Why Turbo Lister?

Turbo Lister is easily available on eBay. Even if you don't use it for listing on eBay, its Description editor is a handy tool for creating templates & descriptions.

NOTE: The instructions below include info on placing photos within your template. These are photos which must be hosted on your web space or thru a free account, such as Photobucket.com. If you do not have such space, it's highly advised, but if you insist on using eBay's Picture Service, you may delete the photo tags ( [[Picture1]] & [[AdditionalPictures]] ) and the photos you upload to eBay will show below your template.

Using Turbo Lister to personalize a free eBay listing template...

I have several free templates which can be used for your eBay listings. (Many others can be found on eBay's Photos/HTML discussion board.) These are instructions for modifying my template, Gold Floral, but the basics would be the same for any of my templates as well as most others available.

The first thing you'll need is the HTML (source code) of the template. To retrieve the HTML for the Gold Floral template, in Internet Explorer 7, is to go to Page>View Source as in image below:

In Firefox, go to View>Page Source or press Ctrl+U.

Save the source code as template-goldfloral.txt to your desktop or other location of your choosing. Open Turbo Lister. In Turbo Lister, go to New to Create New Item as seen in image to right.:

In the window which opens, click on the HTML tab:

Go back to the source-code file you've saved (template-goldfloral.txt) and double-click to open it in Notepad. Select all of the code (Ctrl+A or Edit>Select All) and copy it (Ctrl+C or right-click to copy). Now paste this in the HTML window in Turbo Lister:

Click on the Design View tab to see what this looks like. As long as you're connected to the internet, you should see the graphics:

As seen in the above screenshot, you are not seeing the full template width. You may hold your mouse above the edges of that window and click & drag it larger as can be done with most Windows windows. The image below shows the Description Builder window resized larger:

In order to save the item record (template with description) in Turbo Lister, you will need to have a title, category, start price and payment method selected. It doesn't matter what you have in these fields if you're only using Turbo Lister for its design features. If you will be using Turbo Lister to list the item, of course you should put in all of the appropriate info, including that which goes into the other fields. For the title field, enter Gold Floral Template.

On the Create Item window then click to Save as Template:

In a moment, you'll see this record in your All Items folder as well as the Templates folder as below:

Now, to create the HTML for the template for a specific record, you'll Create Item from Template by selecting the Gold Floral Template as shown below:

Enter a title for your item template/description you're now working on so you can easily find it when needed:

Scroll down & click the Description Builder button & open the Design View tab. Hilight the text at the top/middle:

Type over that hilighted text with your message:

Replace the title, description and terms information similarly:

To enter the first picture, you will have to go to the HTML tab and find [[Picture1]]. Replace [[Picture1]] with the URL of your main picture and the appropriate HTML. For example,
<img src="http://www.going1nce.com/6201-497t.jpg">

Now, the Design View shows this:

If you don't have any additional pictures for that listing, delete [[AdditionalPictures]] and back space one additional space so that blank area will not remain. If you do have additional pictures, you will first replace [[AdditionalPictures]] with the URL of the first additonal photo. If you have more photos, type the next <img src... tag & URL. The image below shows 2 additonal photos added to the code (as highlighted with pink here):

This code results in the two photos next to eachother:

If you want one picture below the other(s), place your cursor between the photos in the Design View and click your Enter key. This results in this:

Click on the Preview Tab to see what your template/description will look like. You may then click the Save button to "hold" the record until you are ready to use it in the description field of the Sell Your Item (SYI) form on eBay. When you've clicked the Save button, the Turbo Lister window will show it in a list like this:

Using this description/template in the SYI...

You'll need to make sure you're using the option to List with all options as indicated below:

When you get to the Description area of the SYI, you'll be pasting the HTML into the field. Make sure you select the HTML tab of the Description area:

In Turbo Lister, double-click the line as highlighted in the 3rd above image for the item you'll be listing. That opens the Edit Item window. Click in the Description field, click Ctrl+A then Ctrl+S to select all of the code and save it.

In the SYI Description area (HTML tab), paste the code you've just copied from Turbo Lister.

NOTE:

If you make a mistake in Turbo Lister, you can go back by typing Ctrl+Z to erase that mistake.

Please save constantly as you work! (When you click the Save button in Turbo Lister, this takes you to the list of item records as shown in the 3rd image above. You'd then have to double-click to open the Edit Item window to go back to the Description Builder. It will seem superfluous to do this until you somehow lose all of the changes you've made.

If you want to add a line break (single line), click Shift+Enter to insert that space between blocks of text. If you want to enter a paragraph break (double line), click the Enter key to insert that space.

If you want to make a bulleted list, select the lines which should have a bullet before them as in below image on left. Then click on the bulleting tool as circled in image to the right. That will place bullets as shown:

Please note: I do not offer Turbo Lister support. If you follow the above directions, you should be able to modify the free templates I and others offer.