Listable Directory Theme Review: The Easy Way to Create a WordPress Directory Website
The Listable WordPress theme from Pixelgrade has been created to help you build a fully functional online directory as easily as possible.
Listable aims to simplify the process of creating a directory or listings website with WordPress, but the developers have also attempted to include all of the essential features needed for this type of site in one package.This is in addition to a good selection of those nice to have features that help improve the overall experience.
These features and functionality have been wrapped up in a stylish and modern design that will help convey to your visitors that your directory website is a professionally run service that can be trusted to provide reliable information and services.
Traditionally, building a directory website hasn’t been easy.Therefore, in this Listable WordPress theme review, we’ll be exploring the features on offer in more detail and finding out what its like to use this theme to build a listings website with WordPress.
Whether you want to build a local listings website of the best restaurants in your area or a global database of freelance developers, or somewhere in between, Listable aims to be the only tool you’ll need.So, let’s get started with our hands on Listable WordPress theme review.
Listable WordPress Theme Review: The Features
A good online directory will allow you and your visitors to submit listings to your website, with the ability to add all the relevant information about the entity being featured.A good directory website will also include front-end submission forms that make adding the listings straightforward and custom fields to store the data for each listing more efficiently.
When creating a listings website, it’s nice to also have the option of monetizing your website.Popular monetization methods include offering pricing plans and packages to users who want to add listings, displaying adverts, or creating sponsored listing opportunities.
Other useful features you might want to see in a directory website builder include e-commerce capabilities for selling products from the site, an attractive design with easy to use customization tools, and a mobile friendly user interface and layout.
Now, let’s find out if Listable includes all the features needed to run a professional online directory or listings website.
Attractive Modern Responsive Design
While a directory website – whether it’s listing remote jobs worldwide or the best fitness centers in a specific city – needs a certain set of essential features, the design will make or break the project.
Thankfully, the Listable directory theme features a highly modern design that will give your listings website a professional look and feel.The design is fully responsive to ensure your mobile and tablet-using visitors can access your site as easily as everyone else.
The category listings pages look great, as do the individual listings.With Listable, it’s easy to add multiple photos to each listing and all of the necessary information and a custom map.
Listable also includes some attractive blog post layouts and templates.
Although you are building an online directory, your website really should have a blog.Adding one will allow you to use content marketing to attract more visitors to your website, as well as having a way to provide additional useful information to your target audience.
The posts on your blog needn’t be constrained by the limits of the default WordPress post editor.With Listable, you can create attractive layouts for your posts and present your blog content in different ways.
Fully Customizable
As we’ll soon see in the user experience section of this review, the Listable theme is highly customizable.Creating a custom homepage layout is very straightforward, as is changing the appearance of your website in many ways.
Website Setup Wizard
As building a directory website includes many steps and essential elements, knowing where to start and ensuring you’ve completed all of the necessary tasks can be difficult.Thankfully, Listable includes a helpful walkthrough or setup wizard that will guide you through the process of building your online directory.
This includes ensuring you have the recommended and required plugins installed on your site and creating the pages that your directory will need.
You also have the option of importing the demo data to quickly build out the foundation of your site and populate it with sample content.
Once you begin to use your website after installing the theme and required plugins, many helpful tool tips will be displayed to guide you through the main features and ensure you make the most of what Listable offers.
We’ll look at how easy it really is to setup this theme in the next section.However, on paper, at least, it looks like it includes all the tools you’ll need to build your own directory website with WordPress.
Monetization Options
As much of the directory functionality of the Listable theme is powered by the WP Job Manager plugin , you have the option of installing a range of extra add-ons.
Amongst the features that these extensions will add to your site, you’ll be able to charge your users a fee for submitting their listings to your website.This enables you to turn your online directory into a source of revenue that not only helps your target audience but also generates an income.
Highly Extensible
As well as the monetization related add-ons for WP Job Manager, there are plenty of other extensions to choose from.This opens up a whole world of functionality for your directory, including:
– [Adding Products/Deals to Listings]
– [Adding Bookings to Listings]
– [Organizing Listings With Categories and Tags/Amenities]
– [Adding Social Login & Registration]
Listable Directory Theme Review: User Experience
Now that we’ve established that Listable has all the features needed to run an online directory with a great looking design to match, it’s time to look at the quality of the user experience on offer.This section of the Listable directory theme review will explore how easy your website will be to use, from both the site administrator and end user perspectives.
Demo Content Import
The best place to start after installing and activating the theme and the required plugins is to install the demo content.This gives you a good template to work from when setting up your site.The sample content also makes it easier to understand how the theme and its plugins work.
Thankfully, the demo import feature works well.After accessing the corresponding menu item through the WordPress Customizer, you can import all the demo content and have your site setup and ready for use.
With just a few clicks, you can import all of the content and have a site that closely resembles the demo version of the Listable theme.
Now, it’s time to configure the site’s settings to ensure your directory works in the way you want.
Configuring Your Online Directory Website
Through the Listings settings page, you can configure how the listings in your directory are handled.
This includes your preferences related to handling expired listings, how the listing filters work, and whether to enable categories for your listing entries.
The Submission panel allows you to configure how listings are accepted and published as well as who can submit them.As Listable gives you a good amount of control in this department, you should easily be able to set your online directory up in the way that you want.
Through the settings, you can decide whether visitors need an account before they can submit a listing, and if so, what user role they are assigned when signing up.You can also define how their account details are generated.
When it comes to configuring how the listings on your site are published, you have the option of enabling listing moderation to ensure nothing is published on your directory without your approval.You can also set the expiration period for listings and whether you want to accept edits to pending submissions.
Customizing the Appearance Listable Directory Theme
As well as working through the settings pages to configure how your online directory works, you can also modify how your website looks with the WordPress Customizer tool.
The Listable online directory WordPress theme has good support for the Customizer tool, which is always nice to see.
Through the tool, you can change many aspects of your website, including:
– Colors
– Fonts
– Overall styling
– Map options
…and much more.
As well as the more granular controls, such as changing the colors and fonts for individual elements, you can save yourself a lot of time by simply choosing from one of the style presets.
Widgetized Custom Homepage Builder
As the homepage of the Listable theme is widgetized, you can personalize how it looks and what content it contains through the Customizer tool.
Any number of widgets can be added to the homepage, including those that come with WordPress as well as those from third party plugins.This gives you a wide range of options for building a custom front page for your online directory.
Adding Listings to Your Directory
The Listable theme allows you to enter listings through both the back and front ends of your website.This means admin users and those with the right level of access can add listings through both interfaces while your registered visitors can add listings through the well-integrated front-end submission forms.
As you can see, as your users are creating their listing, some handy tool tips are displayed to guide them through the process.
When it comes to the back-end interface for adding listings, the WP Job Manager plugin that is used to power your directory website has a very user-friendly interface.This back-end user interface integrates seamlessly with the rest of the WordPress admin area, making it feel like a core component of your website.
Creating a listing is almost as straightforward as creating a regular WordPress blog post.Each listing can have its own title, description, and supporting information.
This information is added through the Listing Data panel.
You can then organize the listing by using the taxonomies on offer, which includes categories and listing types.Listable includes a number of predefined categories and listing types.However, you can easily edit these or add your own.
As mentioned earlier, the developers of the Listable directory theme have added their own helpful tool tips to the core functionality of the theme and required plugins.These tooltips help guide you through adding new listings, as well as configuring and managing your online directory.
A Word on WP Job Manager
As mentioned, the directory functionality of Listable is powered by the WP Job Manager plugin, a tool from Mike Jolley of Automattic.Although the WP Job Manager is a solid plugin, it has been created to manage job listings on a WordPress website.
However, thanks to its feature set, it does work just as well as a tool for powering an online directory.
The addition of the tool tips should help to clear up any areas of potential confusion from the terminology used on the back-end, hopefully, before they arise.
At the end of the day, a listing is a listing.Therefore, whether you’re adding job vacancies to your website – using the WP Job Manager plugin in the way it was intended to be used – or publishing listings of local attractions or building a global directory of freelancers who work remotely – there is plenty of shared functionally.
As there are many optional add-ons available for WP Job Manager, you can easily grow the scope and functionality of your online directory as your needs develop.
This all helps to make Listable a highly flexible WordPress directory theme that can be used to build almost any type of online listings website.
Listable Directory WordPress Theme Review Conclusion
Listable is a great looking theme, so it’s good to see that its appearance is backed up with impressive features.
Thanks to the decision to use of the WP Job Manager plugin to take care of the listings management, you get an easy to use interface for publishing your directory content, with the option of adding more features as and when you need them.
Although the demo version of Listable looks great, thanks to the good level of support for the customizer tool and the widgetized homepage, you have plenty of opportunities to customize the appearance of your site.
Overall, Listable is a great tool for building an online directory and listings website with WordPress.It has the looks and features you need, and with a price tag of only $64, it’s very affordable.
Find out more about Listable now.
