When I started my own classifieds website, I needed a simple, easy-to-use script to build a classifieds portal, and I came across a wordpress theme . For 2-3 years everything went reasonably well, and I learned a lot of amazing things. But after some time, I realized that wordpress themes are not able to cope with the high volume of traffic and listings that came with my site’s growth. So I started the search for another classifieds script, and I found a free open-source classifieds script called OSClass. It was exactly what I was looking for. My classifieds website is now running on OSClass, and I’m able to provide a comparison and explain why I chose OSClass over Wordpress theme.
Wordpress Themes
Pros
- The biggest advantage of Wordpress themes is its WordPress backend. You can customize your theme installation and add features with just a few clicks thanks to the thousands of plugins that are in the WordPress ecosystem.
- Most of the Wordpress themes has very well commented and structured code, so a novice PHP developer can easily customize it to his/her needs.
- In most of the themes you find integrated Google Checkout/ PayPal payment gateways etc, manageable through an easy-to-understand dashboard. Customizable ad posting form and custom fields, as well as a multistep category selection.
Cons
- The WordPress database structure is not optimized for heavy transaction based database queries. Too much of the information is in a single table, which is ok for blog publishing purposes but can prove disastrous for a classifieds platform, which uses mainly transactional queries as opposed to selective queries.
- An aggressive database abstraction layer is great for newbie and non-technical users, but it’s also slow. With a high volume of ads and visits, a WordPress database can become too busy and cluttered.
- Dependence on the WordPress platform. Most of the themes can’t increase its performance because it has to deal with WordPress’ database structure, whereas OSClass developers can deal with performance issues head-on.
OSClass
Pros
- It’s not just a theme that will be based on any third-party CMS system. Actually, the whole CMS is created to be used for the needs of any general classifieds system. It supports a growing collection of plugins and themes, built by community members.
- It’s quite a bit faster than its WordPress counterpart. It has a well-structured database, queries are fast and pages are quick to generate.
- OSClass is open-source and free, that’s hard to resist! And it includes all the features that any general classifieds portal needs.
- The dashboard is easy-to-use: it allows you to effortlessly manage all your plugins, listings, comments and OSClass itself.
Cons
- The UI where you manage listings and comments could use some improvement. It’s manageable for listings and much better than WordPress.
- Search result accuracy could improve as well. It’s a very important feature for classifieds sites. Integration with Sphinx Search server like is used at Craigslist could be an option.
- User roles would be appreciated, in order to establish different tasks for different users. A single administration option is ok if the site is managed by a single person, but when managing single-handedly is not possible, multiple user roles would be great.
Final thoughts
In my three-year experience with my wordpress theme, everything was manageable until we hit 400,000 listings. After that, I switched to OSClass and it’s handling +19,000 users daily (generating over 56,000 pageviews a day) and over a thousand new listings every day with minimal resources. Wordpress theme is adequate for sites with a local or small community, and WordPress backend and features are unparalleled, but I wouldn’t recommend it for a large-scale project. For my needs, OSClass is the best solution for a highly active and popular classifieds portal, due to its well-structured database and scaling.
Note: For starting out Osclass or Wordpress themes is good option. You can start with very low capital. Once you have made decent money out of your first version or get some kind of funding ,develop an advanced highly secured version script along with the android & apple apps, transfer the database and launch it. Till than stick to the above ones. Also there are many new plugins for Osclass available this days. I have not tested them entirely & also new versions of Osclass is also available but i have not upgraded as did not want to risk any issues arising if the new update breaks my website or bla bla bla. Also excuse me for my grammar as English is not my first language. Thank you
