This topic contains 6 replies, has 3 voices, and was last updated by 
Guust 6 years, 10 months ago.
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Open Support TicketI find it rather difficult to find a high performance business directory (BD) theme. Looking on themeforest reveals alot of business directory themes, but as GD states here: https://wpgeodirectory.com/best-wordpress-directory-theme/ only a few are good at being a BD. Which leaves me with just two options, Listify and vantage. They are sadly not what i am looking for.
besides that I have been looking through more than half of the showcases on this site, where many of them are using the GD themes. One thing is that they dont perform very well according to google pagespeed insight and gtmetrix, they may be optimised for business directory but if google dosen’t like it, that would make it a tough time to get on page 1. The other thing is the visual expression, that i think many of them fall short on, including the GD themes (sorry GD).
I know that i could just get a theme, put a developer on it to optimise it, but from a starting point of view, i need to start on a good foundation both according to hosting, caching, wp, themes and so on.
Can any of you recommend a high performance business directory theme (that has low load times and perform more than average on pagespeed, gtmetrix) with tested geodirectory that could both serve as a listing site but also offer other services (could be pages with checklists, todo’s blogging, bbpress) and being modern in the design (i know that is subjectively)? Hopefully the list is not empty, so any guidance would be really appriciated!
Hello,
We are happy to help if there are display issues with whatever theme you choose.
You should not combine a directory theme with a directory plugin like GD.
The performance you are after will mainly depend on your server environment, not the theme.
Our GD themes are intended to work optimally with the directory plugin, but this may get you on the right track:
https://wpgeodirectory.com/docs/server-requirements/
Here are some other blog posts that may interest you:
https://wpgeodirectory.com/making-your-wordpress-site-slow/
https://wpgeodirectory.com/20-best-free-wordpress-responsive-themes/
Thanks
Thank you for your fast reponsens!
So basically, what you say, besides scaling the server to handle the load, i could go with any theme that performs well? Maybe it’s because I want the look and feel of a listing theme to be integrated with geodictory, but you advise against those? It confuses me tough, since in the link posted earlier, you actually compare several listing sites and address the poor coding behind them. Ofc. that doesn’t necessarily mean I should use them.
I already do own a premium theme and it perform decent, but I’m just afraid when traffic comes, that it would overload the whole setup. I have seen many posts from Paolo where he advices people to be very cautious and even therefor have created (maybe with some other at Aye Code) “best-wordpress-directory-theme” article.
Another question, regarding to the display issues. It may not be a display issue, but what i miss about GD is a decent “My Dashboard” site. I know there are a few drop-downs, but I want to show the user/vendor more than just that, like what plan they have chosen for a listing, when it expires and other account informations, on the same dashboard. I guess that would require some customization.
Sorry for my lack of knowledge, still fairly new 🙂
To get a better dashboard for your users, you can combine your GD site with out UsersWP plugin: https://userswp.io/
Have a look at the settings at GD > Prices and Payments > General tab.
There are options to display the expiry date for your users.
Thanks
Guust, you recommended the 20-best-free-wordpress-responsive-themes url, but paolo indicate in the comments that they are not compatible with GD. Is it just another article about responsive themes OR are they used in conjunction with GD since they are listed here on GD? Im fairly well-know when its comming to responsive themes so thats not an issue.
I am just still a bit unsure why you would advise against wp themes that are a directory, when you say it’s just a matter of server capacity, and then all decent performing themes could do the job but not the directory themes?
Concerning the userswp, ive just tested it and it doesn’t seem that i can create registration form for different roles? One for users, and one for vendors and though only showing dashboard information that regards the role.
Nearly all themes should be able to be made compatible with GD, they may just not be compatible out of the box. And this should even be simpler once the next major update V2 comes out.
Have a look at GD > Theme compatibility for all themes that needed little tweaks, and those tweaks are included: https://wpgeodirectory.com/docs/core-theme/
The reason to advise against all-in-one directory themes, is that they will have competing and conflicting functions with your GD plugin, and the only way to use them with GD, will be not to use any of their directory components. You cannot run one directory site with two directory systems.
UsersWP is not able to create different registration forms for different roles without customization.
Everyone is a user, so if some users should not be able to add listings, then you may need to look for a membership plugin to use with GD and UsersWP.
Thanks
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