This is a semi-major upgrade with lots of fixes and goodies. Towards our goals for BePro Listings 3, we have made strong progress. Specifically, of the list of improvements we set for ourselves, we made strong progress on the following
- Increased support for different schema markup
- Add location information to listing URLs
- Increased control of Map related features
- Look and feel enhancements
Fixes
As we continue to build on the BePro Business Directory on our live websites OutdoorPhotographyCanada.com and BePro Themes.com, we have pushed the plugin to its limits. This has provided us with insight into aspects that needed to be fixed. These included
- Increased security and sanitizing of submitted post content
- When ajax search is turned off, the search still works
- There are recursive elements when saving a listing. We made this more efficient
Improvements
As we pushed the plugin, we noticed aspects that absolutely needed to improve. These aspects worked as advertised; however, we saw the need for them to do more. Aspects to examine for improvements include
- Recent Listings widget now offers up to 10 listings VS just 5
- The display_listings shortcode had some beta code for searching the database state field. We made this code official and added the ability to search the city field via shortcode options
New Features
As noted at the beginning of the article, we are delivering new features to the free plugin that we believe many users will like. Let’s break down each feature and consider how you could make use of it
Schema Markup
Schema markup is code (semantic vocabulary) that you put on your website to help the search engines return more informative results for users. Since BePro Listings supports any type of directory, we created the following markup options:
- LocalBusiness
- CreativeWork
- Event
- FoodEstablishment
- Intangible
- MedicalEntity
- Organization
- Product
- Person
- Place
- RealEstateListing
SEO Address URLS
We couldn’t figure out a better name so there it is. For those with our new SEO feature activated as well as the Geo feature, the address will be added to the url. This is invaluable for those trying to rank for terms like “near me“. So a listing like “Example Title” will have an URL like yoursite.com/example-title-city-state-country-zipcode-address
More Control Of Map Features
This is still in the works. We have lots of great features to deliver here. For now, what we have delivered is the ability to showcase listings from a geographic region without using an API. Before, this was not possible via shortcode at all. The important leap forward is not just the addition of the feature but it just searches the database. So the obvious issue here is that if your listing or shortcode option are misspelled then records won’t show up. The obvious benefit is that you don’t have to pay google or mapbox just to show your listings.
Look and Feel Enhancements
We are making strong strides towards this goal but we are not there yet. Ultimately, BePro Listings should look good in as many themes as possible. For now, we have implemented the following:
- Optional Bootstrap mobile styles
- Default listings layout is now full width
- Tweak default style of various elements including user profile
Conclusion
As we continue to use BePro Listings ourselves, we have found deficiencies and opportunities. The recent rapid updates benefit the entire community but they are specifically focused on what we are learning in the field. Just like automakers learn in F1 racing, we are learning through our live websites. Rather than just guessing what customers need, we are the primary customers of BePro Listings and continue to improve the plugin to fit our needs. We think this is a unique advantage of BePro Listings over other directory solutions.
