confused with having a forum and classifieds displayed

[G1]

do i need to create categories subcategories as a forum to use with classifieds or can i just do away with the whole process and do it after ive installed classifieds? planning to redo the site since having both displayed in the page makes the whole thing very redundant and confusing for me and some of my friends who looked at it. i hate to delete everything again but i will if it makes posting in the auction a lot more convenient instead of just the forums.

[SMFHacks]

You can just create categories in the Classifieds area you don't have to make them in the forum.

Now the question is what purpose is this site. Is it for the forum or just the classifieds.

SMF Classifieds has an option to display the main Classifieds categories on your forum board index underneath all your existing created forums.

[G1]

heres what im trying to accomplish . ill set up a classifieds and free ad listing section via a forum. at first i want to give out the auction feature for free
and charge them later on when they get used to the system and just use the free ads for like personal stuff like announcements and discussions.
ill just charge a yearly monthly or weekly fee for using the classifieds. i think im getting overwhelmed a bit tbh

what advice could you give me on whats the best course of action here? thanks.
i know about the classifieds below the index thing, so now i have 1 free forum and a 2nd classifieds one, which kinda drives me nuts

im experimenting with classifeds and putting up bogus stuff to practice it, first i cant see the pics im displaying when i make a list, and when i check the permissions and the checkbox to allow how many pics i can put, things seem ok and upload goes well  but it doesnt display in the main page .

[SMFHacks]

If you want to do like forum level memberships I would do something with Paid Subscriptions which is built into SMF 2.0
What you could do is have membergroups start the new visitors on a free trial and older members require them to buy a membership.

Then from there with the Classifieds you can setup the prices for listings. For trial members no cost to add listings, but for full members charge a fee for a listing etc and see what works for your site.

what advice could you give me on whats the best course of action here? thanks.
i know about the classifieds below the index thing, so now i have 1 free forum and a 2nd classifieds one, which kinda drives me nuts

You could make the classifieds show up before anything else but that require some extra code basically it would turn your site to be classifieds first.
Then in the menu Classifieds,Forum so they can switch back and forth

im experimenting with classifeds and putting up bogus stuff to practice it, first i cant see the pics im displaying when i make a list, and when i check the permissions and the checkbox to allow how many pics i can put, things seem ok and upload goes well  but it doesnt display in the main page .

Under Admin -> Classifieds -> Settings -> Layout Tab
There is a setting called "Number of pictures to show"
This setting affects how many pictures are shown on the listing page when you view it

Also each category has a setting called "Max images:" is number of images allowed to be uploaded per listing.
Make sure it is greater than zero. You can see these settings when you edit the category

[G1]

solved.