PCA SDR

How do I put a classified ad for a car trailer on the forum or in the Witness? or both?

Post an ad in the Classified section online and it will be in the Witness also (although not until October's edition now)

http://ad2adnetwork.biz/ad2ad/index.php ... showallads

Greg

Ted-

Once you have posted your ad on the classifieds site, you can make a short post here on the forum to alert members to go look at it.

HTH,
TT

Dumb question from a curmudgeon:

Why are the ads for the PCASD forum not like on other Porsche forums, like Rennlist, where as long as you post a price and don't run an auction for the parts, one can post an ad in multiple forum places using as many words as wanted for free and the ad lasts until it is cancelled by poster?

To me, one of the important functions of the club is to facilitate the Porsche hobby and commerce between members not put up barriers.

I have just sold many parts through Rennlist that may have been of interest to locals, but I didn't want to screw around with the ad rules.

My $.02

Bob,

Good to hear from you! It's been awhile. This is what I understand regarding this issue. Others with more knowledge and experience concerning the situation may jump in and correct me:

There are a couple of reasons for the ad policy on this forum differing from the other Porsche forums with which you are familiar (Rennlist, Pelican Parts, etc.). The first is that the ad2ad site for PCA-SDR classifieds predates the forum and is the source for the ads that are published in the Windblown Witness each month. They can be downloaded in bulk by the editor in a format that allows "pouring" them into the layout of the WW in a fairly simple manner. It is also a minor source of income for the club, though short ads are free there.

The second is that the forum originally came into being through the efforts and resources of a club member, and is hosted on his private server. Though the club has "adopted" the forum as a means to promote, organize, and discuss club events, AFAIK these resources and the efforts to set up and maintain the forum were offered on an entirely volunteer basis and "gratis" to the club. One of the concerns in hosting the forum was that it might grow to the point where storage (disk usage) and processing resources on the server might become an issue. To avoid this, the function for uploading and storage of images directly to the server (as it exists in most other online forums) has always been disabled in this forum, as images are a much greater "disk hog" than text archives and require more processing resources to display. It was felt at the time of inception of the forum that disallowing classified ads would avoid the conflict and redundancy with the ad2ad site, as well as the possibility of overloading a server that had other private functions to maintain that were more "mission critical" for the owner.

Perhaps the time has come to review this policy, but that is up to the Board of Directors, and I'm not sure it is a very high priority item or concern at this point. In the intervening years, both disk storage and processing power has become exponentially cheaper, but the time and expertise to establish and maintain such an enterprise as this forum is not inconsequential, and with the other technological projects we are engaged in (website, social media, AX and TT timing and results, etc.) it may be that we would be stretching our available human and financial tech resources too thin if we added a major upgrade of the forum software and hardware at this time, I don't really know. It is something to bring up at a Board meeting if you feel strongly about it.
HTH,
TT

Thanks Tom,

Your response makes total sense to me.

My concern was mostly that I, for example, have sold many parts to those outside of PCASDR who may have been interested.

In the "olden days" 40 years ago, a Porsche swap meet was a more common occurrence for PCASD and many parts changed hands there and then - but I think there were more people working on their cars back then as well, so parts sales not a big deal now.

Still, too bad that it can't be done as easily on line here as on other forums.

-Bob

Bob Gagnon wrote:In the "olden days" 40 years ago, a Porsche swap meet was a more common occurrence for PCASD and many parts changed hands there and then - but I think there were more people working on their cars back then as well, so parts sales not a big deal now.

There have still been at least one, if not two swap meets a year locally, though they have not been PCA-SDR organized or sanction events, necessarily. The last one was put on by John Chamber's in No. County on 6/28/15: http://forum.pcasdr.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=6363&p=43150
There was a joint BMW/Porsche swap meet at Autobahn in El Cajon last year that I hope gets repeated sometime soon as well. http://forum.pcasdr.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=6019
The Festival of Speed this year had a swap meet component to it as well, though that's a little further to go to sell some parts.

I wish it was easier to sell parts to local enthusiasts as well. The internet has made it so easy to tap into the larger national demand, but shipping is a hassle and adds to the expense.

There's always the local Craigslist.

TT