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mothra
mothra None
9/23/13 3:47 p.m.

hooptysearch.com

So I created this site a while ago to search craigslist for cars, bikes and cycles and sort the results by year and price. It also will scrape out the mileage if it can. You can do city or state wide search.

I could use a bit of feed back from your community because I hear that many of you look at craigslist regularly.

So, what do you think? How can I make it better?

EDIT: CORRECTION: another, not anouther woops

ransom
ransom UberDork
9/23/13 3:51 p.m.

That's kinda cool...

It'd be nice to have options to show thumbnails where possible and possibly an excerpt from the ad... These are things that I often look at on regular CL listings.

Year isn't necessarily a big deal to me, but it is neat to have. It's nice to see that the posted isn't just listing a $13,000 car as $13

old_
old_ Reader
9/23/13 3:54 p.m.

Instead of searching by city you should do a search within X miles of a zip code to be able to search multiple cities at once. Much more useful that way

JoeyM
JoeyM Mod Squad
9/23/13 3:55 p.m.

welcome. That's certainly worth a look.

BTW, great username. I liked the rodan movie I saw a while back.

Sine_Qua_Non
Sine_Qua_Non Reader
9/23/13 3:58 p.m.

Site don't work

ransom
ransom UberDork
9/23/13 4:08 p.m.
Sine_Qua_Non wrote: Site don't work

I should just leave it to the OP, but as a developer, you've just nailed one of my pet peeves...

When you say "Site don't work", are you getting a(n)...

  • Blank white page?
  • Error message?
  • Incorrect data?
  • Funny layout?
  • Something else we could spend all day guessing at?

It worked for me and a couple of posters before you so... User error?

Or what browser are you using? Maybe it is broken (in some specific way) for you due to using a browser the OP hasn't tested with, in which case you should let him know what it is so he can test/fix...

mothra
mothra New Reader
9/23/13 4:09 p.m.

In reply to ransom:

That is in the pipeline of things to add, I would like to figure out a way to have a nice, clean popup when you roll over a price link. I will bump it up and try and get it added soon. Thanks!

mothra
mothra New Reader
9/23/13 4:10 p.m.

In reply to ransom:

Oh god thank you for posting this. hahahaha.

In reply to Sine_Qua_Non:

post the URL that is not working for you.

mothra
mothra New Reader
9/23/13 4:11 p.m.

In reply to old_:

I will look into a way to do this, its tricky because it can be a very slow task but I will see what I can do.

Sine_Qua_Non
Sine_Qua_Non Reader
9/23/13 4:13 p.m.

Still came up the same.

The server encountered an internal error or misconfiguration and was unable to complete your request.

Please contact the server administrator, [no address given] and inform them of the time the error occurred, and anything you might have done that may have caused the error.

More information about this error may be available in the server error log.

http://hooptysearch.com/?item_type=cartruck&model=Volvo+&city=greenville&listing=0&minprice=&maxprice=1500&submit=Submit

ransom
ransom UberDork
9/23/13 4:16 p.m.

In reply to Sine_Qua_Non:

You, sir, are a quick study. That's a perfect error report.

mothra
mothra New Reader
9/23/13 4:23 p.m.

In reply to ransom:

Yes!! Thank you Sine_Qua_Non. I have found the problem and am working on fixing it now.

Sine_Qua_Non
Sine_Qua_Non Reader
9/23/13 4:32 p.m.

^ Got me excited in my search for a minute only to be disappointed when that 1970 was actually a 2001 XC70

mothra
mothra New Reader
9/23/13 4:35 p.m.

In reply to Sine_Qua_Non:

Yeah, let me fix that issue too. . . . .

EDIT: after look over it, its just going to have to stay a false positive because of the way they formatted the Title. Sorry about that, maybe in the future I can make it smarter. . . . but you are looking at a unfortunate edge case post.

Duke
Duke PowerDork
9/23/13 4:39 p.m.

Nastygram from Craig Newmark in 3... 2... 1...

mothra
mothra New Reader
9/23/13 4:41 p.m.

In reply to Duke:

Yeah . . . I figure if CL hates it enough they can send me a cease and desist and I will make the site go private.

bigdaddylee82
bigdaddylee82 Reader
9/23/13 6:05 p.m.

Comparing searching Craig's List directly to your site, the State wide search doesn't work.

My quick example: searching Little Rock, AR on both Craig's List & your site both show the same 3 results for "Subaru Justy," but if I select the entire state of Arkansas on your site, I get zero search results.

Edit, don't worry about roll-overs/pop ups, I want a thumbnail image or two, and an abstract/first few sentences of the ad directly in the search results. Add radius search by zip code, and it'd be perfect.

If you can find a working version of the old "Craiglist Helper" Zink made for Firefox & Chrome, that's what I'd like to see again. That was the best CL search aide I've ever used, alas it's no longer supported.

  • Lee
mothra
mothra New Reader
9/23/13 6:35 p.m.

In reply to bigdaddylee82:

Boy, that was a really tricky bug, but I fixed the multi-state search, I think. Check it out and see if I missed something.

Ok I will re-think the results page in order to give a bit more detail.

The next major feature is going to be a zip code + radius search, so many people have asked for it now, that I have to do it hahaha. I will post here when I push that out.

I would like to thank this community for the feedback. It has all be quite helpful in rooting out issues in my code and letting me know what people might want me to add. Thanks again!

bigdaddylee82
bigdaddylee82 Reader
9/23/13 6:50 p.m.

In reply to mothra:

State search seems to work now. Thanks for the work you're putting into this. I hope you manage to dodge the CL cease & desist Nazis for long enough that we can get a lot of use out of this. I look forward to future updates, best of luck, and thanks again.

  • Lee
Spinout007
Spinout007 UltraDork
9/23/13 8:14 p.m.

Cool. I'll use it. It omits the local results when I do a statewide search from my phone. Still...found a 2500 dollar hard top miata with it.

clutchsmoke
clutchsmoke HalfDork
9/23/13 8:17 p.m.

Thanks for the work you're doing on this. The searching CL suuuuucks. I like having search tools such as yours!

mothra
mothra New Reader
9/23/13 8:30 p.m.

In reply to Spinout007:

What state/city are you having problems with and I can take a look at it this evening. Glad you found something!

Spinout007
Spinout007 UltraDork
9/23/13 9:01 p.m.

Gainesville FL is local for me. just did a search for sub 5k miata local first then changed it to state and that is when it did it.

lnlds
lnlds Reader
9/23/13 9:34 p.m.

If you could filter between automatic and manual it'd be nice too. It seems like a difficult task with keywords overlapping but thats the general gripe with CL that I have

bigdaddylee82
bigdaddylee82 Reader
9/23/13 10:05 p.m.

Another little quirk I'm noticing. When searching the entire state of Arkansas, I get search results from North Carolina. Specifically, Fayetteville, NC. Fayetteville is a larger town in both states. I don't know if that's a common issue with multiple states having towns with the same names show up in the search results?

  • Lee
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