Listing with multiple locations and optional address fields.

This topic contains 15 replies, has 5 voices, and was last updated by  Directory Path 5 years, 5 months ago.

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  • June 2, 2019 at 5:47 pm #490447

    Directory Path
    Expired Member
    Post count: 235

    We’re using your Custom Post Types plugin to create a directory for online stores, but we’re having problems with the address field and configuration for multiple locations.

    Consider these listings.
    umbrella.com – sells to Australia and New Zealand.
    (How can we indicate that this listing is associated with 2 countries?)

    mealprep.com – sells only to the states of California and Florida USA.
    (How can we indicate this listing is associated with 2 states in the USA? Also notice City and Street Address are not needed)

    fancycoffee.com – sells only to the city of New York.
    (Address field on GD is all or nothing. We don’t need a Street Address for this listing, but we can’t make it optional).

    Thank you.

    June 2, 2019 at 10:31 pm #490481

    Guust
    Moderator
    Post count: 29970

    You can use the Franchise Manager for listings that want to add more than one location.

    If you use addresses, all parts of the address are required.
    But street address can be anything, but cannot be blank. For example, you can use “Online store”.

    You can create a CPT that does not use addresses, and then use tags or custom fields or categories to nominate delivery areas.

    Thanks

    June 2, 2019 at 10:48 pm #490483

    Directory Path
    Expired Member
    Post count: 235

    You can create a CPT that does not use addresses, and then use tags or custom fields or categories to nominate delivery areas.

    But then they won’t show up in the map.

    But street address can be anything, but cannot be blank. For example, you can use “Online store”.

    Or you can make the field optional. What’s the logic behind all parts of the address being required?

    June 2, 2019 at 11:48 pm #490488

    Guust
    Moderator
    Post count: 29970

    Locations are like categories. The country is like the main category, regions are like sub-categories etc.
    Databases can not work without proper classification.
    Thanks

    June 2, 2019 at 11:49 pm #490489

    Directory Path
    Expired Member
    Post count: 235

    What does that have to do with the topic?

    June 3, 2019 at 12:15 am #490496

    Directory Path
    Expired Member
    Post count: 235

    Locations are like categories. The country is like the main category, regions are like sub-categories etc.

    I don’t know how this is related to the topic, but to use your analogy, if:
    Country = category
    Region = sub-category
    City = sub-sub-category
    Street Address = sub-sub-sub-category
    Then why not let us add a listing with just the category (country)? Why do you make us classify to sub-sub-sub-category level?

    June 3, 2019 at 12:38 am #490500

    tinamama
    Expired Member
    Post count: 317

    I have this issue too. All my listings are in just one area, so I have no need for all these subcategories. I only need a city. Period. The state is assumed since I don’t cover other states. I did turn off all the other subcategories though.

    I mainly want everything categorized by the topic. So, for me as a family resource site, my topics are like kids sports, kids classes, birthday parties, etc. The cities are not as important as the topics because our cities aren’t that far apart and parents will usually have no problem traveling to get to many things.

    Having more flexibility to customize how the categories work would be lovely. It sounds like it would work for the OP as well…to be able to choose multiple cities. I also have virtual businesses that work in multiple cities. The franchise option for these businesses don’t really work because they are not actually franchises. They are businesses that travel. (For example, a princess parties biz.) So I don’t need a separate listing for each city that they travel to. That would be nuts for some of these businesses that have a long list of local cities that they operate out of! Sounds similar to the OP where they have businesses that operate out of multiple locations as well.

    June 3, 2019 at 1:13 am #490506

    Guust
    Moderator
    Post count: 29970

    I was answering the only question you posed: “What’s the logic behind all parts of the address being required?”

    I never said Locations are categories, but LIKE categories to explain the hierarchy.

    Addresses are required to create latitude and longitude entries in the database. People may know where 15 High Street is if you standing in the main square of the town, but Google and databases are not that clever, they need more information.

    June 3, 2019 at 1:21 am #490507

    Directory Path
    Expired Member
    Post count: 235

    Google accepts only Countries, Regions, or Cities perfectly fine.

    Country: Bolivia
    https://www.google.com/maps/place/Bolivia/@-16.2255307,-68.0524124,6z/data=!3m1!4b1!4m5!3m4!1s0x915edf8977bba295:0x1c9ec2bb0115edbf!8m2!3d-16.290154!4d-63.588653

    Region: Califonia
    https://www.google.com/maps/place/California/@37.1927748,-123.8053028,6z/data=!3m1!4b1!4m5!3m4!1s0x808fb9fe5f285e3d:0x8b5109a227086f55!8m2!3d36.778261!4d-119.4179324

    City: San Francisco https://www.google.com/maps/place/San+Francisco,+CA/@37.7578149,-122.5078109,12z/data=!3m1!4b1!4m5!3m4!1s0x80859a6d00690021:0x4a501367f076adff!8m2!3d37.7749295!4d-122.4194155

    There is no reason to force listings to be classified up to the street address.

    June 3, 2019 at 7:02 am #490529

    Alex Rollin
    Moderator
    Post count: 27815

    We have tried to make Geodirectory work for a wide variety of use cases and for addresses to work, at this time, it requires all parts of the address. In the future we may be able to find a way to make “Region” or “Country” specific directories, but this is the way it works at this time.

    As Guust has mentioned the Street part of the address is used to lookup values but, once a value is set, the street value can be set to any value so obscure a specific streetaddress.

    The Franchise manager is our go-to solution for listing in multiple locations. Some well known sites follow a similar approach, saying that each market is actually independant. We tried to go one better than that by linking franchise listings together to make them easy to add and edit.

    June 3, 2019 at 10:48 am #490574

    Stiofan O’Connor
    Site Admin
    Post count: 22956

    It would be great if you can explain your concept as i don’t really understand your points… You don’t want the listings to have a address or specific location BUT you want them to show on the map? If i understand that right, where do we put the map marker? And if there are 4000 listings like that in “New York” do we put all those map markers in the one place rendering 3999 almost uselss?

    Thanks,

    Stiofan

    June 3, 2019 at 4:15 pm #490627

    Directory Path
    Expired Member
    Post count: 235

    The most immediate use-case is an online store directory. Ecommerces don’t sell at 15 John Street, but to the United States. Putting 4000 pins in the US is not a problem, because maps aren’t so useful for online directories. (and you offer the cluster plugin). 99.9% of ecommerces sell to countries, not regions or cities. I can’t imagine an online store selling just to California. So if the other address fields weren’t required, we could have a CPT with only the country field. The only other change needed, as mentioned in a separate topic, would be to make addresses a 1 to N association, because website often sell to multiple countries (USA and Canada, Australia and NZ). GD would put a pin on each address (country) associated with the listing.

    Anyway, we understand this is a big change to your existing plugin. Alex, Kor, Guust, Stiofan, and Paolo have offered outstanding customer service and support, really a 10/10 all around experience, and we are very pleased with existing business directory features GD has. We wouldn’t mind looking for an alternative plugin for the online directory use-case.

    June 3, 2019 at 5:42 pm #490637

    Stiofan O’Connor
    Site Admin
    Post count: 22956

    OK, thanks for the comments!

    I don’t think map markers is the best way to do this, for a user this could still mean zooming in to a location where there are thousands of markers in one exact location and no real way to distinguish them.

    We have been planning something that might fit, it more of a “area of coverage” which is intended for things like service providers (maybe a plumber) to be able to show an area he covers on a map, with more a “area” than a “pin”. This is still at the planning stage just now though.

    The hard part is filtering listings by those areas, showing it individually is much easier.

    Stiofan

    June 3, 2019 at 6:08 pm #490639

    Directory Path
    Expired Member
    Post count: 235

    I don’t think map markers is the best way to do this,

    I agree. Here’s an idea for the online directory use-case.

    Remove the map altogether. Listings can be associated with 1 or more countries. Add a dropdown list of countries. If a user selects United States, he’s shown all the listings associated with the USA. If he has USA selected, and click a category, he’s shown all the listings in the USA associated with the category.

    Map is not needed at all for that use-case. It can be a CPT that doesn’t have an address, but instead can be associated with 1 or more countries.

    How does that sound?

    June 3, 2019 at 7:05 pm #490647

    Stiofan O’Connor
    Site Admin
    Post count: 22956

    I think thats the way we will end up going but it would have a drill down also, set countries, set regions, set cities, set zip codes.

    Stiofan

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