Thread: Ready to buy, but one question

Ready to buy, but one question

My business has thousands of customers that own businesses that repair smart phones and tablet computers.

I am looking to create a business directory for them and this seems to be a great fit.

However, I do not want to limit this to just phone repair companies.

I would like to eventually include computer repair, garage door repair, AC Repair, restaurants, bars ... see where I'm going?

So I guess my specific question is, is Vantage designed in such a way that it's best to work with a specific niche? Or could if comfortably encompass all business types without being cluttered or hurting the user experience?

Because listings are based primarily on categories, it's perfectly suitable to use for specific or various business types. Ultimately though, whether or not you actually want all of the various types of listings in one single installation, or perhaps want to look at separating these into sub-domains is personal preference (the latter of course would involve additional customization of the theme, with the possibility of a WordPress multisite setup). Some examples from the AppThemes customer showcase can give you an idea of how you can change the homepage layout to accomadate directing users to various sub-domains. Thanks.

Got it

I'm assuming that each listing is able to be indexed by search engines and be potentially found directly in Google and other search providers. Can you confirm?

What if somebody searches for something in particuar on the site's search feature, does it also list according to keywords in the different listings? Such as if somebody searches for "steak", will it pull up listings with the word steak contained in it's content? Like steak subs or steak house, assuming that we have matching listings?

Yes, although you can also help improve this even further with additional SEO plugins such as mentioned on our recommended plugins page. A future release of Vantage will include rich snippets for even more improvements to this.

Using your example, yes the search feature will search for listings (title and description) which use the keyword input by the user. You can view the Vantage demo for a better idea of this. Thanks.

I promise this is my last question (I think) LOL.

If we use this (Vantage) with many categories and sub categories (probably as many as 100 or more) of unrelated business types, would the interface look cluttered, such as when the user hovers over the "Categories" tab?

Example: Category "Automotive" may have sub categories such as "Transmission", "AC Service", "Tires", etc. Then the next category might be "Household" with sub categories of "Electricians", "Plumbers", "Garage Doors", etc.

I understand that this can be done. But want to make sure things don't end up as a cluttered mess. I also understand that we could operate several different instances of Vantage that are more specialized, but I THINK we would like to have a single, all encompassing solution if possible.

If clutter becomes an issue, is it possible to hide the sub categories on the "Categories" hover over? Or do you suggest a better solution?

Or is this just a relative non issue that I'm unnecessarily concerned about? :)

Possible solution:

I noticed that in the dashboard under: settings> reading> there is an option "front page displays" and "categories" is an option. I assume that means the home page could be set to list the categories and sub categories there? That extra space and heads up display to the user could reduce any possible clutter.

There are options in the Vantage admin dashboard which allow you to hide subcategories or change the category depth so that you're only displaying the parent category on the category menu or category page. This is the easiest way of keeping things tidy as it doesn't require customization.

Our themes are not specifically designed to use a static front page using the settings you have mentioned in the "Reading" options, so if you did select this, you may also need to carry out additional customization of the theme code for certain parts of the default homepage layout to display on a different page. You may like to check out the AppThemes customer showcase for some ideas as to how you could customize the homepage too. Thanks.

Standard package versus the Developer package ... looks like Developer package includes Photoshop PSD Files. What does that mean?

That's correct, the developer license includes the Photoshop .psd files, whereas the standard license does not. The files are useful for web designers who wish to redesign the layout of the theme, as they contain all of the layout/color/size information for all of the pages used within the theme. You still need knowledge of .css in order to make use of the files, so if you do not, then you may not find a use for them. Thanks.

I don't want to buy the standard, only to wish shortly down the road that I bought the developer. If I buy the standard, then wish to get developer, I assume I won't be able to pay the difference and upgrade?

And just to confirm, developer does allow access to the actual images, right? Not just the ability to add our own, but stock images that already exist in some kind of location?