Using Listings Manager, it's possible to display your listings in multiple ways. For instance, you
could have separate pages for:
- window-stickers (for Auto Manager users)
- having the listing details appear in any number of languages, one page for each
- offering different 'categories', such as rentals / sales, used / new
- a stripped-down version of the listing that is better for printing
This tutorial explains how to do the last one, but the others would work in precisely the same way.
Step 1: Create a printer-friendly template
Find the _publish_listing.html template (stored in your /templates/[industry]/ directory), and save a copy of it with
a different filename. This is the template that is used to create your listing details pages.
For the sake of clarity, here we'll name it _publish_listing_printer_friendly.html, but you can actually
name it whatever you want - just keep this in mind when you're building the custom link in step 2 below.
You'll need to edit this template so that it is a slimmed-down version of your regular publish listing page.
For example, you may want to remove the images altogether to have the printed version of the listings appear as
solely text. It's a good idea to try to fit it all into one page for printing purposes.
After making your changes, re-upload the file to your /templates/[industry]/ directory.
Step 2: Include a link to the printer-friendly pages
Now we've created the template for the printer-friendly pages, we need to provide a link to it from your
existing listing pages.
Download your _publish_listing.html template via FTP from your server. As mentioned, this template
is used to create your listing details pages. In this page, add in the following link (at an appropriate spot):
<a href="$search_url$?view=$listing_num$&template=_publish_listing_printer_friendly.html">Printer Friendly</a>
Perhaps place the link at the top of each listing for ease of navigation.
For those of your who are curious, here's what makes up our printer-friendly link:
- $search_url$ - this placeholder contains the URL of your search engine
- view=$listing_num$ - this section of the query string tells the search script to show the listing page
specified by its unique listing number
- template=_publish_listing_printer_friendly.html - this tells the search script to use your newly-created
printer-friendly template to display the listing data with
Finally, go into your Setup Options and republish your listings by clicking its corresponding 'Publish' button.
That will recreate your listings with your new Printer-Friendly link. And you're all done!
