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WHAT’S NEW IN 2.5

Are you ready to build your NextGen online directory startup? With 2.5 release, you can take your ideas to the next level.

Here are some of the top features available in 2.5 release

Elementor Page builder

One of the much-awaited features for ListingPro is here. A lot of users including some top influencers have been waiting for this feature. We are so excited to inform you that ListingPro will now support the Elementor page builder which will allow you to drag and drop elements from front-end while having the live preview of what you are building.


WPBaker Frontend EDITOR

Even though Elementor is great we still have hardcore fans for WPBakery. So we have great news for them as well. With 2.5 release the WPBakery fans don’t need to be left behind. You will now also have a front-end editor to spin pages much faster.


🗺️ Open STREET Maps (FREE)

Openstreet Maps used in the archive page. (Free Google Maps alternative)

No more worrying about paying for Google Maps just for getting the map working in your directory. OpenStreet map will work for you right out of the box and all you have to do is make sure Map type is set to OpenStreet map.

You will still need Google Maps for other features such as Near Me, AutoFill, Auto-Locate and so on. But with OpenStreet maps, you can save a lot and not have to worry about going through the trouble of creating an API or paying anything just for having a map.


⭐ Advanced Multi-Criteria Ratings

Reviews & ratings is a core feature of a directory without it visitors cannot really share their experience about any business. Of course, ListingPro had reviews & rating feature from day one and later we introduced a simple multi-criteria rating option to allow admins to have up to 4 different criteria but those were all global. With 2.5 release, we are introducing the Advanced Multi-Criteria ratings which will allow admins to create unlimited criteria but also different groups of criteria for different categories.

So if you are a directory that has listings for various different industries such as restaurants, hotels, automotive, or healthcare it doesn’t matter, you can have a unique set of criteria for each industry. Not all categories have unique criteria, so you have the option to create Global Criteria that will be applied to all categories that are not unique.

Let’s take a look at a few examples. For the restaurant category, you can have different criteria that of a hotel category.

Restaurant

  • Taste
  • Cleanliness
  • Service
  • Ambiance
  • Price
  • Portion

Hotel

  • Service
  • Cleanliness
  • Communication
  • Location
  • Value
  • Parking


Set Order Priority for Search Result

Now you will be able to set an order priority for the search results on the archive page.

  • Claimed
  • By Title (A – Z or Z – A)
  • By Date (Most recently published)
  • Most Viewed
  • Most Reviewed
  • Highest Rated
  • Random


Google Analytics for Business Users

In addition to the insights provided by the default user dashboard that’s available for listing owners out of the box, business owners can use Google Analytics to get insight into each listing. All it needs is a UA code provided by Google Analytics. It can also provide valuable insights that can help you to shape the success strategy of your business. Learn how many people are visiting your listing and from where. Additionally also learn how long they are staying on the listings.


✅ Claim now 2.0

After getting feedback from our users we have totally redesigned the experience to claim a listing. User can now attach a file while submitting a claim request and also can either choose to signup or login if it’s a returning user.

Attach a file for verification.
Sign up for new user before submitting the claim.
Sign in for returning users before submitting the claim.


🤑 Show MONTHLY BREAKDOWN of ANNUAL PRICING PLANS

Annual pricing plans are broken down to display the monthly cost. Before if the annual cost was $100 it will show only $100 in big and bold font which could be a bit intimidating for the users. Instead now it will show the monthly breakdown first ($8.3) in big and bold font and also give the total annual cost below to help increase conversion rate.


Advanced FES Form Builder

Front-End Submission (FES) Form

Front-End Submission (FES) form is one of the top core features of a directory that allows business owners to submit their business listings. ListingPro had this feature built-in in from day one. But before 2.5 you were able to do very limited customization by adding custom fields and features. But with 2.5 you will be able to use a drag-and-drop form builder that gives ultimate control over how you want to build your entire front-end listing form for any industry. We even designed it in a way that it looks and feels very familiar to all native WordPress users.

Advanced FES Form Builder
Default Fields Tab
Custom Fields Tab
New Custom Form Field


Custom Lead form builder

An easy drag-&-drop Lead form builder gives full control over how you or your users want to build the lead form on listing details page for any industry. There are all types of fields from simple text to advance range fields that can be created.


Events calendar

Event Calendar is another major feature in this release. It comes with various different styles such as full calendar view, split view, and more.


📅 Appointments Booking

Whether you are running a directory for Tax Accountants, Dentists, Lawyers or for any kind of business that needs to accepts appointment booking, you can now allow your business listing owners to accept appointments using our free built-in simple appointment booking feature that takes no time or technical knowledge to setup for you as an Admin or for your business owners.

How can a user book an appointment?

From front end users can switch between calendar view or individual day slider to find the right day and time slot. Once they find it they can enter their details and submit. The requested appointment time slot will be removed from the available slots. Only if the listing owner decides to cancel the slot until the slot has been

Preview of calendar view of appointments booking on listing details page.
Preview of all available slots in a day for appointments booking on listing details page.

How does listing owner approve and manage appointments?

List of all appointments requested with scheduler’s details
Appointments settings for listing owner

From the listing owner dashboard, a user can approve or cancel a pending request and click more to view more details of the user who requested an appointment in the side panel.

Switch to calendar view to see all the approved appointments.

🦸‍♂️ Command Center

When ListingPro launched back in 2017, people loved the builtin dashboard for business user to manage their listings and with every release the business user dashboard got better and again it does with the much awaited 2.5 release. But in addition we have a major surprise for the directory admin which we felt didn’t get much attention to help them manage their directory better, we mean a lot better.

Introducing Command Center which will help our customers built and manage directory like never before. Command Center includes an amazing Admin dashboard that gives important data insights from a single pane of glass. Additionally the Command Center allows to access all the supported ListingPro Add-ons, License Manager and more.

Dashboard for Directory Owner (Site Admin)

As every dashboard’s primary goal is to give insight in to the most important data points (KPIs) to keep running the machine smoothly, let’s look at what’s available in this dashboard.

1. KPI OVERVIEW

Primary KPIs

Admin dashboard has three primary Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) that helps a Directory Owner (Site Admin) to monitor the growth of the directory.

  1. TOTAL USERS – Total number of users signed up, including listing owners and non-listing owners.
  2. TOTAL LISTINGS – Total number of listings submitted, including live, pending review, and deleted.
  3. TOTAL ADS – Total number of ad campaigns created.

Each KPI can be further expanded to view the breakdown.

Secondary KPIs

Admin dashboard also has three secondary Key Performance Indicators (KPIs).

  1. TOTAL VIEWS – Total views for all listings
  2. TOTAL REVIEWS – Total reviews submitted for listings.
  3. TOTAL LEADS – Total leads received by businesses via their listings.

2. Key Activities & Tasks

Pending Tasks

Pending Tasks shows lists all the critical tasks that a site admin needs to review and take action on such as new listing submission, flagged reviews, flagged listings, and listing claim requests.

Payment Activity

All recent payment activities will be displayed in under this widget. Can be filtered by listing invoices, ads invoices and invoices pending approval. For each it shows invoice#, how many days old and what payment method used.

Directory Taxonomies Overview

Finally the dashboard wraps up with an overview of all the taxonomies count you will need to know as a directory admin.

About the author

Peter N.

101 comments

  • Hello Brother. “We have made some major changes in the latest version that requires a one-time compatiblity wizard to make sure everything is fine after the update.” I’m getting the problem. How do I provide a solution? I reinstalled my website but the problem continues?

  • Can you monetize appointments?
    can you make it so a business owner can take payment through an appointment bookings

  • [ Map settings ]

    Hi,

    If I have 200 business listings, and use pagination to see 20 listings per page, will I be able to see all 200 listings on the near me map or will I only see the current (active pagination) page listings?

    This was a very big shortcoming on LisitingPro 2.0 that was hopefully fixed!

  • I love Listingpro and the update they have done recently. Unfortunately, the listing submission function stopped working, and the page gets refreshed every time we click on the ‘submit listing button’. It looks like a major error of the release, and you guys should carefully review the issue and release a new update with a fix for all this issue soon. Also, google ads don’t recognize the code I paste inside the theme option. Totally, I am having a no revenue situation for a couple of years. Support extension is very expensive, you guys have to work on that area. Hope to see a fix soon.

    • Thank you so much for your review. I intended to buy the theme today. However, after I read your review I will not purchase it untill they fix all the issues. Again I thank you so much. David.

  • Hi there, i am facing issues with the Listing Pro, i want to point on the Events section, well when i add an event let’s say for today you can open it from you PC which is visible but when you open it from your phone it’s not showing the event at all, so im concerned why whould someone designed events for this theme and they don’t work on the day of the event, i mean whats the point go have events when the people can’t open them from the mobile phone, if i add the event for today from 8:00 am till 8:00 pm the events should not working exactly at 8:00 pm, please if someone is able to explain to me this Genius thing with the Events, thanks in advance!

  • Just tried to upgrade from 2.0.x to 2.5.6 using the Envato auto installer. Auto installer identified the available 2.5.6 version and ran the installer. Then I was asked to delete the 3 plugin modules so that the new versions could be downloaded and installed. This all worked. However, once it completed, it shows me the one-time compatibility wizard page. The start button does nothing.

    It seems like there is no code linked to the button, so no way to complete it. Also, when trying to add a new listing, I just get a broken page. Upgrading failed. Don’t bother with this latest version until someone from ListingProWP comments to the solution to their one-time compatibility wizard. (also note they spelled compatibility wrong, so if you are searching google for the error, you will want to search – “compatiblity”).

    Anyone find a solution to this?

      • Just tried again with a fresh copy of my site. Installer is broken. Attempted with the latest version of edge. Same behavior as in Chrome.

        For the record, attempted to upgrade from 2.0.14.1 to 2.5.6. Upgrading to 2.5.6 breaks your site and its unrecoverable. DO NOT ATTEMPT TO UPGRADE WITHOUT A BACKUP READY TO RESTORE. I’ve attempted this upgrade twice now (both with Chrome and Edge). Does not work.

        Anyone experienced this issue. Also one thing to note, when it asks to delete the previous listingpro plugins and then have the theme push to install and activate the new versions of the plugins, I noticed that only the listingpro plugin was version 2.5.6. The other two plugins: ListingPro Reviews and ListingPro Ads showed as version 2.1. I don’t know if this is what it should show, but thought I would mention it, in case anyone can help troubleshoot this issue.

        I hope I can upgrade this theme soon. I’m getting a lot of spam through my contact form, and I can’t use WPforms with the older version (2.0.14.1) with that plugin.

        • Hey Jay, finally found a solution for this after an entire day of searching. Clearing cache and rebooting browser should do the trick for you.

          I’m still running into issues with pricing tables now showing up now, prob gonna spend the next 24 hours on that bs 🙂

  • Hey,

    I run into a problem with this version. When I go to plugins, I get screen that says “One-Time Backward Compatiblity Wizard: We have made some major changes in the latest version that requires a one-time compatiblity wizard to make sure everything is fine after the update.” and it has a green START button. This button doesn’t do anything though and now I can’t get to my plug ins.

    How do you bypass this?

  • Looks like some great new features but still don’t see a ‘back to search’ button on the listings.

    One of the best themes out there tho, well done!

  • I currently have Listingpro with support. How do I upgrade?? Everything in wordpress is updated including the Listingpro theme and when I try to download a new file from Themeforest it downloads the same file as I have. I’ve tried everything I can think of and nothing has worked.

    How is everyone updating? I’ve been waiting for this update, now that its here I can’t get it updated. Please help!

  • I don’t suppose it’s a necessity but what if I were running a sale for people that upgraded or signed up early or even referrals it would be cool to be able to push that to their dashboard.

  • Please add whatsaap functionality in share listing which is not available in directory theme. And whatsaap call is also not working properly it shows that no isn’t in contact list.please fix this issue.

  • Please update multiple pics in menu section. There we can add only one pic for particular menu. There should be arrangement for adding multiple pics according to selected items.

    • Yes you can add multiple pictures for menu you just need to turn on the option in theme option 》user dashboard 》Menu Gallery
      After this you can add multiple image one by one

  • Hi Listing Pro Team,

    Love the update, but it seem’s that you’re Listing Pro Wizard or the “One-Time Backward Compatiblity Wizard” is not working, at least for us. No Actions happens when we click on it.

    But otherwise appreciate the update highly!

    • I have the same issue – Click on the Wizard, nothing happens. No JS error in the inspector. Once this message appears you can’t navigate to any other pages without this message appearing.

      • I’ve been able to bypass the wizard now, by manually removing the Listing Pro Plugin as this seems to be the problem here. After deleting it in the Web Directory over FTP and installing it via (Appearance>Install Plugin) it solved the problem for me.

        • Thanks for that comment. The new Listingpro update is asking me for a JS composer (WP Bakery) update but I can´t do that apparently without paying. Did you have a problem like that? (Because of the wizard problem I’m trying to update all plugins except Listing plugin.)
          Another one, could you install Elementor and have the Listingpro option block inside it? What I need is the Listing Posts and Listing Categories options. Thx for your help. Have a good one

          • Hi Luis,

            As I’m not an official representative of Listingpro, I can only provide answer’s based on our experience, but regarding your questions:

            – The WP Bakery Plugin is indeed only possible to update to the newest version through payment. However, as far as I understand Listing Pro 2.5 has updated it further (not to the newest one) and doesn’t require the newest version of the Plugin as the Theme elements work with that version. So you can ignore the message for an update concerning the JS composer.

            – I’m more familiar with WP Baker, but given the changelog of Listing Pro, you should be able to freely install Elementor as your Frontend-Editor and use the Listing Pro elements as well.

            Hope this helps

    • Had same issue, I submitted a ticket and support was quick to fix the issue on my site. 🙂
      I think you need to delete all listingpro plugins before updating. I just deleted one plugin. You need to delete all three.

      • Can you ask them what they did? I don’t have support any longer. I think this is almost there way to just make more money by having a bug in their installer so that you are stuck.

        I tried deleting and reinstalling the theme plugin as recommended above. It did not resolve the situation. Also I removed all 3 plugins and reinstalled as instructed on the install guide. So its definitely a bug in their installer. Can anyone advise how to remove this message or get it to run.

  • Good evolution of the listing.

    I recommand you to focus on basic of SEO for increase the quality :
    – remove H1 title for connect button etc… Not use HN title to make a good vizualisation, it’s for the seo!
    – simplify CSS, JS to speed up the site (your plug in minify is not enought good, I prefer wp rocket) But even with wp rocket, there is to many CSS block the view of page etc…
    -schemas edit for each listing to help google to rank each listing (adress data, feature data, …)

    I hope my coments will be read by the developer team, it’s important for our business and so your business

  • I downloaded the update but my pricing plans disappeared from the page and I can’t find the code. I can’t find the command center as well.

  • Listingpro wizard is not working ini this new release,

    why don’t you resolve this issue, One-Time Backward Compatiblity Wizard? I reported this

    and you have released new version without a demo

  • When I emailed with one of your representatives about 3 weeks ago and specifically asked if the new version would include an events calendar I was told that it would! I do not see this. Could you let us know please when exactly this will be added or if at all?

    • Events Calendar included. We updated the post above. You can watch the video and screenshots provided too.

  • My big question is will there finally be an events calendar? You’ve been teasing this new feature for awhile now but no indication when it will be added to an update. Will this be included in 2.5?

  • These don’t look like new features more like advanced versions of the existing ones. A bit disappointing.

  • It has been a real pleasure working with you guys. Very skilled team and assistance over listingpro. Whe are waiting for the new 2.5 update. Thanks for all dear.

  • Hi: Just wondering if there will be any work to convert an existing directory to the new 2.5 version. Have you been testing with existing directories to see if everything loads up ok? I’m hoping that we only need to do more customization and the data stays intact.
    Thanks, Anne

    • I am terrified of this too… I have spent 2 years of endless configuring and modifications, and support tickets to get this working the way I want. I am worried the upgrade will mess the whole site up….. considering NOT upgrading on this site until there is more thorough information or tutorials…

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  • Hello, can you just stop beating about the bush and share everything that is coming up? We need to plan around the next features but since you guys are not sharing the mandatory ‘patch notes’, we are having a tough time planning around it.

    • This ‘big update announcement’ has been now going on for over two weeks. Your click to share buttons don’t work so I cant find out what the hidden big feature is.

      Pleaae stop messing around with very poorly and outdated marketing strategies and stick to creating and fixing ListingPro. People who want to know about the updates have already bought your product so don’t need some fake anticipation buiding.

  • Hi just wanted to give you a brief heads up and let you know a few of
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    show the same results.

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  • Hi. This all sounds great .

    I was told there was fantastic upgrade to your events module. It’s it possible to get details.

    • Events Calendar included. We updated the post above. You can watch the video and screenshots provided too.

  • ListingPro is definitely the best directory on the market no matter what business you want to run with it.
    The features and the UX are way better than others, if you really need an additional feature you can still add some code yourself but really it has so much to give out of the box.
    Really happy with these brand new features coming in January, they keep getting better.
    For those wondering about the support, they are very skilled and would respond quickly.

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By Peter N.