Yes - the hardware classifieds have been split!

[Stuart Wright]

The poll I posted some time ago showed that half the people wanted to split the classifieds and half didn't.
I have decided to split them because in my opinion, the worst thing about busy forums is that your thread can vanish off the first page too quickly.

The comments in the poll showed that the main reluctance to split was the feared inability to easily browse all the classifieds in one go.
I have resolved this issue by creating a custom search which I have put into a sticky thread at the top of each of the two forums.
The search shows all the classifieds from the two forums in one go. Pretty much as you had it before.

Hopefully people will appreciate the reason for the change and accept it without too many complaints.

[chedmaster]

i think its much better, if your looking for something to buy you may not want hundreds of wanteds getting in the way, but if you do you can with the search! thanks!

[Tejstar]

Nice work Stuart, I think it is definitely a lot more user friendly this way.

[eviljohn2]

Looks good. I know that you were trying to get rid of the sub-forums on the main index page but how about having the "All-Classifieds" query avaailable as the sub-forums were on the main page? Then drilling down isn't necessary to get at them but you retain the category separation.

[CJROSS]

Daft question here but when I initially browse the classifieds forum, all I see is WTD posts, is there some way to flip this around to seeing FS posts ? I know where to find all posts. But this seems a bit back to front. IMHO.

[Stuart Wright]

If you want to look at just the Wanted or Just the FS threads, go into those forums.
The 'browse all' facility lists the threads in the order that someone last posted to them. This is what you would have seen previously.
If it happens that a whole bunch of Wanted ads have been posted most recently then those will appear at the top.

I'm sad to admit that it has taken me nearly three months to discover that the forums have split

I only discovered when I posted a Want Ad from the "Classifieds" and it disappeared!. I was about to re-post when I decided to investigate further - maybe I had been banned!

Anyway, I voted against the split, in my opinion, hardly anybody looks at a wanted thread. Obviously I'm a case in point. I've sold a lot of stuff because I've happened on a wanted thread for something I've got in a cupboard somewhere. I'd never considered selling it because it's not something I thought anyone would be interested in.

Now the main point of my post!

You say you have given us a dedicated search to show all for sale and wanted ads. All well and good but it HAS to work! It doesn't for me.

I'm using Firefox and I used the search to see if my newly posted Want add was listed. There was no sign of it.

The newest post is 4:07pm (the 300Gb disks) The newest post on the "Proper" for sale thread is 5:03pm and is the PowerMid post.

People using just the search will miss out on lots of items

Just my 2p worth

Dave