Working in the area of educational startups is always trending and so many people that are active in this area want to set up an online solution there. If you want to establish an online platform in this area article directory platforms are one of the most popular categories that you can find in the market. Here we will talk about WordPress as CMS and Listdom which is the best article directory WordPress plugin and provides you with so many modern and easy to use features.
WordPress: The Most Popular CMS
WordPress helps you to create online websites easily and with some clicks you can set up an online website. Nowadays more than 70% of online websites are using WordPress as their main engine. Working with WordPress is easy and at the same time there are millions of different tutorials that help you to know how to work with it. On the other hand, most of the hosting providers come up with easy installation of WordPress and you can install it easily in your host.
Another great point about WordPress is the thousands of different plugins and themes that developed for this amazing CMS, the plugins extend functionality of WordPress and the themes add a new theme to WordPress which is related to front-end functionalities. In this article we will introduce Listdom Lite, Listdom Pro, Listdom Addon, and Listdomer Theme which all of them help you to create your article directory website as easily as WordPress works.
Listdom Lite: the best Free Article Directory WordPress Plugin
Listdom Lite provides so many amazing features that you can create a fully functional article directory in WordPress with that. Listdom Lite is a free article directory WordPress plugin and you can download it from WordPress repository. You can simply go to the WordPress plugins page, click on Add New and then search form Listdom and then install and activate that. In this section we will talk about adding categorize options, add new articles, create short-codes to show listings in the front-end, create search forms, and change the default settings. So at the end you will have an article directory with these wonderful plugins.
As the first step, we will add the categorized options which are available in the WordPress back-end Listings menu. At this time, Listdom has category, location, label, features, and tags in order to categorize the listings when adding them. For example, Information Technology is a good example for categories or for the tags option mentioning some keywords for the added category.
The next step will be adding articles from the Add Listing menu. When you are adding listings you can specify title, description, contact information, features image, gallery images, specify location where the article belongs to, labels, tags, category, and etc. Working with Listdom add listing feature is as simple as adding a new post or page in WordPress.
Now you have added some sample or real articles and we want to show them in the front-end. In order to do this head over to the Listdom menu in the WordPress backend and then click on the Shortcodes menu. You can create shortcodes in more than 90 different skins and then add the created shortcode in a WordPress normal page. Listdom supports single map, half map, grid, list, list+grid, masonry, carousel, slider, cover, and mix of them as its main skins each skin supports different styles which you can use easily.
When you are working in the area of article directory having different search forms are so essential. Listdom has an amazing search builder functionality which allows you to create a different search form based on your requirements and business plan. In order to create search forms simply click on the Search Bilder menu of Listdom menu. After you create a search form you will have a short-code and you can use it anywhere that you want.
The last step will be talking about the Settings menu of Listdom. You can define, change or add default settings of Listdom like Google Maps api, listdom load front-end packages, listing details page layout, slugs, archive pages, custom styles, and etc. Working with Listdom settings is the most easy process that you can see in the different online softwares.
Listdom Pro: the best Paid Article Directory WordPress Plugin
If you are looking for more advanced features for your online article directory website then Listdom Pro can help you to cover those. It is a paid article directory wordpress plugin that includes so many professional features like fron-end add/manage articles, attributes or custom fields, OpenStreetMap, Embed Video Codes etc. In this section we will introduce just some of them but you can see the full list in the Listdom Pro official website.
If you want to allow your users to add their articles from the front-end and without accessing the back-end or referring to you this Listdom fron-end dashboard will do it for you. In order to do this you just need to add Listdom dashboard short-code to a WordPress page and then that’s it, you have the front-end dashboard in your website.
The other brilliant feature that you need is attributes or custom fields. With this feature you can extend the Listdom default add listing form and your own fields. For example, who certified this article or when it has been mainly published. In order to addd the attributes or custom fields you can go to the Attributes menu in the WordPress back-end Listings menu and add your attributes. The attributes can be per category or for all categories.
If you want to use a map but do not want to use Google Maps, Listdom Pro supports OpenStreetMap which is a free map provider and you do not need to create an API for it. As soon as you install Listdom Pro Leaflet will add to the map provided and you can select that to show the location on OpenStreetMap instead of Google Maps.
With embed video code functionality you or your users can add YouTube video codes to their articles. It is an easy process and you can add YouTube embed video codes to the listings in the Add Listing form. There are so many other features that Listdom Pro provides which you can see the full list on Listdom Pro official website.
Listdom Add-ons and Listdomer Theme
Listdom Add-ons will help you to be number one in the market, for example with Listdom Android/IOS mobile apps you can provide Android and IOS applications for users smartphones. As another example with Listdom CSV Importer add-on you can import so many articles as bulk and with a CSV file. At this time Listdom provides more than 25 addons which you can see the full list on the Listdom official add-ons page.
Listdomer is a WordPress theme which is mainly developed for the listing and directory websites. You can use this amazing WordPress theme for your article directory as it provides so many great layouts for this specific category. You can see Listdomer demo in its official demo website.
Conclusion
Listdom Lite, Listdom Pro, Listdom Add-ons and Listdomer theme are WordPress solutions that are mainly developed to help you to create your online article directory website easily. If you have any questions regarding setting up Listdom plugins or Listdomer themes their high tech support is available to help you.
