Sometime next week, I’d like to fix the way HC Multi handles End Dates for items. At the moment, End Dates are pretty much ignored for Standard, Buy Now and Hold listings. If the End Date is passed, the item continues to show up in your store and be available for purchase.
After the changes are made, listings with End Dates in the past will
- No longer show in your store, but will be viewable in the “Past Items” section
- No longer be available for purchase (the “Add to cart” button will not show)
Note that items with End Dates in the past do not show up in searches (and haven’t since the new search system was installed).
So please, go into your listings and modify any “End dates” which are in the past on listings which you would prefer to remain active. For most listings, you will probably want to set the “End date” to “0000-00-00 00:00:00” which effectively means there is no end date and you would like the listing to remain in your store until you manually remove it.
One last thing — I am thinking about changing the “Show” checkbox in HC Multi into “Preview” like it is for HC Standard. So the “Preview” setting on the Profile page would go away, items with future “Go live dates” would only show up if Preview was checked, and all listings with valid “Go live” and “End” dates would show up in the store, regardless of whether “Preview” is checked or not. This would be retroactive, so any items with “Show” unmarked, but dates that would make the listing active would now show up (e.g., templates, etc.) It may be a pain at first, but I think ultimately, it gives you more flexibility. Please leave your input in the comments section.
ETA: For now, the “Show” function will continue to work as it always has.
Thanks and Happy New Year everyone!
Sounds great! Something new learned today by putting the all zeros for perpetual items. Thanks Karen!! Now go kick back with a glass of wine 🙂 Happy New year!!!
Awesome! Thanks Karen!
Thanks! I am going to be revamping my stores for the new year, so this is good info!
I was just wondering how the “preview” button would work with draws. I like having the “show” option for those items so that people can come and look and see who won. Would that listing disappear as soon as the draw ended?
Lisa — great question. I think the way I will set it up is that auctions and drawings will not move into past items until they are over two weeks old. If the seller wants to move them sooner than that, they can edit the end time back a bit.
Sounds great! I wanted to list some items as a ‘surprise’ for Cyber Monday but had no way to do it without a preview button. And I was surprised by an item whose end date had past getting sold once when I didn’t know it could do that.
With being in Congos (that act like standard) and having a multi cart, it gets confusing sometimes trying to keep the differences straight.
So thanks for these changes! I like them.
I just want you to know that I really hate you right now. I have several HUNDRED items that just disappeared from my store and now I will have to spend the next 6+ hours (because the site crashes on me constantly) fixing all the effing dates.
Thanks, thanks a lot.
Hopefully I’ll stop hating you in a few days, but I’m not holding my breath. Woo-hoo for improvements that make my life suck big time. I definitely didn’t need to sleep tonight.