1. Logon to Admin page
2. Open "Admin Preferences"
3. Check "Collect fees for ad Posting"
4. Select Package Mode
5. Save configuration

Go to Payment Processor and ads Durations page. Application comes with a few preset packages. The first available package is "Trial Package"- membership. This free package assigned to all newly created user accounts if you choose to enable it.

Free Trial - To enable/disable Free Trial, use "Enable Free Trial" check box. Trial package - is system based and not be deleted.

• If Trial Package enabled, all new users would be able to post ads free for the duration of this package until it expires.
• If Trial Package disabled, then all new users must purchase one of the Premium packages (any other package beside Free Trial Package)

Description - Describe the package and it's features. The text you enter here would appear at the package selection page presented to clients. HTML Format is OK.

Product ID - This is 2checkout specific. See info about it within 2checkout configuration below. Disregard if not using 2checkout.

Package Duration - Specify the duration of the package. The package would automatically expire when user first logs in to the account after the package expiration date.

Ads Duration - Select ads duration for the package. There could only be only one ad duration value for the given package.

Expire Ads as Package Expires - This would effectively override the Ads Duration when the package expires. Example: You set 30 days Ads duration and 60 days Package duration.
During first 30 days, after the package purchased all ads posted by user would have 30 days duration. However, if a client posts/reposts the ad on 45-th day of membership, the ad duration would be set to 15 days instead of 30, on 52-nd day - 8 days and so on. So that all clients’ ads would expire as soon as membership package expires. In this scenario if the client reposts the ad 8 days before the package expiration but then decides to purchase another package, the ad would expire in 8 days but when client reposts it, the duration would automatically be extended to the full Ad Duration set for newly package. If you uncheck this setting, then ads would stay online for the whole duration specified at the "Ads Duration" level even if package expires. This flexible configuration gives you plenty of room to manipulate and configure the most appropriate for your site scheme.

Allow to post no more than - This is a flat setting and overrides the ad limit set in "Admin Preferences". This setting counts ALL ads under the clients accounts (including expired). If clients reach the limit, they cannot post anymore unless they delete some existed ads. Note: If you configure this setting as 0, then client may submit an unlimited number of ads.

Allow to post in "What's Hot" list - Hot List represents featured ads and displayed at a special page navigated from What's Hot link from the top menu. Ads listed here have a bit more attractive appearance and have a special icon, when viewed in regular categories list. If you enable this feature for the package, clients who purchase this package prompted to choose this feature while posting an ad.

Max. Number of Images - Select how many images to allow as an attachment to the ad (10 max).

Allow to post in locked categories - You can set locked categories and allow or disallow submitting ads to those categories. To lock a category you would use a custom Pricing Scheme.

The pricing schemes for the most parts are irrelevant to "Package Mode" and used in "Credits Mode". One pricing scheme configuration however, is directly relevant to packages. That configuration is "Lock Category".

Navigate to Custom Scheme page, select any scheme other than "default" from a drop-down selector (if you do not have any custom schemes other than default, simply create new scheme - type some name of the scheme and click "Create").

You do not really need to configure anything else here, other than selecting "Yes" at the "Lock Category" drop-down selector and saving the scheme. Now you can select any Main Category and link this scheme to it. Follow the procedure in "Linking Schemes to Categories" in chapter 7.2 and create a link. Once link created the category and ALL subcategories under it would become locked.

Note: The inheritance rule does not work in case of locked categories (if you link a different scheme to a subcategory, which has the "Lock Category" set to "No", this subcategory would still be locked by the scheme inherited from a Main Category).

You have locked some Categories and now:

• If you checked "Allow to post in locked categories" box for a given package, then the package owner would be able to post in ALL categories regardless.
• If you uncheck "Allow to post in locked categories" box for a given package, then the package owner would not see locked categories in the list while posting an ad. There will be no warning either. Therefore, you have to let your clients know in advance, that this package will not allow posting in certain categories. The best place to do it is within package description.

Default to Free Trial when Expired - If enabled, then after the package expiration, the default Free Trial package would automatically be applied to user account. This feature, if applied to Free Trial package itself, will make it practically endless because after expiration, a Free Trial package would automatically be applied over and over.

This configuration also overrides a disabled Free Trial package (first check box appearing on Free Trial package configuration page). This would essentially mean that after any Premium (purchase) package expiration, clients would automatically get the Free Trial package regardless.

Take Package Offline - This would effectively remove the package from the list of available sale packages. Offline is irrelevant for "Trial Package" because the trial package controlled by "Enable Free Trial" configuration.

Formatted Package Name - This is how the package name would actually appear to your clients. You may freely use HTML code and images if necessary to highlight the package name.

Creating "Free Post" categories - All the way at the bottom of the page, there is a "Free Post" Categories configuration section. You can move any Main Category into the "Free Post" section. Why do you need this and how does it work?

By design, clients cannot post ads at all without a package applied to the account. You can however use Free Post Categories to allow clients to post ads even if they did not purchase any packages or if the Free Trial package has expired, (in case trial package enabled).

Important: "Free Post Categories" rule does not work if client has a package applied to the account (even if it is a Free Trial Package). It only works if client has no packages at the account or package has expired.

Normally, when clients, who do not have a package applied to the account (or package has expired) click on "Post Ads", they presented with a message asking to purchase one of the available packages. If you however assigned atleast one category to the "Free Post" list, then the client can freely post ads to that category.

What about the duration and the number of attached to the ad images. Where this information would come from if client does not have any packages applied to the account?

In this case, for the ad duration, the "pricing scheme" would automatically be applied to this "Free Post" Category and the maximum number of images client could attach to the ad would be the same as you set in "Admin Preferences". Only ads durations part would be used from the scheme to render duration options and create a drop-down list for the client at the ads submission page. The interesting part of this case is, that you can create a different "pricing schemes" (see "Credits Mode"), then link those schemes to different categories, and have a different duration schemes for each of them.

Note: Again, the "Free Post" Categories are only valid for clients who did not purchase any packages. Once client purchased a package, ads duration and other attributes of the ad would follow the rules set within the purchased package properties. The "Free Post" categories duration would no longer be valid for this client. In addition, the "Free Post" overrides "Locked Categories", but again only for clients without any packages.

Package Display Pages

There are 4 more links at the packages configuration page.

When no clients logged in to account, the link to acquire_display.asp displayed at the top menu. This page displays all available packages information to visitors. If client creates an account and logs in to the system, this link changes to acquire.asp. In addition to package information, this page also presents purchase buttons. The packages information at both pages pulled directly from database. However, at some point you might wish to display packages information at the main page - default.asp. The best place to display general packages information (without purchase buttons) is a Main_Page_Center template. The template however cannot utilize any ASP code to pull packages data from database. For that reason, 4 links were created at the admin_paymentpack.asp page (Payment configuration page in Package Mode).

1. List Code Row - This link generates a page with an HTML code (from acquire_display.asp), which contains all packages information for your Main Template. This code includes a style box. The packages information listed in a row. See the instruction within generated page for the code integration.
2. List Code Row Bare - This link generates the same page as 1. The only difference is, that the code generated in a bare format (without a style box).
3. List Code Column - Same as 1, only package information displayed in columns.
4. List Code Column Bare - Same as 3, only in bare format (without a style box).

Note: It is important to understand, that the generated content is static. It will not change within the template, when you changed packages configuration. If you modified any package, you would need to generate this code over and copy it to the template.

In addition, you can modify the acquire_display.asp and acquire.asp pages to display package information in column/row and with or without a style box. This configuration is available at the very bottom of packages configuration page.