Hosting

A member reported that mediatemple wordpress hosting is 100% compatible with GeoDirectory

I host almost all my sites with WPEngine – it’s expensive but is fast, secure, has automated daily backups and a staging area.
You’ll need a registrar that provides DNS (most do) and a separate email solution (Google Apps / Zoho etc).

I’ve heard people say that MediaTemple is good, but i’ve never tried it…

Wp Engine will give you problems with GD. Unfortunately they don’t support PHP sessions and GD relies on sessions only for multilocation purpouses.

Thank you, Paolo. I tried both WP Engine and Zippy Kid with my GeoTheme sites and ended up moving all of them to Lightning Base. If you may recall, the hosting company owner himself (Chris) even installed and configured GeoTheme for me along with other plugins.

He only hosts WordPress and he is already very familiar with GeoTheme and GeoDirectory. My questions and issues are resolved in a matter of hours – sometimes in less than an hour!

Apparently they started supporting seesion. That’s new.
Until not too long ago they were suggesting to use cookies instead for security reasons.

If Sessions won’t be saved, Multi Location will not work properly. As simple as that…

for example… Geolocation won’t work either.

Ok, just been back for another chat with them – this was how it went…

John Allsopp
I have a plugin which relies on php sessions to work – the plugin dev said you didn’t support them, but a sales guy just said you did…?

James Gardner
Well, it’s a bit of a touchy subject. They’re not explicitly disallowed on our service, since they do work. Caching can cause them to break which is why we typically disable cache on the relevant page, or ask that you store the session data in a cookie.

I guess going with that, what does the plugin do?

John Allsopp
It’s a directory – https://wpgeodirectory.com It uses php sessions to store location data, so visitors can browse directory entries relevant to their area

James Gardner
Hmm, is that used on the homepage?

John Allsopp
A visitor can set a location and then when browsing the site through different categories etc, they only see listings in the area they chose

So, site-wide

There’s a demo at http://wpgeo.directory/ The location switcher is on the right hand side in the main navigation bar…

James Gardner
Do you have it on a site currently? Or are you thinking about implementing it in your site?

John Allsopp
It’s on there at the moment but the site’s still in development

James Gardner
Alright, it may not work looking at how it functions. Since it’s using Geolocation you could maybe implement that functionality through Javascript, and have it communicate with the rest of the directory system.

John Allsopp
So if it doesn’t work…is there anything you could do (from a server perspective) to allow it to function?

James Gardner
Well we can exclude cache on any sub-page, but if it causes the home page to not work we cannot do anything about it.