Suggestions for best way to organize

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January 5, 2018 at 11:06 pm #411585

jason balgopal
Full Member

Post count: 23

Folks –

I am creating a directory for services related to court work.

People will be searching based on three or four things:

1. The “Courthouse”
2. The “Service Type” (Probation, prosecutor’s office, etc…)
3. The “Region” (county or city)

How should I structure my GEODIRECTORY so that people can search for each of these?

Right now, I’ve got the PLACES set for the actual listing itself (I’ve renamed PLACES to be “LISTING”), and I”m using CATEGORY for the “Service Type”…and I”m using TAGS for the “Region”. But, I’ve tried using a custom FIELD for the “Courthouse” but it is difficult to enter all the courthouse names into the FIELD and one can’t search by this field.

Ideally, one could search or narrow their search by looking at the REGION, then the COURTHOUSE, and finally the SERVICE TYPE, or they could and browse by any of those topics.

Suggestions? Thx.

January 6, 2018 at 12:33 pm #411622

Guust
Moderator

Post count: 29970

Are you the only one adding listings? Or can users add listings too?
If you are the only only adding listings, then this may work well: https://wpgeodirectory.com/docs/franchise-manager-add-on/

The main listing would be the courthouse and the “franchises” would be the services.

January 6, 2018 at 6:31 pm #411697

jason balgopal
Full Member

Post count: 23

Thanks Guust….I tried that. But as you say, it seems that a USER could add a FRANCHISE (or, “Courthouse”) for my purposes, but not a BRANCH (or “SERVICE).

My plan IS to have others add listings (services) or to update and edit them.

It seems that the Franchise Manager would NOT work for that.

Any other suggestions?

Thx

J

January 6, 2018 at 6:53 pm #411701

Alex Rollin
Moderator

Post count: 27815

Hello!

I will ask some additional questions that will help to clarify:
What kinds of problem are you experiencing, specifically?
Is the directory national? Other?
Why not add a category for ‘Courthouse’?
Are the services commercial? Or all provided ‘by government’?
Do some services provide…’services’ for multiple Courthouse?
All listings will be free?

Will you be creating a list of links to individual regions (locations) (some members do this because they service only one state, other do this for SEO)? This strategy leans more towards making the listing pages contain lots of info/listings (and separating them by category).

Some brief advice:

Put the name of the courthouse, service, and region into the title & description of each listing.
Use as few categories as you can get away with, but as many as you need for distinguishing listings.
Plan to add a widget for each category on the listings page. https://wpgeodirectory.com/docs/widgets/
Use tags in a deliberate and liberal manner. Plan ahead to add them yourself based on the category. Think ‘sounds like’ for search results.
Stick with one CPT if at all possible so you really just have one search.
Set your WP site to display 100 listings WP > Reading > Display 100 posts
Don’t use ‘nearby’ features until you need them because you have ‘too many’ listings.

January 6, 2018 at 7:17 pm #411708

jason balgopal
Full Member

Post count: 23

Alex:

Thx.
It could eventually be a national directory….just local right now, but I want to prepare it for the future.
Some services are governmental, some private.
That’s good advice to use one CPT (or just the basic: Places).
There might be 20 COURTHOUSES I’d start out with (as service locations)….and a number of other SERVICE LOCATIONS (i.e.: Probation & Parole offices not IN the courthouse, or Shelters, or Addictions Counselling offices, etc…)
Those could be found within 10 REGIONS
There could be 35 SERVICES in each COURTHOUSES (many are the same service in each courthouse [ie: prosecutor’s office], but with different data: tel#, etc.., and some with the same data: address will be the same for all services in a courthouse).
In the non-courthouse SERVICE LOCATIONS there would be usually many fewer (almost only 1) SERVICE in each of them (i.e.: in a P&P office NOT in a courthouse all they would do is probation matters)

_____

SO….does this make sense: 1. Change the name of PLACE to SERVICE, and then each listing should have as much info in the TITLE and DESCRIPTION as possible (I guess that is for “search” purposes?). then…
2. Use the CATEGORIES for the COURTHOUSE names.
3. Use the TAGS for the REGION.

Does that work?

It does NOT use the “TAGS” as liberally as you suggest (I’d only have about 10 of them).
AND, it uses the CATEGORIES for a LOT of Courthouses (35-ish)….but then the Courthouses would easily show on the listing map.

Thx

J

January 6, 2018 at 7:49 pm #411727

jason balgopal
Full Member

Post count: 23

Ahhh….I think it may be better to not use the REGION codes…perhaps I don’t need them.

In any case, I can use the TAGS for the “Type of Service” (and if I want also for the Region).

Any other suggestions?

Thx

January 6, 2018 at 8:24 pm #411739

Alex Rollin
Moderator

Post count: 27815

Hello!

You should use categories for services. Restrict categories to service related.
You should make a special package and add all the courthouses yourself, and restrict the courthouse category to the package for courthouse listings.
and Tags to add additional details or alternate names for categories (this is especially for the search value for the listings you yourself add to the site). It is hard to control what tags users will add.
Region will be handled by GeoDirectory in all likelihood, and you should proceed with setup of your site with dummy content to see how location pages work.

My favorite changes for ‘places’is to ‘listings’ but that is really up to you and the style of your site.

January 7, 2018 at 12:30 am #411771

Guust
Moderator

Post count: 29970

This is what I would do (if I understand correctly):

1. Create a SELECT custom field with the COURTHOUSES listed. Make it a required field.

2. Add that to the GD Search: https://wpgeodirectory.com/docs/gd-search/#select

3. Use categories for SERVICES (lawyer, counsellor, etc).
Add that to the GD Search too if you like: https://wpgeodirectory.com/docs/gd-search/#cat
Also create a category “courthouses” if you want to add a listing for each courthouse itself.

4. Let the Location Manager deal with the REGIONS automatically.

Now a visitor to your site can select from the GD Search: service type, courthouse, location and search any free text.

January 7, 2018 at 2:51 pm #411818

jason balgopal
Full Member

Post count: 23

Guust: Thx, that’s helpful.

The only difficulty with the CUSTOM FIELD to list the 35 or so courthouses, is that the backend entry field is very difficult to use to enter AND sort 35 entries. Also, is there a way to SORT the CUSTOM FIELD when trying to create a listing?

I’m sure I can SORT once the listings are created, but when they are created the COURTHOUSE FIELD is in the order I had entered them.

January 7, 2018 at 5:25 pm #411829

Alex Rollin
Moderator

Post count: 27815

Hello!

There are no built in tools for editing the field entries for the custom field, no, but you could use a spreadsheet and a formula. For the sorting, you could do that in the spreadsheet too. You can let us know if you would like help and contact with a GD Expert to help with that and the rest of your site setup.
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