Hi Dirinc,
Firstly thanks for the detailed review, even if it is only a 1 star and that makes me sad :(, it’s still good to see a proper explanation of why you feel that way and it let’s us explain how we plan to make things better, i will try and reply appropriately in the same way to you.
At best its beta. There have been 8 updates to the core plugin since release. This means 8 times you would need to offline a live site to make changes. It’s a long way off being something you get a directory up and running with minutes in.
I would disagree, there are lots of users out there who are using this on live sites and making money. Updates and frequency of them just goes to show how much we are working on improving the pluign, our aim it to release updates every 1-2 weeks and we are on-target with that. The update of the core plugin usually takes no more than 30 seconds.
Large numbers of issues are unresolved on the forums – take a look its free
We don’t mark all posts as resolved, we use the resolved system mostly when the problem requires a code change and we mark resolved once the change is made, simple questions don’t always get marked as resolved once answered but if you read through them you will see most have been answered and the customer is satisfied.
The general attitude of the developers is that the customer is always doing something wrong not the product. Anything that is not included now, which is difficult to work out as theres no documentation you are redirected to ask for as a feature request!
I disagree with your first sentence here and people can go view replies on our forum to see this for themselves. As for documentation, this is being worked on and we have hired extra staff to help with this, we are building detailed documentation on a dedicated site for it, we are providing written and video documentation, we have not promoted it too much as it is still being worked on at this time https://docs.wpgeodirectory.com/
As for things not included now, yes we do provide a system where users can go and vote on the next big thing to be developed, this is by far the best and most democratic way to do things and i believe should be in the positives section of your post ??
Its also interesting that several of the reviews on this WP page are from forum moderators (Gust) or paid members of the team (posh john)
The two moderators on the forum that have left reviews were at first customers, they both paid for membership and have built live sites with GeoDirectory, why should they not be entitled to a review? There are no reviews from any developers here.
There is no detailed user documentation 3 months after release.
As i stated above we have setup a dedicated site for documentation and also have started on video documentation with 10+ videos already. https://docs.wpgeodirectory.com/ https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC1i6wQt-OC_59LDG439Q6mA/videos
If there is any documentation you would like fast tracked please just ask.
Again, just look on the forums. See the reviews on this WP page for the core plugin where they quickly threaten negative commenters with legal action!
Yes please look at the two reviews where legal action was mentioned, the comments were untrue, defamatory and deserved legal action. We have nothing against negative comments, constructive criticism is usually what helps make things better.
While they develop directory systems it appears they do not have any experience in actually running a user friendly business directory.
All our support staff have live directories! I have been running business directories for years, i don’t actually know what makes you think this?
Its promoted as working with virtually any theme. The reality is compatibility packs have had to be released for it to work with any popular WP theme such as Enfold, Avada, X and Genesis. Even then you will be expected to make coding changes to your themes functions to get it to work. There is no documenation on how to do this, again its a work in progress.
The plugin will work with almost any theme, the problem is positioning, this is due to the many ways a developer can code a page template, some themes require no modifications and if they do it is usually around 10 lines of code to make the plugin use the theme’s own wrappers and make it look perfect. The compatability packs take it even further and these tap into the theme custom title layouts and the theme custom breadcrumbs and make them use the GeoDirectory ones so everything looks like the plugin is part of the theme.
A WP Plugin is supposed to make life easier not require coding changes to functions to get it to work to start with. This is beyond the scope of most plugin users without paying to hire a developer.
Usually there are no coding changes needed, we agree a user should never have to make coding changes and we are doing our best to make sure they don’t have to. We are developing short codes (not the best for integration but good for novices) and also a plugin that will let either select the theme or enter the wrapper id or class to make everything fit perfect.
Note there is no list of 100% compatible themes apart from WP2012. Its not compatible with multisite, Buddypress or woocommerce.
Non compatibility would only consist of miss aligned page templates and with a post on the support forum could be resolved in minutes, a full list could be helpfull though, thanks for the suggestion. We have stated multisite, buddypress and woocommerce compatibility will be added when someone steps forward who is willing to help us test it.
Address/Maps
This can only be described as challenging. There are issues with setting address on the map unless your listings happen to be in western countries such as USA. Region data is added to listings automatically from the API which may or may not be relevant
The set address on map is a extra feature, you can always just drag the marker to the location, all problems with the address come down to the way the Google api returns the regions, they are not consistent and what you might call the egion is not what Google might call it. We are working with users to make this better and when people work with us thing quickly become better.
Search Features
There is no universal search. If you use CPT’s, users will only ever be able to search inside one type of cPT when they land on the site
This is being worked on, but as it stands you simply have to select a dropdown of the CPT you want to search, so if you are looking for a fast food place you might have to change the dropdown to ‘food’ etc. Also this comment is referring to a addon and not the core plugin.
If a user wants to search for say a hotel in all cities in a global directory this is not possible. They must first choose a city then run a search
This is untrue. You can search for a hotel in all cities and you can also limit your search to once city/region/country if you so choose. Again this comment is referring to a addon and not the core plugin.
Location Switcher
Users must choose a location before making a search. If they start with New York for example they cannot then look at listings in San Fransisco without changing their location. It’s not intuitive or user friendly at all. Users leave sites if they can not get somewhere in a few clicks
We feel this is intuitive, the first thing you would want to do is select your area and then you would do a search, we do however understand this might not always be the case and we are adding the ability to change the location directly in the search bar, this is due to user feedback and we are acting on it. I am sure you can appreciate that ?? (again this is an addon and not the core plugin)
Featured Listings
A selling point for any serious online directory. The GD Featured listings are not displayed on top by default.
I am sorry but they are, please see here: https://wpgeo.directory/attractions/ maybe you are referring to the widgets, be even then there is the option to sort by featured first?
Again thanks for your feedback, i would have preferred if you had come to and voiced these concerns on the forum first as some of your points are valid but some are not true. If you intend to stick with GeoDirectory please let us know and we can work on any of your concerns and if not good luck in the future.
Thanks,
Stiofan
