).
Open up the file in a text / HTML editor, and, at an appropriate spot
in the code (depending on where you want the data to appear), enter
in the following HTML:
Undercoating: $lfield30$<br>
Additional: $field31$<br>
What this does is put two placeholders in the page. These placeholders
are used by the Auto Manager program to plant the actual data into the
page. Specifically, here's how it works: when you enter a new listing,
the program looks at the _publish_listing.html template and creates
a new HTML file from it. In doing so, it sifts through the template
and replaces all the placeholders with the actual data. So, every page
that is created is uniquely determined by the contents of the listing
itself. $lfield30$ is the placeholder for listing field number 30; $lfield1$
is the placeholder for listing field number 1; $lfield75$ is the placeholder
for listing field number 75. It's as simple as that!
Now, re-upload the file to your server, and make sure it's put back
in the /templates/_auto/ directory. (Note: it never hurts to
make backups! :) Finally, go into Setup Options and click "Re-publish
all listings". This recreates all your HTML files based on your new
template. Now go and view one of your listings - if it contains information
for those fields, you'll see it appear in your page!
One final remark: This tutorial focused on adding a listing database
field, not a homepage field; but the principle is exactly the same.
The only difference is regarding the templates. You'll be concerned
with these two templates: _publish_homepage_index.html and _publish_homepage.html,
which are used to create your homepage index and individual homepages
respectively. Follow the above instructions, only replace the $lfield#$
with $hfield#$. The "hfield" stands for "homepage field", whereas the
"lfield" stands for "listings field".
