Reply to ad

The “Reply To Ad” page is the contact page that allows for replying to ads in the system. The page is a child page created under the main classifieds entry page at installation. The page uses the shortcode [AWPCPREPLYTOAD]

When someone clicks on the link to reply to an ad, the function that displays the contact form is executed. The function depends on information that is transferred through the link clicked to be able to identify which ad is being replied to. This information allows it to retrieve the correct information for completing the process of sending the contact email.

Similarly to the Show Ad page, with search engine friendly urls turned on the Reply To Ad Page must guess where in the URL that gets clicked to open the page the value for the ad ID is stored. By default it will look in position 3 for the ad ID.

Example URL: http://www.awpcp.com/classifieds/reply-to-ad/36/4-Dolce–Gabanna-dresses-for-sale/
The chart below will show that the value set in position #3 of the above example URL is 4-Dolce–Gabanna-dresses-for-sale This means that when the system looks in position #3 for the ad ID it will not find the ad ID; but it has no way of knowing it has found the wrong value, so it will attempt to process the contact form using 4-Dolce–Gabanna-dresses-for-sale as the ad ID. Obviously it fail because it cannot retrieve the necessary information using the SEO ad title. It needs the ad ID.
replytoadpath

The ad ID on this particular website is stored in position #2 not position #3, so the value in the SEO Settings needs to be changed from the default value of 3 to the correct value of 2 in order to process the contact emails. Once changed to 2 the system will be grab the correct value and will be able to process the contact email.

To change the reply to ad (contact) path go to your classifieds admin options under SEO Settings and refer to:

If contact page link not working in seo mode change value until correct path is found. Start at 1

If you are not using search engine friendly URLs then the above step of making sure your SEO reply to ad setting has the correct value for your website will not be necessary.