Craigslist Change
Craigslist (with whom we have no affiliation) recently made a change that prevents their pages from being loaded in ‘frames’. Frames are basically sub-windows within another page, like our default results mode at SearchTempest used to use. This caused several other search sites to simply shut down, but we made some changes and are still going strong.
Problems?
If you are having issues, please try the debugging steps in our FAQ. Then read on!
Changes to Separate Cities Mode
First, you will notice there are now three tabs near the top of the results page. The first, ‘Separate Cities’ is basically our default results mode from before, except that we have switched to getting the links to the craigslist results from a service called 3taps. It works essentially the same as before for now, although in the future it will allow us to do some cool new things like filtering by date and consolidating everything into one list rather than windows within windows.
The only issue at the moment is that 3taps didn’t quite have the capacity to handle all our traffic, so things can be a bit sluggish at times, especially between 5-7pm pacific time. They are working hard to ramp up, and this should be dealt with very soon. Also, in order to help with the slowdowns in the short term, currently only results from the past seven days are shown in this mode.
Update: 3taps added some new servers today, so we’re hoping this will be resolved. We may still have to do some tuning, but timeouts should now be seen much less frequently.
New Direct Results Mode
Now, for those of you who liked getting your results straight from craigslist, just more conveniently, we have also rushed to develop a new alternative that will let you keep doing just that! You’ll find it under the ‘Direct Results’ tab on the results page. Since we can no longer use frames, it basically opens a craigslist results window along with a little control window with links to easily flip between cities. I’m pretty pleased with how it turned out in such a short time!
And of course, we still have the ‘All Cities Together’ mode, which remains a good option for quick searches across wide areas.
Summary
So basically, craigslist made a change, so we reacted to keep the site (hopefully!) as useful as ever. We are still dealing with that performance issue in the ‘Separate Cities’ results mode, but it should be 100% very soon. For now you might want to try searching outside the peak hours of 5-7 pacific if you find things are running slowly.
We also recommend you give all three results modes a try, using those tabs near the top of the results page: ‘Separate Cities’, ‘All Cities Together’, and ‘Direct Results’. We’ve found that different modes are more convenient for different types of searches, so there’s no right answer for everyone. Fortunately, it’s easy to quickly flip between them!
Feedback
Since we got all this out in such a rush, please do let us know about any difficulties you might be having. We will work to address them ASAP. Even if everything’s working great (and we certainly hope it is!) we want to hear your first impressions, and what you’d like to see in the future!
If you are having problems though, first try out these basic debugging steps. If those don’t work, please do contact us, but please be as specific as possible about what isn’t working. What results mode are you using, what’s the URL of your results page, etc. We need specific info about the problem to try and fix it!
You can comment here, check out the forum thread, or even just fire me an email. Thanks!
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website still does not work properly, its been how long now? i used to use this website alot and now not at all. should be quick and easy but it is not anymore and i shouldnt have to explain the obvious. i hate how tech guys play dumb and constantly say how everything works fine on their end. maybe you should get help to figure out the problems or just shut down the website altogether. it takes so long sometimes it even crashes internet explorer.
You think we would rather ‘play dumb’ and deal with comments like this than just fix problems? The simple truth is that the site is working for the vast majority of our users. We are more than happy to help you figure out why it isn’t working for you, but we can’t do so without more info. Have you already tried the troubleshooting steps linked above (all of them)? Since your complaint is speed, I wouldn’t be surprised if you’re using an old version of Internet Explorer.
If you have tried all those steps, please check out this post: http://forums.searchtempest.com/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=3. It lists the info we need to figure out why things aren’t working for you.
i have done every thibg least stpt by step and nothing works the wat is was great but i have ben screwing around with your new page I SUCKS BIG TIME
Love your site! Keep it up.
When you get to adding more features, could you add an option to sort items by low price/high price?
Thanks, and sorry to hear about your troubles with craigslist.
John
For sure. It’s supposed to do that already, so it shouldn’t be tough to fix. Hopefully I can get to it today!
Edit: Done!
John, could you email me the link to your results page? Would like to check out your specific query to look for differences from our tests. Thanks! http://www.searchtempest.com/feedback.php
advanced searches don’t seem to work.
have used pipe for searches in the past with good results. changes seem to have affected the ability to do this on searchtempest. pipe still works on craigslist.
fyi.
I can’t believe all the people who bitch when their free site stops working for a little while, don’t let it get to you Nathan. They should appreciate the time & effort you put into this for our benefit. Keep up the good work Nathan, it sounds like your on top of things and I’m really looking forward to the additional features coming to the separate cities mode.
Don’t listen to these complaining babies. Constrains on being innovative and making the effort to keep the site working despite changes made by CL.
p.s. back to craigslist – city by city. fun fun.
btw: who, or better yet, how many people were complaining about how bad the previous results were being shown? there were annoyances but you’ll never make everyone happy no matter how many tweeks / versions you push out. this is just like our RF equipment at work – new and improved releases that haven’t worked for well over a year. just keep buying the big bottles of aspirin 🙂
I’m not sure what you mean Ken. As mentioned in the post above and in my previous reply to you, the results weren’t changed due to user complaints, they were changed because craigslist *prevented* us from doing things the way we were before.
Before you go search one city at a time, you might also try our Direct Results mode, which gives you results straight from craigslist, along with a control window to quickly flip between cities. It’s not as fast as the old way, but it’s a heck of a lot better than searching manually.
why are we the beta testers in this “update”. shouldn’t it be tested in a small subset of the main public before actually going public? it appears that people are having issues regardless if your end looks okay. i don’t get any results either and i’ve tried it 3 times today 11am’ish, noon’ish and now 3:39pm. just keeps searching with no results shown.
Because as mentioned, craigslist broke the way we were doing it before. Would it be better to just shut the site down for everyone while we test it with a few people?
Have you tried the debugging steps in the FAQ? http://www.searchtempest.com/faq.php#problem
Guys, the site is indeed up and running. If it isn’t working for you, please first try these debugging steps: http://www.searchtempest.com/faq.php#problem. If it still doesn’t work, please fire me an email http://www.searchtempest.com/feedback.php, but be as SPECIFIC as possible about what isn’t working. Let me know what results mode you’re using, what you’re searching for, and exactly what is going wrong. Ideally include the URL of your results page, and even a screenshot.
hmmmm. your search didn’t find the item in any cities, yet it shows up on my local craig’s list using the same keyword for the search. sounds like your engine’s not working very well.
Your site seems excited that you got things working??
But, it is causing security issue with my computer and also I can’t get search results, it just continues to search on and on and don’t get to any results.
I am not sure of excitement at this point, it is not working, at least not for me?
I really did like your site, I wish you could get it working again.
But, please don’t say it’s working when it is not working.
Until you have fixed the two alternatives to your new direct search offering, the site is not worth using.
Fix in what way? They seem to be working well on my end. (All Cities hasn’t changed at all in months, and the Separate Cities mode seems to be getting great results, except during the peak hours, since as mentioned 3taps is still scaling up.)
Stop trying to fix your problem. Start a new business of your own much like Craigslist. Craigslist hasn’t made much of any changes in years. Here is a chance for you to out do them with a new place for people to do their business.
This new system is awfull
I guess we’ll have to agree to disagree? Or you could tell me what exactly you don’t like about it so I might be able to help…
The reason I go on tempest is because craigslist is terrible!Searching every city and state 1by1 even if what your looking for isn’t there! I like putting in the zip, what im looking for and the distance and hit enter!Nice and simple,but no some genius had to come along and fix something that wasn’t broke.I don’t have the patiance or the time for this B.S.Good job !!!!! I guess i will check back to see if it goes back to normal,if not bye bye!
Nick, this post is like 7 months old, so whatever problem you’re having it likely isn’t due to these changes. Also, the changes made back in May were precisely because it WAS ‘broke’, as this very post explains.
Regardless, you certainly still can just enter your zip and desired distance, then hit Enter. So I’m not really sure what the issue is, but if you’d like to actually explain the problem you’re having, one of us will probably be able to help.