I use Craigslist a lot. I have found free boxes for moving, a couch, a car vacuum and many more things from my local sellers through Craigslist. In fact, my wife even finds some freelance web development/WordPress work through Craigslist.
Craigslist operates with the less is more motto. No web 2.0 graphics. No ajax. No poncy logo. They have managed to stay in the 90s with their looks but you cannot beat the power this simple site offers. It probably owes its popularity by making it easy to use for even the not-so web savvy folks as well. That’s a good thing.
Crgslst comes to offer an alternative interface to Craigslist users. I for one welcome Crgslst with open hands for the excellent features it offers to the goldmine of Craiglist data.
Crgslst Quick Look
- A simple Ajax interface with the search form to the left
- A way to save your favorite locations and keep them visible for easy access – very useful for me as I tend to search different locations for different things. For eg: when I am looking for a furniture I will be looking for something close for easy transportation and when my wife is looking for some freelance gig, distance wouldn’t matter
- It also shows your past searches – great for quickly searching the same item day after day. There’s a clear button if the list gets too long or if you don’t want it
- The search results are neatly displayed sorted by the date of posting and the actual title of a Craigslist post.
- Another great feature I like is that you can ‘remember’ the results you like for easy access later. Right now it shows a serial number for the post in the items that remembers and it’ll be helpful to see atleast the first few words of a title instead. I also like that it highlights a whole listing in yellow if you have already saved it to ‘remember’.
Crgslst is in beta and are saying that they are adding more features soon. I am really looking forward to seeing those but I will be content with just the functionality they have given already. It just has made my Craigslist surfing 100x faster.
There have been a couple of attempts such as this in the past but were shutdown because they were burdening Craigslist’s servers. I am not sure how the earlier attempts worked but Crgslst say they are working off of existing Craigslist feeds to show us the information and they don’t serve multiple city search at the same time so they don’t bring down Craigslist’s servers.
When you click on a Crgslst result, you still see the original post in Craigslist so I don’t see the harm of this new service to Craigslist.
What do you think of Craigslist alternative, Crgslst? Can you think of a reason why Craigslist might get pissed off by this new service?
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I’ve been playing with this and I’ve got to admit it is much nicer than the original Craigslist. Nice find K!
Sorry about double posting, but it looks like your search highlighting is showing up for regular visitors. When I went to Shankrila.com and clicked the permalink title for this post, I got to the post with all the words Craigslist on the page (including in the comments) highlighted in orange, and all the words Alternative highlighted in green, along with this message at the top
“Google Search Results
You arrived here after searching for the following phrases:
* 2008
* craigslist
* alternative
Click a phrase to jump to the first occurrence, or return to the search results.
”
It’s odd, because I didn’t search at all but came here directly.
Troy.. that’s artificial intelligence working here in ShanKri-la. 👿 Not. I did search this morning to see if I had posted about Craigslist before to deep link and my caching plugin must have cached this page with the highlighting. I deleted the cache and it’s gone now. Must happen on other similar occasions too.. hmm will have to see if this such a bad thing or take it up to the plugin authors to see if there is a fix. Thanks for alerting me buddy!
Crgslst rocks and I hope they stay afloat unlike the previous tries by other alternatives.
Thanks for the link. I need to try that out, because I am on Craigslist just about every day looking the dream house that I will never be able to afford. 😛 And, hey, I found a racquetball partner on there once too. I do like the simplicity of the site (there’s a reason I search with Google instead of Yahoo :), but this does speed up the search process on CL.
Annie’s last blog post..Fastest Cruise Ship in the World?
Bonanzle.com is a new marketplace site with a pretty face, that is another great alternative to Craigslist. It doesn’t actually use Craigslist listings (meaning it isn’t going to disappear tomorrow, unlike Crgslst, which is no longer online), but you can import the Craigslist items you’re selling to Bonanzle.
Hope you’ll try it. See http://www.bonanzle.com/blogs/5
The best classified system to me is http://cl.radiux.com.
Jamie.. thanks for that heads up. I checked it out and my initial thought was that it was a spam site. But, after playing with it I am learning to like the interface. Maybe I’ll post about it soon. 🙂
Wow.. .what a difference in searching through the plain text of craigslist. This makes me love AJAX even more than I did in the past. Great post!
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It is blocked ?! When did that happen. Stupid CL doesnt want to be better, or something. Reminds me of a stubborn old person that is resistant to change.
@Ryan: It isn’t blocked for me and works fine.
In the Midwestern US (Targeted First at Missouri) I run a new Startup called MidwestAds.Net (Launched 10/1/08). It is similar to Craigslist, but contains no Adult content, No Dating Ads, and has a Place where Churches can list their service times and directions, etc…
It includes all the basic Employment/Community Events/Real Estate/Autos/Etc…
Let me know what you think…
http://MidwestAds.Net
Thanks
Unfortunately, Craigslist has blocked their servers again. It’s too bad, because it looked like it could have really help Craigslist out.
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Another great community feel can be found at http://www.Plunderhere.com
It’s really a pity that there is no such thing as Craigslist in Europe. This is one of the oldest yet most succesfull services in the US – every start-up seems to get copy-catted – but not CL. That’s a pity, actually.
My shameless self promotion -I was getting really tired of Craigslist, so I created my own alternative – Free Ticket Classifieds/ Its only for buying and selling tickets but you can see how some simple changes to CL can help.
Free Ticket Classifiedss last blog post..4 Fiesta Bowl Tickets – Texas vs. Ohio State (Texas Section)
Another excellent alternative is http://www.alsoshop.com
I found another great classified ads free with uploading pics of my ad absolutely free. Display your product in you ad free ! zonaltrade, You can try this.
Sometimes I’ve wondered about the power of the craigslist website. I guess it is the simplicity of the website itself. Allows almost everybody to use it easily.
Have you ever tried LaDeLoList – Multi-city Craigslist Browser with photos on results search page?