Great question. This is a frequently requested feature. A 'digital locker' is on the product roadmap to better support digital goods.

Doug - sorry for the delay in my reply. As I emailed over the weekend... Yes, you can install Panjo on your live site and hide it from members so that you can kick the tires. You can activate Panjo from within the admin CP. You can disconnect any and all links from the public site to Panjo in order to test it out.

Panjo keeps buyer and seller contact info. Panjo does not sell the info. Panjo plans to send its own 'marketing' emails. For example, a digest of items that might interest a buyer. However a member would be able to unsubscribe from any non transactional email. We haven't sent marketing emails to date. That is on our product roadmap. Members have requested 'what's new' and other similar email subscription options. Those emails would drive members to your site.

We didn't use to ask a seller for his/her email. We used to rely on the email address on file with the seller's vBulletin account. We quickly learned that members often have old, bad, or unmonitored email addresses associated with their vBulletin forum credentials. As the marketplace was sending emails to sellers with information about their listing, like a question asked or the fact the listing sold, the sellers were not getting those emails. That is why we ask a seller for an email.

At present, we don't support modifying the page title. We have that on the product roadmap.

When a seller creates a listing using Panjo and assigns a category to the listing, you can direct Panjo to create a thread post in a designated subform based on the category the seller assigned to the listing. If that feature is not working for you, let us know. There could be a configuration issue.

Example: Listings created in the Panjo plugin on this Porsche community create thread posts in this Porsche classifieds subforum.

Still waiting to hear back from Tom Mourmouras on skype still nothing

Hmmm... I think the way it should work is that the fields would pre-populate with the info, but give the user the opportunity to edit it. Perhaps with a message conveying the importance of a current email address. The next time the forum member uses the service, it would again pre-populate, but with the email address he used last time.

Thomas was just out at lunch (pacific time). What is the question that you are awaiting an answer on? FYI - over 200 forum owners have spun up marketplaces in the last 48 hours. We are working as diligently as possible to answer everyone's questions as quickly as possible. You can try to skype another team member at: chadbillmyer

You can find more Panjo contact info here: http://panjo.com/Contact

Once a seller submits his/her email the first time, we do pre populate going forward.

It's not working for me.

One of the devs were working with me via skype and said the problem would be fixed in 24 hours that was 48 to 72 hrs ago and no word if you need to see my forums just click on my sig. I told them to just update this mod as i have not updated to 4.2.2 yet still running 4.2.1 as I am waiting for dbtech to update some of the pro mods i am using

Force, all of them from DBTech should be updated, no new version number, just files patched.

It does say some are hot fixed but I can't find a list of what ones have been

All of them have that had the php warnings. :)

Hmm. The entire mod seems to have just vanished from my site. Just blank. Which is mildly embarrassing.

Please see your email. We identified a problem on your site and sent you instructions how to resolve the issue. email me if you don't see the email from us: chad@panjo.com

Any Screen shots please?

Links to screenshots are in the OP. Plus additional links to several live demos.

If you are on vBulletin version 4.2.2, you can find screen shots in the admin CP.

If you aren't on vBulletin version 4.2.2, you can find Panjo screen shots here and on the Panjo blog.

Got a question for you.

Someone playfully clicked on the "Buy Now" button and completed the form but he has no real intention of buying the item.

In this case, the ad is then marked as "SOLD".

How can the advertiser/admin change the status back to normal?

Thanks.

Oh no! Something worse came up!

Now the ad can't be seen.

Here's the link

Here's another ad

Panjo has the concept of a listing that exists in multiple quantities. In that case, no action is required unless the seller owes the buyer a refund.

If the seller listed 1 of something for sale and a buyer playfully purchased it with no intent to purchase, there isn't a shortcut for the seller to relist the item. At this time, the seller has to relist the item from scratch. And again, if the buyer actually paid, the seller would owe the buyer a refund.

Thanks for reporting this issue. We haven't seen this elsewhere. We are investigating.

Actually, I saw that issue this morning when browsing the bimmerforums marketplace. Maybe 60% of the time when you'd click on a listing, the iframe would come back empty. So all you see is a mostly empty vB page with the forum ads. The rendering of the market place seemed a bit slow. Maybe more server resources need to be allocated.

Server Error in '/' Application.

Runtime Error etc etc ... (today, when trying to list new item)

What's the deal, yo.

Thanks for reporting this! We found the source of the issue. Listings with special characters in their URLs were not displaying properly in the iFrame. We are shipping a fix for this bug today.

What is your site? We'll take a look. It sounds like you might not have plugged in your marketplace id properly. That *might* be the issue. Do me a favor - drop me an email at chad@panjo.com so that I respond faster.

EMail sent

Anyone else have reviews?

Mine is pre-installed with Vbulletin. There have been some feedback from users saying they have problem posting ads but we already have more than 1k ads posted. The page sometimes load a little slow too.

I like how the thumbnails are displayed on the main page.

Click here if you like to see more of my site's users feedback

You can browse through examples of live marketplaces here:

http://panjo.com/Examples

Oh wow thanks for that.

I'm afraid that's pretty much instantly turned me off on the idea of using Panjo to replace our classifieds. Most especially the part about sellers needing to create a Panjo account!?!? WTF?

First, it is important to note that to deliver the marketplace service, aspects of the marketplace are hosted. Due to the hosted nature of aspects of the service, buyers and sellers don't have to "create an account" so much as they have to "connect an account." Buyers and sellers don't need to create a new credential set. They simply need to connect their existing vBulletin account to the marketplace. Why? Here are two reasons...

1) The Panjo plugin helps facilitate the exchange of buyer and seller information in the case of a successful sale. Thus, buyers and sellers need to agree to terms and conditions related to the release of their contact information.

2) For sites using Panjo to generate revenue, the Panjo plugin is involved in the collection of fees. Sellers need to agree to terms related to fee collection.

Hi Panjo

Any chance of removing the (Local Pickup) prefix in the thread title? Kinda ugly aesthetically.

Here's a link to it.

Yes! Sending you an email to confirm exactly how you want us to address this.

That's a good idea. In the thread view, knowing something is "local pickup" doesn't actually add any useful information unless you also know the location.

Is that 3% on top of PayPal.? (or does Panjo circumvent PayPal)

Or, in our case with a local forum, every ad would have that header. Nobody sells anything via mail order.

Some of this info is already outdated since they switched to PayPal.

I have been implementing this and have asked lots of questions, so here is how I understand it.
Panjo currently uses PayPal as the payment processor so the only fee the seller pays is the paypal fee's + and fees imposed by the forums. At this time the PayPal fees are immediately taken out and the seller get the price of the sold item minus paypal fee. What is a little hazy is when the forum owners get paid if they are charging a fee. As I understand it Panjo collects this separately and later from the seller to then pay the forum owners BUT they are working to have this all be part of the paypal system so that at the time of the sale the seller and the forum operator gets paid.

This is really the way it has to be. The fee has to be up front and very transparent to the seller. It needs to come out of the proceeds of the sale before the it is paid.

As it is now, the seller is paid, then asked for some of that payment back after 30 days. When the seller posts his item for sale, notification of the forum transaction fee is in fine print using nebulous language.

"30 Days after your item sells, [Your Forum] will ask for a [X]% contribution."

To me, that makes the fee sound optional, and I can't really imagine my members wanting to pay a fee that comes a month after they're done with the transaction. I know I'd be annoyed.


Here's a stop-gap measure:

Panjo should instead charge the forum fee (as a separate transaction) at the time the item is purchased. That way the seller associates it with the sale and is just happy to get paid. You also know they have the money in their paypal account because they just got paid!

I don't mind if Panjo then waits a month to send me the fee. I'm more interested in the experience of my forum members.

I agree and I pointed out that it looks shady (the fine print) and also in order for this to work they really need to put the forum owners first since without them there is no point.