Create a web directory with the Listable template

The Listable template is a template for create a web directory in wordpress. The directory that we can mount with this template can be free or we can charge our users.

You can template buy here o free download if you're premium member.

If you are not subscribed to the Premium Zone you can give sign up for €10/month here

Here is the video tutorial:

There are other templates that do this function like vantage template but the Listable template has a more refined design and has some aspects that make it much more powerful and scalable than other solutions.

This template uses several plugins to give it directory functionality. This element is crucial since we do not have the functionality in the template and in the future we could change it for another one and the functionality would not be lost.

In addition, to convert our directory into a paid directory, use WooCommerce, the most advanced plugin to convert a website into a WordPress store.

In this way we are ensuring that our directory will have a very powerful store at all levels, thanks to the huge community behind WooCommerce.

On the other hand, if we use the Vantage template, having the functionality within the template is much more limited in all aspects related to collection and converting our website into a paid directory.

The template design is great and you can see a screenshot below:

 

As you can see the design is very good 😉

Let's set it up.

I will start from the fact that you have WordPress recently installed, as you can see in the following screen:

If you don't know how to install wordpress on the premium zone you have a WordPress course to know how to get to this point easily.

Once we have WordPress installed we are going to install the Listable template that will guide us through the installation process.

To do this we go to Appearance -> Themes -> Add new and upload our template, activate it and once activated we will find a screen like the following:

One thing that I really like about this template is that it guides us and we can assemble the template automatically.

If we look at the previous screenshot, it tells us that it requires installing certain plugins and that it also recommends others.

We click on "Begin installing plugin" and we start installing the plugins you need.

We select all the plugins and install them:

Once they have all been installed, we return to the installer by clicking on the "Return to Required Plugins Installer" button.

Although we install them all at once, I recommend activating them one by one so that we don't have any problems.

We are activating all, in some of the plugins it will take us to a configuration screen.

The first one that takes us to a configuration screen is the “WP Job Manager” plugin.

This plugin is the one that will convert our website into a directory website, it will treat each establishment that we are going to add as a job or any other type of website that needs a listing, as is the case with the directory website.

We click on “Continue to Page setup”.

On this page we translate the texts of each of the pages as best suits us:

We click on "Create Selected pages" and on the next screen we continue activating the plugins again by clicking on "Activate installed plugins"

We continue activating the rest and once they are all activated, clicking on any WordPress option will skip the WooCommerce installer:

We click on "Let's go" to start the configuration. In this first tutorial I am not going to stop and configure it in detail since we will do it later, now we are only going to do the most basic configuration.

The first thing it will ask me is where my store is located and what currency and units I want to use:

On the next screen I deactivate the options since I am not going to send physical products:

Now we can configure the payment methods that we are going to allow in our directory. As it is very important, we will dedicate time to it later. Now I'm just going to activate the "Bank Transfer" payment method so I can test the purchase process later.

At this point we have already configured (above) our store and we can continue with the process to have the website as it appears in the demo. We click on “Return to the WordPress Dashboard”

At this point we already have our template installed but it still doesn't look like the demo. At the moment our website looks like this:

Although it seems that we are very far from our final result, this is not how you will see below.

Now let's install the demo content. The demo content creates adapted test content for us and also adds all the widgets and configuration of the main page and interior pages.

To do this we go to Appearance –> Customize –> Theme Options –> Demo Data –> Import demo data

This process will take a while since you have to import all the content. If you get an error because your server stops the process, I recommend that you install the plugin “WP Maximum Execution Time Exceeded”, that way your server will increase the execution time and let you continue with the process. This plugin has no options, you just activate it and it starts working.

And now if I go back to the main page of my website I already have the entire website mounted:

 

Although in later videos I am going to tell you how the template works in depth, in this video I want to comment on a few things so that you do not go crazy trying to find them.

To configure the main page if we edit the page we will realize that not all the elements that we see on the main page seem to us:

How can we see the Title that appears on our page matches the title when editing. We can find the subtitle a little further down where it says “Page Subtitle”. We see that it matches our page:

Below the body of the message (what we have empty) we can find the 3 fields of our search engine, if we deactivate any of them it will not appear on our website.

And the field that appears when editing the page as "Front Page -> Highlighted Categories" is the highlighted categories separated by commas. What we separate by commas is the url of each category and in parentheses the name we want to appear:

If we go to Listings –> Categories we see that it matches:

Everything that appears below is not found in the page edition, but in the widgets:

They are the Front Pages Sections Zones:

And so far the first tutorial of this wonderful template 😉

If you are not subscribed to the Premium Zone you can give sign up for €10/month here

I hope you liked it

regards

Oscar