[Rob H]

Great plugin – this solves what has been the cause of being bald from pulling out hair out on other plugins that require you to use a blog for the directory.

We are about to purchase the premium package that provides us with everything.

However before we do, we need to make sure that when our members are brought to our directory home page, we can display the directory something like this: https://templatic.com/wp-themes/category-icons/directory-category-icons.jpg (you can remove link as they are maybe a competitor, although they are a theme)

Ideally we want:

1. Search function on the top
2. List of categories (we are OK with just having main category name)
3. When they click on a category, it shows all the listings in that category
4. Search bar stays on the top of those pages

Is this possible? We also found: https://cranbrookchamber.com/business-directory/ but unsure if this uses your plugin and this is much fancier than what we want. We just want clickable text.

Worst case, we could create that on our own on the front side, then just link to the corresponding category pages where it will show the listings in that category. Is this also possible?

Thank you!

[Steven Zahm]

@ Rob

Well, Connections can do what you want, just not displayed exactly like you want. The Widget Pack includes both a search and a category widget which you can place in a theme sidebar. If you want you could use a widget management plugin to limit their display only on the directory page. Here’s a demo link of what this might look like with the cMap template on the entry detail/profile page.

If you want to create you own category landing page, that to is possible and something many users do infact do. You could even use the search and category widgets as shortcodes on the landing page and do this automagically. Though you would have to create your own CSS to make the category list multiple column as it will only output as a list. Hope that makes sense.

I hope that thoroughly answers your questions.

[Rob H]

Thanks Steven,

We are getting a little closer.

Please note that we are not using widgets on our site, so I know that does make things a bit challenging, possibly.

Because we will only have about 40 categories, let me know if this would be the solution:

1. Create the ‘directory home page’ which shows the categories by hand. (Wont take but 15 mins to type)
2. Link to each category to the page I create for each one. Then on the category page, use the [connections] short code that will display the listings in a specific category for that page.

I believe the above will solve it, correct?

Also, in the themes, do we have the ability to:

A) Change the display on how listing are shown (i.e. have text along side of image/logo)

B) Change the titles of the text (i.e. Work phone to Main Office)

C) Edit the way the search book looks (increase size and also center it on the page with a background) with CSS?

I believe once I have the above, we will be good to go and will be purchasing the Pro Pack today. Thanks for the help!

[Steven Zahm]

@ Rob

re: I believe the above will solve it, correct?

Yes, that will work quite well too.

re: Change the display on how listing are shown (i.e. have text along side of image/logo)

You can, but that would require altering the template’s PHP file. I would highly recommend using a template override file.

re: Change the titles of the text (i.e. Work phone to Main Office)

Yes, you can follow this QuickTip on how to change labels. Note, some templates have template specific text which requires a different method. If you need to change one of those labels, let me know Am I’ll give you the specific instructions.

re: Edit the way the search book looks (increase size and also center it on the page with a background) with CSS?

Yes, you can. I recommend using a custom CSS file., though, you can add custom CSS overide any other why you wish. You just need to keep in mind the load order of the files.

[Rob H]

Excellent information Steven. Thank you very much!

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