New More User Friendly www.soaring-classifieds.com
Paul Remde
A few years ago I created my free www.soaring-classifieds.com web site as
free a service to the soaring community. It was somewhat popular and it did
help quite a few soaring pilots sell their used sailplanes, instruments,
parachutes, etc. The only problem with it was that items had to be posted
manually by me. At times I could post items quickly, but when I'm busy with
customer orders and e-mails it was often hard for me to get items up
quickly. So I have been trying to find a way to let customers post their
own items, but I don't want to invest in a slick database driven system.
Fortunately, I have found a good solution.
The new system uses free Google web sites. Anyone wishing to list an item
on the site needs to get the username and password from me and then they can
add their items themselves at any time. The site supports the upload of
photos as well as lots of room for text descriptions.
The site is organized by country or region and each country or region has
pages for Sailplanes, Instruments, and Miscellaneous.
The user interface is pretty intuitive. There are instructions on using
the site on each page of the site. I will clarifications and additional
instructions as necessary.
Let me know if you have any suggestions for the site.
I hope you will find it to be a useful resource. I have found that the
market for used soaring instruments and sailplanes is extremely good. There
is always a glider pilot somewhere looking for a good deal on used items.
The new site is at the same address: www.soaring-classifieds.com. If that
doesn't work yet (I just changed the forwarding) you can go there directly
at: http://sites.google.com/site/soaringclassifieds/.
I must give credit where credit is due. Minnesota soaring pilot Chris
Prince recently created a new MN & WI Soaring Accomplishments page at:
http://sites.google.com/site/soaringaccomplishments/ that was designed to
allow local soaring pilots to post their own accomplishments to the site.
Thanks for the idea Chris!
Good Soaring,
Paul Remde
Cumulus Soaring, Inc.
http://www.cumulus-soaring.com