general

I've been pretty quite over the last few years. After doing routine site updates tonight, I decided to send out this quick post.

I've been thinking for a while that I need to revamp the site and make it mobile friendly, but in all honesty, I don't have the time like I used to. Hopefully I can get around to it, but for now, it's going to remain as a desktop only site. I have no plans to shut the site down or anything, but I also don't have any plans to enhance it anytime soon either.

We have opened up a sister website called Buy My Paint (buymypaint.com) which is also a classified website for selling used paint equipment. The biggest difference between the two sites, is that Buy My Asphalt is geared toward a very specific industry whereas Buy My Paint is open for all industries who use paint equipment. This will definitely include Parking Lot and Pavement Line Stripers and we highly encourage that you post that type of equipment over there as well to get more exposure.

I did some backend updates (again) nothing really to report on the front end of things other than increasing the number of images you can upload from 6 to 9 : )

There is one thing that isn't working (at all) that needs fixed but won't be fixed until later which is the ability to "unpublish" a post using the bulk method. You can publish them or delete them, but you can't unpublish them... However, you CAN still go into each individual post and unpublish them... (I guess one-at-a-time is better than not at all!!)

There's not much of a reason for me to post anything, I guess just to remind myself that it's something I want to do... BUT, I tried to setup the user profiles so when you click on someone's name, it gives you a tab where you can look at all of the stuff that they've posted... I got it working, sortof, but not to a production state that I am happy with. I'll come back to it later when I have more time.

I haven't made any significant changes to the site over the last week or so, other than changing the menu title image and adding a used asphalt plant equipment category. I'm not too sure if there is a demand for asphalt plant equipment or not but time will tell. I am mainly just sitting back and watching the site to see how things are doing and what areas I might be able to improve on. If you have any suggestions, feel free to let me know.

Well, I "think" I finally have the posts so they will expire on a timely manner. I will just have to wait and see at this point if it works right, but the posts should start expiring on their own after 45 days. This way, if you sell the equipment and forget to remove the post, it will go away on it's own. You can always re-publish the post by going to the posts "edit" link from your "My Account" -> "My Posts" tab. Just scroll to the bottom of the page and there should be a "Publish" check-box that is unchecked. Check it, save the post and it will be live again for another 45 days.

The first week has been a great week for Buy My Asphalt. While we haven't seen a strong amount of posters, we have had quite a few registrations and a lot of folks stopping by to view the site. After reviewing the site analytics, we have seen quite a few people searching for used asphalt sealcoating equipment.

We will continue to strive on getting the word out to potential sellers and hopefully start seeing some posts up of used asphalt equipment.

The first day of BuyMyAsphalt.com has been a successful one with 35 hits to the website. This may not seem like a lot but for the first day of being open, I would have to say that's remarkable! Today has been even better with 64 total hits to the site. That tells me that there are A LOT of people searching for used asphalt equipment! We don't have any actual posts yet though which means the buyers are out there, but the sellers aren't... I need some posters! Register for your free account and start selling your equipment!

System Update:

January 12th 2009 marks the date of open registration for the site. I (the helpfuldude) have spent the last few weeks polishing up on a few of the back-end items of the site to allow for the registration process, easy posting and easy navigation of the site.

At this point, the site is a work in progress of updates and enhancements which is why it's in "beta" status. It simply means that more improvements and enhancements are on the way!