Steven Zahm@ Virgil
RE: if a business wants their listings to show up first, is there a way for me to set that?
You would need the Custom Entry Order extension. To set an entry to display at the top, you would set the entry order to 1. To have an entry show second, after the entry assigned to 1 you would assign that entry the order of 2. If there is no entry assigned as 1, then the entry assigned 2 would actually be first.
That said, I would recommend setting order by 10’s or even 100’s. This will allow you the opportunity to insert entries in between others. For example having entries assigned orders of 100, 200 and 300 would display those entries in that order at the top. So you could insert an entry in between 100 and 200 by assigning the order as 150.
Hope that makes sense!
RE: I want to customize the single page layout for the business. I feel that the generic single page listing is just to plain looking. Is there a way for me to at least customize it?
Here’s a link to the developer docs for Custom CSS for Templates and Custom Template Override Files. These can be used to customize the single page listing in any manner you choose.
RE: I purchased CMAP. However, I would like to customize the listing view. Is there a way for me to do that?
Yes, using the methods in my previous answer.
RE: I would like to know if there is a widget available in which I can put select listings on the sidebar?
Well, there is the List widget included in the Widget Pack. It does not allow you to choose specific entries but it does allow you to choose a specific category. So, I suppose you could assign entries to a “Widget” category and then have the widget display only that category.
RE: I want to be able to charge for having businesses list their company
You may be already aware of this but I wanted to make sure…
Connections does not accept payments for listings. I do not plan on adding such features. I recommend you use a membership plugin like Restrict Content Pro to manage membership payments and renewals. This greatly increases your ability to monetize your site where a directory is just one benefit of the user’s membership.
There are other directory plugins which do integrate payments, but then you lock yourself into only being able to monetize your directory making it very difficult to expand member benefits and further increase your opportunity to monetize.
Hope this helps!