Very Unsure
This topic contains 14 replies, has 6 voices, and was last updated by 
Stiofan O’Connor 9 years, 9 months ago.
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August 10, 2014 at 7:36 am #11532
I purchased GeoDirectory to join a forum of leading experts on the subject, and believe GeoDirectory has the features I need.
The problem is, after 15 years of working in this field (mostly custom PHP coding/involved SQL work), I feel like a complete moron with this set of plugins.
After installing twice, the default theme has blocks all over the place and looks virtually nothing like the relatively crisp demo. Trying to figure out how to move anything is a chore, and it appears no one is hanging out on the jobs board for hire. I’m willing to pay fairly for support, but we’re directed to the jobs board for paid assistance – and it seems no one is home.
My point is, for someone new to the theme and in need of getting up and running, it appears GeoDirectory is very much a no man’s land where you throw money into the general fund but are very much on your own.
It would be very wise for the publishers of this product to actively cultivate a support team which can offer expert level assistance, for pay, to assure someone who needs the product working and needs support can get it in a reasonable time.
It appears we’ve thrown some money down a rat hole here, and that is unwelcome news.
I’m not saying the product isn’t what it claims. I’m saying the support via the forums is completely hit/miss, and when you’re told to “go to the jobs board” where there is no one willing to work (even for pay) and the tickets are all unresolved… is that a product which is well managed for actual competitive deployment?
Unfortunately, this has been money wasted. We can’t build a business on a project with a very haphazard support method and no experts who can assist for market rate pay.
I’m not angry, but I seriously wish we had not bought into this product. I think GeoDirectory means well, but is going to gather a number of people like me who buy it based upon the promised feature set – then toss it aside in disgust. When you can’t even beg to pay for legit support, it’s not a product.
It’s almost like playing a version of Sims… SimsDirectory, where you spend the entire day building for points but accomplish nothing in the real world.
I’m really disappointed. Throw out the flames and tell me I’m an idiot if you like, but this product is not a mature contender in a commercial services marketplace. Perhaps I should have used GeoTheme which may have more knowledgeable people accessible, but GeoDirectory as it is seems to exist as Beta vaporware.
If anyone knows if actual paid support people exist for this product, please let me know. Aside from that, I feel this is not ready for prime time software and I’ve been duped into investing in it.
Debate me on this. I want this project to work, but as of yet it’s been completely terrible and unfit for any actual purpose.
August 10, 2014 at 8:02 am #11533Hi Jason
After reading your post, I had a search for any of your earlier posts.
I found two support posts you started and both are waiting for your reply.
Support will only know that further action is required on a topic, when you reply after they ask questions that would allow them to further assist.The team behind GeoDirectory are the same people as GeoTheme, so you can expect the same dedication and support.
The jobs board is mainly to let developers that are familiar with GD (but who are not part of the GD team) know that you want a hand. Please see the Jobs policy on the right hand side of this page. The jobs forum is not to get paid support, support is free for premium members, see https://wpgeodirectory.com/support-policy/
Please see also my post in the jobs forum.
August 10, 2014 at 8:50 am #11537I couldnt agree more with this statement – maybe someone will take notice. Its been a total waste of money, time and effort so far. Its run like a hobby not a business – with fixes maybe happening when the developers feel like it.
Unfortunately, this has been money wasted. We can’t build a business on a project with a very haphazard support method and no experts who can assist for market rate pay.
I’m not angry, but I seriously wish we had not bought into this product. I think GeoDirectory means well, but is going to gather a number of people like me who buy it based upon the promised feature set – then toss it aside in disgust. When you can’t even beg to pay for legit support, it’s not a product.
August 10, 2014 at 10:31 am #11543Hi guys.
Let me assure you we are dedicated to this and you have not wasted ur money. We have just taken on a new full time develpoer and we will be releasing updates ever week from or as needed.
Our support policy is to support our products functionality but customisation is not support and we try to avoid this so we can concentrate on making our products better. I will however try and find a good developer to man the jobs section off his own back, thank you for bringing this to my attention.
Jason if you can reply as a private message with your Skype address on Monday I can work through any problems you have and hopefully get you in a better place.
Thanks,
Stiofan
August 10, 2014 at 10:49 am #11545I want to be very clear. I am not an angry customer with little knowledge taking my misunderstanding out on the product.
I’m a serious developer who is trying to use your software to customize a directory. That’s what you build, directory software.
If you open your own demo on an iPhone 5, the map is so large and unwieldy no one can actually use it for an actual application. When I installed the GeoDirectory core theme on my own host, the blocks are all out of whack and I feel stupid trying to find out how to move them. It’s as if someone put all the ingredients of the world’s best apple pie in a pan and forgot to bake it.
The end user, both those of us buying GeoDirectory, and those who would use the resulting applications, must be considered. As it is, I’ll put a $500 reward out for anyone who can use GeoDirectory as it is and actually build a working model which would be competitive in the marketplace for any real world purpose. Right now it’s a bunch of coded toys tossed in a box, and I’ve yet to see a demonstration of it that I can point to and say “Yes, people will use this to actually connect with my business.”
GeoDirectory is marketed as a mature solution, natural successor to GeoTheme and has a great looking landing page that tends to fall apart when you try to dig into the nuts and bolts of the demo.
Now, caveat emptor. As a customer, I have a responsibility to purchase products fit for a particular purpose. I saw “Geolocation” and “Directory” and bought into the GD (appropriately lettered at the moment) because I wanted to believe it would be useful.
Your own demo throws “Sorry, no record were found. Please adjust your search criteria and try again” ALL the time, and the demo theme I installed looked nothing like I expected. Attempting to modify it is a pure lesson in frustration, and I was coding in Perl at 15 years old. I’m not the smartest person in the room, but if I can’t make sense of a theme product for WordPress either I need to retire and shoot myself or the product is faulty.
The bottom line?
GeoDirectory should not be in the marketplace. Not yet. It’s a high minded product with lots of potential bells and whistles. It’s not baked yet.
What do I need as a customer?
I need a directory which takes less than 45 seconds to load which enables me to create locations, attach products and services to those locations, sort by distance from me, have reliable review functions and reasonably adept administrative features.
I need people to be able to find products and services via a location aware directory. That was the promise of GeoDirectory, and it was released perhaps a year too early.
Unfortunately, I have work to do. I have wasted perhaps a dozen hours trying to tool around GeoDirectory and make sense of it. Having thoroughly failed, I have to find another set of tools, spend more money, cross another learning curve and put a project together for a client.
Your home page says, in some bold letters, “… location based business directory portal you always dreamed of.”
I’d take that down in a hurry, put up a Coming Soon page, and visit the nearest Catholic confessional until this product can live up to that slogan. Right now it can’t, we know it can’t, you know it can’t, and if GeoTheme is the wonderful product it’s reputed to be you are doing it a disservice with this catastrophe.
At the end of the day, I’m your cheerleader. I’m a guy with ten projects in the works who NEEDS YOUR PRODUCT and WANTS TO PAY FOR EXPERT HELP to make it work like the proverbial charm. I could not be any more excited about GeoDirectory, yet business is business and we have to be extremely honest from the heart about where our projects lay.
When it’s not a buggy mess with inaccurate marketing slogans, I’ll come back. When I can actually hire someone who knows how to make it work, I’ll be the first to jump in and pay whatever is necessary and fair to support the project and those who build it.
You have done a disservice to me by wasting my time and accepting payment for a project which isn’t anywhere near valid as a functional directory portal.
Jason Kibby
Chattanooga, Tennessee
423-544-1801August 10, 2014 at 11:06 am #11546Jason I appreciate your feedback even if I don’t agree with it, feedback is how we make things better. There are many live sites out there making money and we have had several appreciation emails from customers who have created thriving businesses from GD.
I am not sure what has gone so wrong for you but i would love to hear first hand and I am happy to chat about it on Skype, I don’t want you wasting anymore time, it would be best if we could chat and figure it out what’s going on.
I will be off for the rest of the day but we can chat on Monday and hopefully get you in a better place.
Thanks,
Stiofan
August 10, 2014 at 11:11 am #11547Would it be possible to see one of these working, successful, profitable installs in action? It would help to guide us while we attempt to make sense of it.
August 10, 2014 at 11:32 am #11550I am out at lunch at the moment and replying off my phone. Hopefully one of them will see this and reply, if not I will get a link to you Monday.
Thanks
stiofan
August 10, 2014 at 12:14 pm #11552Hi Jason. The blocks all over the place will probably be happening because the content being output is not going in to the correct html wrappers.
It is fairly straightforward to resolve this by using the many available action hooks to replace the output wrappers with the ones your theme uses.There are several compatibility plugins already developed which do this, so you may want to glance at those to get an idea of what is needed.
Alternatively I will happily look at helping you to do this for your particular theme.
There are also some new themes being released very shortly (one for GDF and two for Genesis) which should see you up-and-running very quickly.
August 10, 2014 at 12:37 pm #11555This reply has been marked as private.August 10, 2014 at 1:59 pm #11560Jason
+1 For telling it like it is.
Amazing, this post gets 3 instant individual replies from the development team, while being able to correctly set addresses on the map in GD is not on anyone’s priority list.
Enough said!
August 10, 2014 at 5:12 pm #11562Attached is a screen shot which explains my woe.
The “directory you’ve always dreamed of” returns an outsized logo, blank map that covers the iPhone screen and is useless, chopped off text and unwieldy search functions.
My issue isn’t that GeoDirectory is a work in progress. My issue is it’s for sale. I’m not sure what you saw tooling around my REM cycles, but this is not my dream. If I delivered this to a client I’d be laughed out of the room followed by a trip to General Sessions court; you’re using it as an in progress demo.
This is beta test stage, and not very far along in beta. This is the stage at a software company where everyone shows up at a round table with their homemade API’s, coffee stained notes, PhpMyAdmin logins and beer to chat about assembling the ideas for testing.
I want this to work, and would have been willing to give years of expertise toward testing and helping make this kill the marketplace.
Instead, this is killing your customers’ time and money. I’m not sure we know why this is in the marketplace, and why we’re all essentially unwitting venture capitalists for a product not terribly far out of conception.
I would not have released this for pay. I would be afraid of reading what I’m typing.
Again, I’m your cheer team. You purport to know our dreams, let us alliterate them so you might finish this to build a product we truly do need.
I do not want my money back and I believe I represent a number of customers’ emotions.
The next step is actually putting it together and not being afraid of asking for opinion. I know I have several. This is constructive criticism, but make no mistake, it is strong criticism.
Releasing strong software is the hallmark of company integrity.
A mobile friendly site should populate a list quickly, sort the results by distance and/or relevence based on various criteria and keep the pointer map separate so it’s actually useful when it fills the page on its own. The checkmarks on the map are not mobile friendly, and trying to get the map out of the way to reach content is difficult on iPhone and Android.
Think user user user user user. Real location apps (even their HTML5 web cousins) don’t put maps in place for show. They search by criteria and present well designed lists which link to further information. Here, we need that criteria to include geolocation.
Let us be your sounding board. We’re not terribly far from a useful product. I’d be thrilled to speak with you at any time if you need real world feedback, and encouragement. We’re displeased for valid reason. It can be fixed.
I am done sending unfortunate truth. I hope we all work together positively as customers with a company we want to see succeed with this product.
Thanks again,
Jason Kibby
Chattanooga, TN
423-544-1801
facebook.com/jasonsayshiAugust 11, 2014 at 12:40 am #115731. Your layout problems sound like css and/or theme related issues and the guys on the support forum have gone way beyond their support obligations to help newbies with css and design issues.
2. Your custom code requirements go beyond those normally found in a “directory” product and there are plenty of wordpress developers who could assist you; they don’t need to have GD experience. If I was you I would try to find someone local that you can talk face to face with.
3. I agree with your sentiments however that GD is an evolving product and this creates problems for those of us that want to do serious work with it when we have to wait 3 weeks+ between bug fixes.
August 11, 2014 at 12:36 pm #11633This reply has been marked as private.August 11, 2014 at 6:11 pm #11665I have setup a page to report location manager add listings address problems, please test and report finding, i will be working on this most of tomorrow to get it as close to perfect as we can so please voice your concerns/suggestions here https://wpgeodirectory.com/support/topic/location-manager-please-test-and-report/
Thanks,
Stiofan
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