I just finished up doing a complete overhaul on Suzuki Kawasaki of Gastonia’s website. The new one is now running completely on a stock 68 Classifieds Developer edition with a custom template, custom modules, and plugins. I was amazed but I didn’t have to make any core code changes to build this site and from now on upgrades should be quick, easy, and painless.
They are coming from a custom dealership management system that was about 7 years old. So it was time for an upgrade and originally I was just going to continue using what they already had but the code was such a mess I believe it would be easier to move to a commercial product.
News & Events
The news and events section is a custom module I designed specifically for this site. At its core it is very basic but includes just enough to perform the task they required. To make it easier to add news and have it formated properly I went with the TinyMCE module and added in the “tinybrowser” plugin which allows image uploads.
Current Specials
The current specials page is also handled by a custom module. They needed a way to include a sale price for units and some way to highlight these. Instead of using extra fields which would work for this, I decided to go a step further and create a module that interacts with the listing page. This gives them the ability to now enter a sale price and an expiration date. So they can set it and forget it. Much like our friendly Ronco infomercial. 
Showroom Navigation
The showroom navigation uses a javascript pull down that lists price ranges, makes, and motorcycle types. The price range was hard coded but the makes and types come from a plugin which pulls out the information from extra fields.
Administration
In the administration I used the admin capabilities to limit what they see. Just the sales people handle the inventory where everyone can add news, events, and edit the pages. With this I also removed all the links that are not needed for their day to day operation.
Front-end Templates
The template came from Rocket Theme and was originally designed for Joomla. So it was a big job to convert everything over but thanks to firebug it was a lot easier. I also set up include templates for most of the sections to keep from having one huge layout file. If you use 68 Classifieds and are not familiar with them then you should read up. They are a real life saver and here is some of the code I used:
{include file="inc/inc_nav.tpl"}
{include file="inc/inc_top_bar.tpl"}
{include file='inc/inc_sidebar.tpl' assign=sidebar}
Closing Thoughts
I am writing all these details out so those using 68 Classifieds can see just how flexible the system is. I can see it used for job boards, dealership management, and several other purposes.
In the future I am going to be releasing some of these modules or possible write a few posts outlining how they are created as well as maybe creating a tutorial on going from start to finish.
