Vantage Business Directory Theme Preview
Update! We’ve released Vantage. Please make sure you view the following blog posts to see the current state of this theme and future plans:
- Vantage Beta Launched
- Sound the Trumpets, Vantage is Here!
- Video: Creating a Listing in Vantage
- Vantage Introduces the New AppThemes Custom Form Builder
- Vantage 1.0.1 is Near
- Vantage 1.0.1 Released
- Vantage 1.1 Released
We’ve been quietly working away on a special theme which will be our most advanced WordPress App to-date. Vantage is not your typical business directory. It’s a powerful social networking business directory and can be better explained by breaking it down into three primary pieces:
Local Search
Vantage provides online local search capabilities for site visitors. Typically a visitor will search for a specific thing (i.e. a sandwich shop) and the location (i.e. a specific address, city, state, or zip code). This is all done using the Google Maps API and leveraging geo coordinates since they are the most accurate measure of distance.
Each business listing result contains details such as the business address, hours, website, description, etc. It also includes a 5-point rating system and reviews from other site members which are built up over time. The business owners can directly update their own business’ listing information via the Vantage customer account area.
Listings are organized by city/state and a multi-tier categorization system. Content and listings can also be discovered through categorized reviews or via Vantage member profiles and their review lists.
Community
Having a solid community will help your site grow in leaps and bounds. Vantage automatically does this for you as it ties together user reviews and social networking functionality to create a local online community. Allowing your members to keep track of their reviews and displaying popular reviews on your site helps motivate contributors.
Vantage also plans on including a “First to Review” reward system to create a competition among contributing members, further motivating the creation of reviews and adding more unique content to your site.
Events
Besides local business listings, an events system is also an important feature to have. Not only does it allow your members to create and advertise their offline events (i.e. car show, bbq, WordPress meetup, etc) it further helps to grow and involve your community.
Each event will have specific details like location, date/time, description, etc. Members can view the event and “Attend” so the event creator knows how many people to expect. This system will use an events custom post type and specific taxonomies to keep it separate from business listings and blog posts.
Now that should give you a much better picture of what to expect from Vantage. We’d also like to list out the high-level features to help answer some of your other questions.
Feature highlights include:
- Monetizing your site by selling business listings
- Build and foster your own user community
- Business reviews and rating system
- Allow your members to create event listings
- Home page & category featured listing system
- Custom post types & taxonomies for business listings
- Custom post types & taxonomies for events
- Save this and favorites bookmarking
- Twitter & Facebook integration
- Customer account area to manage business listing
- Separate blog to promote your directory
- Create your own custom fields and business listing forms
- Search by keyword and/or location
- Interactive Google maps for business listings & events
- Multiple advertising spaces
- Fully widgetized sidebar & footer
- and much more!
Launch Date
We’ve spent the last couple of months on the design and getting the layout just right which has taken longer than we expected. In turn, it has pushed back the development so we just recently got underway. We know how important this theme is to everyone which is why we are doing our best to get it completed asap.
In order to do so, we have pushed back the release date back a few extra weeks to November 5th see our theme release status page for the latest status on Vantage. We know, you of course want it now but a product this advanced takes time to build correctly. 🙂
Here are some screenshots of Vantage:
Our development team is doing their best to get this built quickly. We are always open to your feedback and suggestions but any new feature requests will have to wait for the next release since everything is already locked in for v1.0.
Comments (213)
Excellent Business + Social Networking Theme for Professionals. The highlight is each company listed with an option of social networking button which is easy for people to share the listed company.
Nice work. I’ll have to read and look through one more time to take it in…I only wish the sample photos were larger.
@Ryan, are the screenshots still too small even if you click on them?
Looking great David! If we want to use Vantage as a product review site can we simply remove references (custom fields?) relating to location? Looking forward to this release.
@bellboy, Vantage is designed more as a social networking business directory but it will be quite flexible and might work as a product review site.
In term of features, it looks like yours is much better than ones released by Templatic.
But I’ll wait until next month before deciding which one I should buy.
p/s Can you make the screenshot pictures bigger?
How did you realize the social networking capability? With BuddyPress plugins?
@michael, nope. Used some special AppThemes magic. 😉
Which Templatic theme were you looking at? I bought one of the Templatic themes once and it was a huge freaking nightmare to do any customization. They didn’t have an online forum and each time I emailed support their reply was vague or it would lead them suggesting I post the customizing up on their job board. I wouldn’t recommend them at all… Just a FYI 🙂
Looks good – I hope you also have the ability to monetise via Adsense.
I hope even more that you leverage some of these cool features on Classipress. Four more days until the highly anticipated 3.1 update and I can finally unleash my sites!! 😀
Looks great…
I wonder whether there is a facility to import existing databases and/or spreadsheets of data that you may have. It’s a great way to get started…
Nick
Hi David,
We love the new Vantage system, as above, we would like to be able to import from an existing database. Will this be available in some way?
How did you realize the social networking capability? What about BuddyPress plugins?
Awesome look! I’ll wait for the release of this theme, I’ve been waiting a long time something like this.
What about payment gateway’s ?
Hopefully you will implement different payment gateways’s and not only paypal. Think about google checkout and moneybookers.
Anyway i will definitely buy this one
@Derek-Jan, it will start out with at least PayPal and bank transfers but eventually most of our themes will include several other payment gateways.
@David, on the face of it and in my opinion, this looks like your best work so far but I’m worried by your overuse of the word ‘local’. Does this mean geographical filtering will not make it into this theme?
Also, the use of categories in your theme, can this be used for geographical values? In terms of building geo directories I can’t think of a better way of handling geographical values than WP’s categories function.
I would never rely solely on Google maps for this aspect.
@Carlos, “local” meaning for the specific searcher. Vantage will allow you to include whatever states/cities, etc as you like.
The default categories will be used for blog posts. We will also have a categories custom taxonomy for business listings as well.
Each business listing will also include it’s long & lat coordinates which allow the radius search feature to work effectively.
@David. Does this mean that location based searches will be done via lat & long (googlemaps) instead of allowing site admins to be less specific and simply use custom fields to specify Country, State/Province, City?
Does this then mean that the advanced search function (widget?) you spoke of before to support searching Country, State/Province and City for ClassiPress (or Vantage even) will no longer come about?
I really like this theme, more advanced than other wordpress city guide themes.
Lovely! Cant wait to use this.
Wow, this looks really great. If you guys are still working on it, I suggest that if you are going to allow payed listings, then the ability to create a Featured Listings Area at the top would be a powerful marketing tool.
What about csv imports if you already have a directory?
@JP, yep there will be a featured listing area so you can charge extra to be listed at the top.
What directory software would you be importing from?
Super work – I have been waiting for this. Great to see some screens. I hate to bring this up because I know appthemes have been great to customize and style yourself but I for one would say that the widget headers and wrap around style with the drop shadow is not that great. I think the simple clean styling of jobroller is easier for others to change to there own style rather than maybe alot of use of dropshadows – but I guess thats just me and my 2 cents – im sure there are more important issues than this at play here but I just wanted to raise this.
Please hurry 🙂
Excellent work!! Only one question I have is: Can business customers list their product pictures or do they have a company profile page like facebook page and visitors can be a fan of?
@Leo, yes each business customer will be able to edit and upload their own pictures (you set the number via the admin area).
If you are familiar with ClassiPress, it will work very similar to how ads are submitted.
David,
Bravo & Excellent! I do agree w/ Carlos Takemura! I think Appthemes is on the right track 😀
Any word on “Clipper” waiting anxiously!
@Mary, thanks.
We are still squashing some bugs in Clipper and hope to have it ready late next week or the following week.
Hate to say it, but that’s what you have said for the last two-three weeks. Kindof wreaks havoc on my project time line. But I’m sure it will be worth it.
Excellent Innovation!!
Hi,
Great news, couple of quick questions if I may.
I am wondered if this file will accept user submissions. For example:
Company or individual publishes a post on there business etc, site visitors or other members can submit a document via a contact form that is sent direct to the original poster.
The idea is a translation service whereby businesses etc can post contents of a document into there submission/post, then end users can translate and submit a word or PDF document containing the translation direct to the original poster.
If this is possible to do, could we have a function whereby we can switch it on or off dependant on category etc
Cheers
Ben
@Ben, no we don’t plan on having that feature.
David,
Wouldn’t it be wonderful to integrate vantage with clipper so that while looking for the directory of the business, an individual can also check whether that business has promotions going on?
Am sure you will be able to let us put everything under one roof ie directory, events page, etc etc and now coupon.
Am not going to mention the names of competition but we do hope you will borrow a leaf from them. Remember they span to a apps outside wordpress so if you need me to be specific, holla me on my inbox.
@50cents, since Vantage and Clipper are WordPress themes, they can’t run on the same instance.
Different products & target markets.
Hi
Will Vantage and Classipress be able to work together on the same blog? I would like my ClassiPress blog members which are businesses to have the facility to showcase themselves in the directory?
or Will it have to be a fresh install on a subdomain?
Thanks in Advance
Damian
@Damian, no. See answer above. 🙂
i will get one!
hi appthemes team
I am greatly amazed with vantage and will hopefully will be able to get one soon.
i would like to ask few questions
1.What are the system requirements of vantage if there are?
2.What type of hosting should i get?
3.Are there selections of designs/skins? or is it editable?
4.Are there other currencies available aside from USD in monetizing?
@cool,
Min requirements: a server with WordPress installed. There are several host providers available with one-click WordPress installs.
Only one skin but there will be multiple color choices.
Any currency that PayPal supports will work with Vantage.
Looks great David,
What is a good way to integrate Classipress and Vantage on the same website, so the site has both a classifieds section and a business directory?
Some members on my site may want to post classifieds and also be listed in the directory.
@John, you’d need to install another instance of WordPress in a sub-directory of your ClassiPress site. Then install Vantage there.
If you wanted to get really fancy, you could use the same user database across both WordPress instances.
hi David. The pictures are a bit small, even when clicking on them.
By the way can this vantage theme be used as a classified site with some small modifications 🙂
the design looks really good, i wish classipress had the same design 😉
Looks AWESOME!! I can’t wait to see how it will work for my business. With all the features you listed that it will come with…it was as though you read my mind. Keep up the OUTSTANDING work!!
Discussion is closed.