On Thursday, January 16, 2014, we launched a new classifieds service on Marion Online. You can now register an account and place (mostly) free classified ads. This change comes after the classifieds service provided by an outside company went down a couple months ago.
You don’t need to register to simply view the classifieds. To place an ad, though, you will need to complete a quick registration.
Most of the rules and prices from the previous service have been carried over into our new offering. Most ads are free with the main exceptions pertaining to “businesses.” Ads requiring payment are $14 for 14 days. You can also choose to “Feature” your ad, even if it’s free, for $15 for 14 days.
In order to maintain a clean classifieds section, all ads will be held for review before being publicly posted. Reviews will take place several times per day and we will do our best to limit delays.
We plan to continue to tweak the system so you may notice changes over the coming days and weeks as we add new features.
You can find the complete list of rules in our User Agreement and learn more in our Frequently Asked Questions section.
To view ads or place one of your own, just click on the Classifieds link at the top of our website or click here.
If you have questions, ideas, or constructive criticism, please send us a message through our Contact Us page.
What Happened to the Old Classifieds Site?
First, it’s important to note that Neighborhood Image, the parent company of Marion Online, did not (and does not) own the website ClassifiedsOhio.net. After we purchased Marion Online in 2010, part of the agreement was that we would link to the classifieds website which was kept by the previous owners. We had no control over the operation of the classifieds service and we found this caused continued confusion to our viewers.
In early November 2013, Neighborhood Image had to complete an emergency server upgrade. The updated software on this new, vastly superior server was apparently incompatible with the old software that was running the service at ClassifiedsOhio.net, causing that site to go down.
Neighborhood Image worked hard to find a solution and get the software working again, but was unable to make it happen. During this process, Marion Online took the full brunt of our users’ disappointment and frustration over not being able to use the classifieds.
Again, we have no direct control over ClassifiedsOhio.net other than the fact that the site is hosted on our servers.
After over two months of not being able to provide a classifieds service to our viewers, we decided to launch our own, self-hosted system. At this point we are unsure on the future of ClassifiedsOhio.net. If they re-start their service, we will provide a link to their site for users that may prefer their service.
About Marion Online News
