Vantage Business Directory Theme Preview

Update! We’ve released Vantage. Please make sure you view the following blog posts to see the current state of this theme and future plans:

We’ve been quietly working away on a special theme which will be our most advanced WordPress App to-date. Vantage is not your typical business directory. It’s a powerful social networking business directory and can be better explained by breaking it down into three primary pieces:

Local Search

Vantage provides online local search capabilities for site visitors. Typically a visitor will search for a specific thing (i.e. a sandwich shop) and the location (i.e. a specific address, city, state, or zip code). This is all done using the Google Maps API and leveraging geo coordinates since they are the most accurate measure of distance.

Each business listing result contains details such as the business address, hours, website, description, etc. It also includes a 5-point rating system and reviews from other site members which are built up over time.Β The business owners can directly update their own business’ listing information via the Vantage customer account area.

Listings are organized by city/state and a multi-tier categorization system. Content and listings can also be discovered through categorized reviews or via Vantage member profiles and their review lists.

Community

Having a solid community will help your site grow in leaps and bounds. Vantage automatically does this for you as it ties together user reviews and social networking functionality to create a local online community. Allowing your members to keep track of their reviews and displaying popular reviews on your site helps motivate contributors.

Vantage also plans on including a “First to Review” reward system to create a competition among contributing members, further motivating the creation of reviews and adding more unique content to your site.

Events

Besides local business listings, an events system is also an important feature to have. Not only does it allow your members to create and advertise their offline events (i.e. car show, bbq, WordPress meetup, etc) it further helps to grow and involve your community.

Each event will have specific details like location, date/time, description, etc. Members can view the event and “Attend” so the event creator knows how many people to expect. This system will use an events custom post type and specific taxonomies to keep it separate from business listings and blog posts.

Now that should give you a much better picture of what to expect from Vantage. We’d also like to list out the high-level features to help answer some of your other questions.

Feature highlights include:

  • Monetizing your site by selling business listings
  • Build and foster your own user community
  • Business reviews and rating system
  • Allow your members to create event listings
  • Home page & category featured listing system
  • Custom post types & taxonomies for business listings
  • Custom post types & taxonomies for events
  • Save this and favorites bookmarking
  • Twitter & Facebook integration
  • Customer account area to manage business listing
  • Separate blog to promote your directory
  • Create your own custom fields and business listing forms
  • Search by keyword and/or location
  • Interactive Google maps for business listings & events
  • Multiple advertising spaces
  • Fully widgetized sidebar & footer
  • and much more!

Launch Date

We’ve spent the last couple of months on the design and getting the layout just right which has taken longer than we expected. In turn, it has pushed back the development so we just recently got underway. We know how important this theme is to everyone which is why we are doing our best to get it completed asap.

In order to do so, we have pushed back the release date back a few extra weeks to November 5th see our theme release status page for the latest status on Vantage. We know, you of course want it now but a product this advanced takes time to build correctly. πŸ™‚

Here are some screenshots of Vantage:

Our development team is doing their best to get this built quickly. We are always open to your feedback and suggestions but any new feature requests will have to wait for the next release since everything is already locked in for v1.0.

Your rating: none
Rating: 4 - 1 vote

 Comments (213)

  • Pjetr

    I also have a feature request, for advertising that you can add banners per category, so for /restaurants you can place restaurant advertisement banners /cars car banners etc..

    i will buy it πŸ™‚ good luck

    Like
  • Luke

    If you can add subgategories under welcome/about
    for instance art – restaurants etc i will buy it

    Good job keep on working !

  • pete

    Hi,

    I have been looking forward to this for a while. Am using clasipress or a few sites and love it! I was about translating this theme. I would like to create a spanish site but would like for it to be translated to english, german and portuguese. What i mean is my user will be entering all posts in spanish, is there a translator plugin that would work or this theme? Or something similar?

    Thanks again. Cant wait to purchase.
    pete

  • Jim

    Hi David, just wondering (if not to much to ask) if it would be possible to get the screens in this blog post in say a 1024pixels size rather than 600pixels. I would like to design my own skin around your design and this would be handy to start with. Thanks

  • Andy

    Will it be possible for registered users to blog on the website with Ventage as a WordPress Theme/app? Let’s assume that I want to build a pet community, can I do this with Vantage? What are the limitations?

    Can you tell me a little more about the community functions/support? What will be offered? Can users make groups, discussions or “forums”?

    Does it have any “viral quiz og competition functions”?

    I am used to use a community application called Jomsocial (Joomla). Will it be possible to integrate joomla/wordpress and to use Jomsocial & joomla modules inside this theme or the other way around?

    I host several high traffic and large user sites and own more than 300 domain names, how can I be sure that it I start using your themes don’t get a lot of support needs? Is it full access to all files and codes?

    Do you think that january/february will be a realistic date?
    I need to know, business has to go on πŸ™‚

    /Andy

    Like
    Anonymous likes this.
  • Leo

    Hi David,

    Any progress on Vantage theme? The reason I am asking is just that, I haven’t heard any news on that. Would you be able to let us know?

    • author
      David

      @Leo, we haven’t made much progress on Vantage (due to a number of reasons) and will be moving the estimated release date range out at least two months. Not the answer you wanted to hear but I just wanted to set the correct expectations.

      We still need to launch Clipper and ClassiPress v3.1 before we can start making headway on Vantage. The theme release status page that Carson pointed out is the most accurate gauge of our progress so check that often. We try and update it once a week.

      • customer
        Lerry Sumawiganda

        @David, quick question on Vantage. How can I generate money with Vantage? Who would “add a business” ? Please advise.

      • customer
        Ms Mohale

        David, this is one HOT theme even before it’s officially released. We’re all waiting for it to unleash various directories. It’s totally in a league of its own, compared to what has been released by your competitors.

        I just can’t wait…due to the huge demand, I would have expected that you dedicate all your resources to it.

        • author
          David

          @Mohale, and we’re chomping at the bit to work on it further.

          It’s our mistake for providing a sneak peek way too early. We’ve now learned to keep the wraps on future themes until they are much closer to completion.

          Like
          Anonymous likes this.
      • Dario

        David

        Working on a new version instead of finishing ClassiPress Vantage is absurd, even more so to postpone the date of departure 6 months.

        ClassiPress is a product they already have in existence, a new version of it is not necessary. Instead they could end Vantage as promised several times.

        At this point on AppThemes confidence is lost, I’m sure Vantage is an excellent product, but this is the fourth time defer the date of this release and unfortunately it is a mistake.

        As a prospective client and I feel cheated and decided to seek another solution instead of this endless waiting.

        • Mi

          Hello,

          I agree that it is better to delay a bit to launch a new theme then to launch it with bugs. However, i canΒ΄t understand why to priorize new versions of already stable products like Classipress instead of the launching of the new theme that everyone is expecting. I have more then one classipress site and i will love to have new features on it but they are ok and stable and i would rather have vantage to start using it on new sites then to have a newer version of Classipress. So im disapointed as well with the new date, as many im waiting for it since october, and i see less important (in my opinion) things are getting done first and vantages just getting pushed.

        • Ann

          Dario, can you recommend an alternative? I really need to get my project going. Would love to use Vantage, but I don’t know how much longer I can fight off the wolves. You can reach me directly through my site http://www.suedestudio.com. Thanks -Ann

    • Launch Vantage Quicker

      I’ve created a “Launch Vantage Quicker” campaign on Facebook. See here: http://www.facebook.com/pages/Prioritise-development-of-Vantage-ahead-of-other-Apps/178226655534600?v=app_4949752878

  • carson

    Leo,

    Trust me I want to know also, but check out:

    http://appthemes.com/releases/

  • Leo

    Thank you so much for your quick response! Hope you guys have a great holiday and business so will those people who use your apps.

  • Karina

    I was hoping that it was ready by now. πŸ™

  • House

    it has been pushed two more months back? Should I just hope for 2012?

  • Leo

    This is sad!!

  • Evo

    Another delay!
    Why not make updates for the finished products like Classipress after you have completed the development of your new products such as Vantage.
    There is obviously huge demand for Vantage so why not make that a priority, and complete updates of existing products later.
    @David your reasons for the delays make no sense

  • Leo

    Actually, It’s not that bad if the expectation wasn’t set correctly in the beginning. However, how can you make us confident in the product support after you release it? For example to say if you released version 1.0 Vantage and we desperately need bug fixes and improvements for 1.1 and we would just have to wait for it a couple of month one and another?

    The theme release status does look nice but it doesn’t actually solve any problems and it also does not have an even close expectation. (I only care about when you will be able to deliver a product, the that date line I hope will be carefully thought). First of all, the status bar doesn’t mean anything, I would prefer to see a timeline on each feature you are trying to work out. Secondly, the target date always change. I understand that everybody has his or her excuses while having trouble to meet up deadlines doing business, but in real world business, how would you tell your customers if they have already signed up a contract with you and paid for the software to be completed by a choosing date? They can accept one excuse but I am not sure if they can accept one after another excuses.

    I am sorry to say all of these, I really love all themes you guys developed, but I am just a littler frustrated seeing the target date moved from some time in November to Jan and then to Mar or April. When we are in business, you know time really matters.

    Please forgive me by saying thing might make you guys mad, just remember because I care about you guys and your business that’s why I share my thoughts with you.

  • customer
    net dev

    Hello

    Quick question on vantage if the new release is going to support cleeng plugin?

    Thanx

  • Chris

    Merry Christmas to all of you at appthemes!
    PLEASE, get your skates on with Vantage – it’s going to be absolutely perfect for my little business in 2011. It’s all I want for Christmas!

  • Eric

    Hi,
    Do you plan to launch a press release WordPress theme someday ?

  • Marcio Santos

    Hello I use ClassiPress and I wonder if I can migrate to VANTAGE without resetting all my categories and ads.
    I’m waiting. Thanks!

  • Ann

    I’ve been stalking the progress of this theme since I first learned of it in summer 2010. Is there any chance we could pay now and get started with a beta version? It might be a win-win, since we can get started and you can get feedback from clients. Just a thought…

    • author
      dcowgill

      @Ann, we don’t have a beta version ready yet otherwise that would be a great idea.

Discussion is closed.