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clare14 Mar 14, 2006

I want to get my own auction template made, as I sell on ebay mostly.   I've looked on ebay, but can't get my head round what I need to do, look at, and regarding the photo hosting, I'm completely lost.   Some want monthly payments, some want a couple of quid and some want loadsa money!!!   I just want my own template, which of course I understand I'll have to buy, and free hosting if that's possible so I can just 'get on with it'!!!  - can anybody enlighten me??   :doh:   

PLEASE!!   :hug:

Amanda Mar 14, 2006

I use Photobucket for my free image hosting. The template was a free one which I have adapted using a bit of code and copy and paste. For example I can change the colours using a different colour code and say the border by saving a free one in photobucket then just swap the http link in the main code. I will post some sites for you to have a look.

http://photobucket.com/register.php

http://www.grsites.com/textures/ Great backgrounds and borders etc

http://www.zoicks.com/auctiontemplates.htm Loads on here for free template sites. I liked the Wizard one. Good luck, E-mail if you want to know more.

Laura Lynn Banner SponsorMar 14, 2006

Hi Clare,

I was going to recommend spoiled rotten fashions, but she had to stop doing business     

I really like Simply Sally's templates... but you do need to host your graphics and photos yourself.  You CAN use photobucket... a free photo hosting service.  Sally gives great customer service and may be able to teach you how to do it :)

I did find a seller that offers templates with no hosting necessary on your part:

http://computers.search.ebay.com/_Softw … onceptsQ2a

Not sure if her templates are your cup of tea... but what I did was to search on eBay for:  auction template

Then as I clicked on some items and I was looking for a seller who had something like this in their listing: ".... and no photo hosting required"

HTH!!

Shelli Retired Help Advisor, Banner SponsorMar 14, 2006

Oh, thanks for the vote of confidence, Lisa, very much... but html is not something I've mastered, or even bothered to try learning for that matter!, yet.  Coding in html is required to create web templates. 

I pay for an auction template service, THE SELLER SOURCEBOOK (www.sellersourcebook.com), which I love.  They provide LOTS of image hosting as part of the package.  Just FYI, they have ten gajillion templates you can choose from, INCLUDING eBay "About Me" templates... so it's a lot of bang for your buck.  And in the TWO YEARS that I've been posting auctions thru TSS, with five to ten photos in each listing, I've never even ONCE had to remove old photos, to make space for new ones.  This means that collectors can look at my old auctions, with the photos still intact and viewable, for as long as eBay keeps them "active."  This helps bring new customers, because they can view all the photos of my past work, as well as my current listings, and get an idea of my style, quality, presentation, policies, etc., over time.  Many artists remove their old listing photos, because their image host doesn't have enough space to keep both the old photos, and the new ones, on the net.

And you get all this for about $7/month!

If you're going to sell on eBay a lot and like the idea of choosing from a huge variety of seasonal, colorful, plain, themed, customized (you can create your own!), and very pretty, already-designed-for-you templates, it's a wonderful option.  And the customer service, each and every time I've tried to access it, has been absolutely superb, and entirely personalized.

Judi is a new user at TSS; maybe she can add something here.

Wish I could help on the design-it-yourself aspect.  Someday I'll learn html...

starlite Mar 15, 2006

Clare,
I agree with Amanda and the others http://www.photobucket.com
is great for picture hosting - remember for a template you will have to host any background picture and any other graphics you want to use for the template
for web templates which are very simple and can be adapted this site has acouple which are easy to change :
http://auctionsupplies.com/templates/
You can edit this by bringing the code into Notepad - save as a filename.html to your own hard disk
Got to yor browser window and click on file open - find the file and confirm the load to the browser by clicking on appropriate buttons - this lets you see the overall picture of the template you have saved.
You can now play around with the file in notepad - make changes, save, click on the reload button on the browser menu bar and see what has happened.
To assist you in using html there are great tutorials on http://w3schools.co.uk
Hope this helps - I use a simple free template which I have adapted by being able to change the html code (I actually teach this so I flippin should be able to   ) and belive me html code is easy to learn