Hi, thanks for the reply. I considered the ebay route, but really would prefer creating a single product that does everything the client wants. The system doesn’t need to process payments, as that would all be done privately between the buyer and seller. If I can’t create another method, I will most likely go the comments route, where the administrator changes the high bid manually.
In my head, I see something like this potentially working: I use Freeform as my bid submission system. Upon bidding/filling out a form, the member is added to an email list for that auction. If someone enters a bid that is a smaller numerical amount than the highest value, a custom (php?) script will return a message saying they must increase their bid and the form is not processed. However, if the value submitted is greater, the form is processed, and an email is sent to everyone who has bid so far. (As I’m writing this, I realize that email would also go to the person who just bid, which might be an issue).
To display the highest bid, I would query the submitted forms. Something like:
SELECT TOP 1 bids
FROM auctionname
ORDER BY bids DESC;
I’m a newbie to scripting, so I might just be really optimistic about it accomplishing all of my wildest dreams. I would love it if someone who isn’t a newbie might comment on the feasibility of this. Thanks again!