Anybody Put A Local Business Directory Together Lately?

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FlipFl0p

New member
Oct 19, 2010
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If so can you recommend a platform, theme or template?

Been looking at Geoplaces and DirectoryPress wordpress themes but they just aren't cutting it for me. Very complicated sign up process for users.

Looking to be able to allow local businesses to list themselves and pay an annual fee, all fully automated.

I know this idea has been around for years and solutions have evolved over time, Joomla used to have some good plugins for it but I gather they are now outdated.

So if anyone has done this recently I'd love to hear your input.

Cheers!

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We used eDirectory on a project at my last job but I can't recommend it: it was buggy, the support was unreliable (sometimes great, sometimes not) and I didn't think it was worth the price. For ease of use I actually like PHPLD but I have never seen a theme/template that looked good enough for a serious project. Before we went with eDirectory, I was also looking at phpMyDirectory: I preferred it, but it was missing some (non-directory) features we needed. It has a 30 day money-back guarantee too.
 
Thank you for your reply Philip,

Can you be more specific as to why you wouldn't recommend eDirectory? What kind of bugs? Are they causing major or minor issues?

I'm interested because this is by far the prettiest solution I've come across so far other than some Wordpress solutions. I would prefer to go with a dedicated system like eDirectory if possible.

phpMyDirectory has good features but it looks very aged now as does PHPLD.
 
Well, to be fair most of it was fairly minor stuff and if the company I was working for had just bought the software instead of taking the monthly fee option, our coder dude could have done it in-house.

Also I was working with the old version, I think they launched version 9 a month or two ago. I wouldn't say something like "it's awful, don't buy it", it's just that I would have a hard time actually recommending it.
 
Thanks for your feedback, I've read up on some reports and others also say it's buggy, especially version 7.5 before all the fixes. You are right, version 9 is out now and it looks nice but as for bugs there's not much info floating around.
 
Yeah, I need something very similar, however, I've been trying to find a designer/coder (without much luck) with any talent. I want something that isn't mainstream, and its just too hard to find someone like that :(
 
this garbage is polluting the internet. all these directory sites are getting slammed right now and are going to continue to.
 
I'm surprised peeps go this route TBH. Ranking them is beyond diff with G pushing local (places). Don't forget amazon etc are also punching in the local biz effort (via email mktg et al), not to mention FB.
Unless you're going to promote to unknowing nitwits, this 20% of search is currently the hot button for BIG corporate america. <GOOD LUCK>.
 
Vantage is what I found a few days ago too. $99 and it looks promising.

And SEO is not my concern with this venture, it's a local thing for my town and all advertising will take place via word of mouth and business cards I will be able to give to various bar, restaurant owners etc. The majority of whom do not even own a website (Unknowing Nitwits). So this will be very useful to them.

And I don't intend on polluting the internet, this is a site catered to my home town and based on a theme that is very popular here. No auto publishing, all will be managed manually.

Should be a very good resource for both local businesses and consumers.
 
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