I want to create a local directory website

Nat

Nat

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I want to create a local directory website. The best themes I've seen are wordpress themes, this one in particular because of the child themes: https://templatic.com/wordpress-directory-themes/

The only problem is that they are slow as heck. I don't want load time over a second, and its two-three. I'm not a coder, and I'm fine with putting money into a site, but is there anything better out there? Is it possible to hire someone to speed up that template?
 
Stephen said:
I'm in a similar situation to you, I am in the middle of building a site using these templates, I will look to hire someone also, perhaps we should get someone together as there must be some cost savings of doing two sites.
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Let me know if you find somebody!
 
Do those themes have cache and minify plugins installed? That might be all they need. Also, theme designers tend not to be aware of optimising their images so it could be that slowing things down too.
 
Tucky said:
Do those themes have cache and minify plugins installed? That might be all they need. Also, theme designers tend not to be aware of optimising their images so it could be that slowing things down too.
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Just in general I really wanted to stay away from WP. But, I haven't found a good looking theme / template that isn't WP. I haven't purchased one yet because I'm still looking and trying to get some advice. I did ask the developers of one of the themes to set me up a few test sites, and they were running on shared servers and page speed was around 3 seconds, even on pages without images. So, maybe they could be sped up with caching and stuff
 
Stephen said:
Yeah, as I remove the installed images and replace them from my own I am optimising them.

I'm going to see how it works when I add Cloudflare too.
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If this helps considerably, please update and let me know :smile:

Also, were you using the same theme in my OP, correct? I still haven't purchased the theme because I didn't want to waste the money if the load times were going to suck so badly.
 
Beyond your typical speed optimization, if every location is a separate post or custom post type, and city and state pages are being populated by custom loops and having to read the database a ton to get it done... Caching will help as to save a static version of those database objects, as will a CDN by offloading image and other files.

Beyond that, if those themes have social plugins loading a lot of external, off-site resources, I'd get rid of them. Nobody shares directories and most of this stuff isn't asynchronous. Depending on where it's placed in the theme it could slow down or block rendering too.

There's lots of places to make gains but your biggest and easiest non-technical wins will be:
  • Killing those social plugins
  • Caching
  • CDN
  • Getting onto a better server like a VPS with guaranteed resources allocated to your sites versus sharing them.
 
Ryuzaki said:
Beyond your typical speed optimization, if every location is a separate post or custom post type, and city and state pages are being populated by custom loops and having to read the database a ton to get it done... Caching will help as to save a static version of those database objects, as will a CDN by offloading image and other files.

Beyond that, if those themes have social plugins loading a lot of external, off-site resources, I'd get rid of them. Nobody shares directories and most of this stuff isn't asynchronous. Depending on where it's placed in the theme it could slow down or block rendering too.

There's lots of places to make gains but your biggest and easiest non-technical wins will be:
  • Killing those social plugins
  • Caching
  • CDN
  • Getting onto a better server like a VPS with guaranteed resources allocated to your sites versus sharing them.
Click to expand...

Thanks as always for the great advice! I'm deliberating on possibly just wasting the money on the theme and trying to see how fast I can speed it up. Working with /finding a designer can be difficult. If anyone on here can do this for me, feel free to send a pm :smile:
 
Full Disclosure: I haven't used a directory theme extensively.

But I stay away from them. Most of those themes seem to work on principle that you want what they have. And that's it.

On Customization

If you try to stray or deviate from their solution, it gets way hard because you will be modifying their code extensively, to which point you are at the literal mercy of their developer updates. Which is the secondary opportunity of the theme maker, directories of great value are often non-generic, and non-generic-ness requires a ton of customization- which they can offer, which is more out of the bank.

In the realm of wordpress plugins, you can only choose to manage so many before something breaks. And if you're willing to go for a hands on approach to customization, how would you know which theme to build on before you purchase them?

I went through at least 7 themes (one of them being the expensive as heck X Theme, and I bought 2 of them) before I settled on a kickass theme which I made my own, but still easily update-able. And I've become so familiar at that theme that I'm using it for all of my websites, one my sites has a directory end which internally is defined only by category and structure. Visually it looks distinguishable enough between an article, and a listing(it's not a listing, but let's say it is).

Personally, customizing a post via Code Snippets and PHP Code to latch on the functionality of a directory in a post, is lighter, faster, more robust, and let's you update it at anytime you want in a format you understand. I've seen directory/portfolio themes that create different post types, and I find them redundant besides letting you know that they are different internally, but should already know that.

Plus, is it future-ready? How do custom posts integrate with restful api and the wordpress app? That's the big hanging question I have for portfolio/directory themes. Which is why i stayed to be as close to stock wordpress, but with enough customization that it doesn't feel vanilla, and loving all the updates of the new wordpress app. Which means all my writing is done away from the admin panel, which is now solely used for tech stuff.

On Asset Building

After this local directory website is done- what's next? Is everything you've learned from this quickly reusable in the most effective or efficient outcome? I use the words asset building almost too often within my own circle, but what I almost never mention is that you are the biggest asset of all.

If you see yourself being able to keep reworking the directory for a few other assets, then that is fantastic! But if not, you have to ask yourself if what you are going to learn here is going to benefit you tangibly for the next website you build.

All experiences benefit intangibly, but only some experiences make you faster, better and stronger.
 
I find Wordpress too limiting to use for a directory site. You need to be able to collect user information so you can create reports to make decisions to help grow your directory.

Example / Why?:
  • how many new members signed up in a given time frame?
  • what is my churn rate?
  • what percentage of users are active on this site (logged in in the past month)
  • split testing sign up pages
I've run directory sites before where users will sign up for a subscription, then 2 months later forget all about it.
 
I have built two similar sites recently. One for a personal project and one for clients. I used Geodirectory for one and Directory Portal for another. There are always ways to speed a Wordpress site up if you have the skills or the money. Some of the main ones have already been mentioned in this thread. Also look at Plugin Organiser I have had some good speed gains from that in the past.

With both of the ones I used they offer you the basic thing but then upsell you tons of plugins so just be aware of that. You can absolutely build a fast directory on Wordpress, though. Caching, gZip and CDN and the main ones IMO. Plus minify and combine js and css.
 
If you are just creating a local directory based site. You could even take a stab at using an alternative CMS like Pico. Especially if you want speed. Lots of free html5 themes around the web to get you started as well.

The first attempt I made with a directory based site using WordPress was way too laggy. WordPress just isn't built for serving large directories. Not much fun for user experience.
 
knownerror said:
If you are just creating a local directory based site. You could even take a stab at using an alternative CMS like Pico. Especially if you want speed. Lots of free html5 themes around the web to get you started as well.

The first attempt I made with a directory based site using WordPress was way too laggy. WordPress just isn't built for serving large directories. Not much fun for user experience.
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again - it's what you make of it... just my 2 cents! :wink:
 
The sites I flipped last year were all directories on Wordpress that looped through 100's of locations per page with just as many images and custom fields, and even a Google map. I had them loading in one to two seconds each. That's not amazing but not bad at all for a page with 100+ images. A huge part is to cache the pages so your server isn't pulling the data out of the database on every page load. It can store it like it's static.

There's no real restriction to speed other than the number of image requests and other requests. These were state-wide pages for the United States. 1-2 seconds didn't impede my ability to rank. But 3 seconds would definitely annoy me. If you have location-based pages, like a page for each store in a city and it's still 3 seconds then that's probably the fault of the theme developer and not that it's a database.
 
Depending on your host, see if you can upgrade to PHP 7 as WordPress runs MUCH faster on PHP 7. On a VPS or dedicated box this should be pretty easy.
 
yuckystuff said:
Depending on your host, see if you can upgrade to PHP 7 as WordPress runs MUCH faster on PHP 7. On a VPS or dedicated box this should be pretty easy.
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Just to add to this, be careful when upgrading that you don't end up breaking your site. Have heard of that happening to some so be prepared to check to see if everything will run smoothly in 7. Cheers.
 
knownerror said:
Just to add to this, be careful when upgrading that you don't end up breaking your site. Have heard of that happening to some so be prepared to check to see if everything will run smoothly in 7. Cheers.
Click to expand...

This is very true. Core WordPress is 100% compatible with PHP 7 but if you're using out of date/abandoned plugins or themes that rely on deprecated methods you could run into issues. Not a problem if you're a developer but if your site is old and held together with duct tape you'll want to proceed with caution.
 
As an engineer I hate recommending wordpress, but it's going to be your best option if you like these themes.

I checked out a theme and it took 20 seconds to load the main document which was just 20k. You can go with the cheapest VPS you want and not worry about load time and CloudFlare will get you within your target load time without a problem.

I would think any VPS would be fast enough loading static content for any reasonable volume of traffic a site like this will get, but you can always opt to use a CDN for the images. I haven't done it myself with WP, but you definitely don't have to be an engineer to do it (http://john.onolan.org/how-to-use-a-cdn-with-wordpress/)
 
directory is a good plan. How about making a mobile apps for the directory. I have no idea on mobile apps. But it would be nice to check on mobile apps too.
 
Bumping this thread :smile:

Nat and Stephen, how did you get on?

I'm thinking of building a site which has a directory but is not solely focused on it. So it would be a magazine type theme that also has a directory section and a members area that allows them to write their own blogs within the site. It would be niche focussed. Question is, do I find a magazine template and look for a directory and members add-on or the other way around? I don't imagine there is something that fits my idea out of the box.
 
Tucky said:
Bumping this thread :smile:

Nat and Stephen, how did you get on?
Click to expand...

I started this thread, got a paid theme, experienced some major difficulties with it, realized I wasn't very passionate about local directories, and essentially put the project on a full hold. I would not recommend paying for a directory theme unless you are sure it has all the features you need, plus it will be maintained, plus it was actually coded well... the one I got ended up having some issues and was a huge pain. On the flip side, if you want clients to be able to sign-up and pay for a listing through the site, you'll need to put some serious effort into coding the interface (or paying for one).

I think the veterans who have posted in this thread have given some pretty damn good advice for anyone looking to start up one of these sites (which is why I never commented anything about pausing the project, I know the info in here will be extremely beneficial to people down the road).

Tucky said:
I'm thinking of building a site which has a directory but is not solely focused on it. So it would be a magazine type theme that also has a directory section and a members area that allows them to write their own blogs within the site. It would be niche focussed. Question is, do I find a magazine template and look for a directory and members add-on or the other way around? I don't imagine there is something that fits my idea out of the box.
Click to expand...

To clarify, are you building a WP site? When you say "allows them to write their own blogs," is that separate from the directory? If it is separate, look into this.

There are a number of directory plugins available for WP, but I've never used any.
 
Thanks Nat. Yes it was going to be a wp site purely because that is the system I'm used to. I have seen on other sites where members can write their own posts for the site itself. This can be a great way to get new content added regularly if you can build a good community. Some people just love to write and mention their lives and what they do in that niche. I know that can have issues itself with spammy content so it would require some moderation.
 
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