DirectoryPress

DirectoryPress turns a WordPress blog into a powerful online directory website with lots of features, import tools and built in payment gateways.

Includes 20+ directory themes, unlimited installations, lifetime free support and upgrades!

Running your own directory website is easy with DirectoryPress, you simply download the theme, install it your WordPress themes folder and your ready to go! With every copy of our VIP DirectoryPress download are loads of easy to customize, changeable templates, professional directory script features and lots of help and support to get you started!

DirectoryPress – VIP Version

My experience with this theme. I purchased a copy on behalf of the Dungog Chamber of Commerce (DDCC). Paying and downloading was quite straight forward (US $79). After I had the download I expected to instructions for it, but there don’t seem to be any. So back to the DP website > Support and there are the manuals to download.

The manual starts with:

1. WordPress 2.8+ Installed
2. DirectoryPress 3.4+ installed.
3. Access to your hosting server via FTP or a FTP manager of some sort.

Point #2?? I thought this was about installing DirectoryPress (DP)?

Anyhow lets press on a setup a separate install of WordPress since this is required to run its own copy. I will install in a sub folder.

OK, done. Now lets find out how to install DP. It seems that I read to much in the above steps all he’s trying to say is to copy directorypress.zip as downloaded to the t themes folder (wp-content/themes). So I’ll do that now and then extract the zip file and activate a theme. That’s all cool, however I was expecting to see 20 or so themes to choose from however only the default blue DP theme is there. Will need to sort this out later. I get asked for the license key and DP informs me of tasks I need to do before setup can continue, I like that. Be aware that if you don’t accept the default location for images that you will need to create the folder yourself. I then followed the recommendation to restore to factory settings, this changed my image folder so I reset to my preferred location.

OK first mystery is resolved in the General setup you can choose from a bunch of different directory templates. I would like to see previews of these so back to the DP website. OK here is where you can see previews.

OK template selected and System Setup complete, onto Page setup. You are told here that any pages you want to set here have to be created first and to do so click here, nice but when you get to the new page screen I can’t remember what pages I was supposed to create. So you need to note them down or remember them.

Overall I must say that it’s a very slick dashboard. My logo doesn’t fit at this stage and now I need to remove all those sneaky ads placed in the directory by the DP guys and I will need to import my existing listings. Before moving ahead with this I fixed the logo, a good size is 60-75pixels high and 300 to 400 wide.

Under tools there is an import facility for posts and a shortcut tool to setup a bunch of categories quickly but nothing for existing listings, will need to do this myself using SQL, since the current directory plugin we are using is Business Directory for WordPress. After a lot of fiddling around it’s now clear to me that every listing is actually a WordPress Post with a few additional custom fields attached to them. I have found some info on CSV imports and file structure, at the far bottom of the DP website. I’ll now export my prevous listings and then try to import. But first I will need to change the categories to suit. Quick check with the Chamber president required, luckily she’s close by since she’s also my wife. OK categories are set. The import is a bit complex because our previous directory had a bunch of fields and now we need to add all the contact info into a post, so this is the SQL statement I wrote for that:

SELECT listing_id as SKU,
company_name as post_title,
concat(“Contact Details:<BR>”,
“Contact name: “,name,”<BR>”,
“Email: “,email,”<BR>”,
“Phone: “,company_phone,”<BR>”,
“Street: “,company_street1,”<BR>”,
“Town; “,company_city,”<BR>”) as post_content,
company_description as post_excerpt,
company_url as url
FROM `wp_biz_listings`

now lets export this to a spreadsheet in csv format and then import into DP. OK that went well. Now I’ll just need to go throught the 200 listings and set the category for each one.

Listing Packages

Preset are Basic, Silver and Gold, which is great because that is what we are currently using, however we use annual payments and this seems to be preset for monthly, will need to sort this out later however there is no URL textbox for people to add their website and I can’t find it anywhere. Had to submit a ticket for this. Changing from monthly to yearly payments was easy, simply change the days to 365 – done.

OK payment facilities still need to be setup as well a few small changes to display of listing etc. However at the end of day one our DDCC Business Directory is now running, click here to check it out. Plus I will insert all of our community organisations soon, 153 of them!