Connections Business Directory

Showcase | Documentation | Support | Templates | Extensions

Connections Business Directory is one of the best business directory plugins available for WordPress. Its simplicity in design and function, vast array of unique features and versatility are the reasons more and more people are turning to Connections Business Directory for their directory needs. You can use Connections to create a simple address book, maintain a staff or member directory and run a business directory or link directory. Connections Business Directory was built bottom up to be as configurable as possible while providing the features you need. Read on to learn about some of the best features Connections Business Directory has to offer…

Features

• Highly rated support.
• Continuously updated bringing you new features for free.
• Compatible with all themes including popular themes such as Avada, Divi, Enfold and OceanWP.
• Compatible with most popular page builders such as Elementor, Beaver Builder, Brizy, Visual Composer, Fusion, SiteOrigin, etc…
• SEO. Every entry in your business directory outputs following the hCard spec. Soon to be updated to following Schema.org.
  • Supports the native sitemaps feature available in WordPress versions 5.5 and newer.
  • Yoast SEO and Rank Math sitemaps integration.
• Event Logging Integrates with the Simple History plugin; logging directory related events such as creating a new entry, modifying an entry, and deleting an entry.
• Supports the WordPress Block (Gutenberg) Editor with the following blocks.
  • Carousel Block :: Display your directory as a carousel.
  • Directory Block :: Use this block to embed your directory in a page.
  • Team Block :: It’s easy to use Connections to build your team page! Team Block is a full-featured block with multiple layout styles. While premium team plugins can set you back $20 or more, Team Block is free for all Connections users.
  • Upcoming List Block :: Use this block to display an upcoming list of anniversaries, birthdays or other events.
• A growing selection of Content Blocks:
  • Related Entries:: Display related Entries in a mobile responsive carousel.
  • Nearby Entries:: Increase discoverability of Entries by displaying nearby Entries in a mobile responsive carousel.
  • Recently Viewed:: A list a directory Entries the user has recently viewed.
  • Last Viewed:: The last directory Entry the user viewed.
  • Frontend Entry Management:: Management options include a quick link to edit the Entry and a Delete option.
  • Entry Meta:: Display details such as when the Entry was added nad last modified and by whom.
• Dashboard admin page where you can see at a glance today’s anniversaries and birthdays as well as upcoming anniversaries and birthdays of members in your directory.
• Multiple entry types from which to choose; such as individual, organization and family. The family entry type is unique to Connections. This entry type allows you to group individuals together as a family which makes Connections ideally suited for creating a church directory.
• You control which entries are viewable to the public and which entries are private, viewable for logged-in users only. You can even have entries set as unlisted so only admins can view them.
• Repeatable fields for address, phone numbers, email, instant messenger, social media, links and dates which allow you to add as much or as little as you need for each business in your business directory.
• Hierarchical (nested) category support. Businesses and members in your business directory can be added to any number of categories.
• Include a biographical text for an individual member or business description for each entry in your business directory using an easy-to-use rich text editor.
• You can easily add a business logo or photo of the staff member for each entry in your business directory or staff directory. The photo and logo images are fully responsive with HiDPI (Retina) display support.
• Scalable, manage directories which contain hundreds of thousands of entries.
• CSV Export of addresses, phone numbers, email addresses and dates.
• CSV Import of nested categories.
• Role capability support.
• Displaying your business directory on the frontend is as simple as putting a shortcode on a page. Don’t let this simplicity fool you. The shortcode provides a large array of options that are just too numerous to list. To learn more, go here.
• Extensible and developer friendly.
• Robust templating support with the Template Customizer. Several basic templates are provided to get you started with you business directory with many more premium templates available to really make your business directory shine.

Extensible

Here are some great free extensions (with more on the way) that enhance your experience with Connections Business Directory:

Utility

• Toolbar :: Provides quick links to the admin pages from the admin bar.
• Login :: Provides a simple-to-use login shortcode and widget.
• Anniversary and Birthday Emails :: Add the ability to automatically send a customizable email to entries on their anniversary or birthday.

Custom Fields

• Business Open Hours :: Add the business open hours.
• Certifications :: Create and assign certifications to individuals in your directory.
• Local Time :: Add the business local time.
• Facilities :: Add the business facilities.
• Income Level :: Add an income level.
• Education Level :: Add an education level.
• Languages :: Add languages spoken.
• Hobbies :: Add hobbies.

Misc

• Face Detect :: Applies face detection before cropping an image.

Premium Extensions

• Authored :: Displays a list of blog posts written by the entry on their profile page.
• Contact :: Displays a contact form on the entry’s profile page to allow your visitors to contact the entry without revealing their email address.
• CSV Import :: Bulk import your data in to your directory.
• Custom Category Order :: Order your categories exactly as you need them.
• Custom Entry Order :: Allows you to easily define the order that your business directory entries should be displayed.
• Enhanced Categories :: Adds many features to the categories.
• Form :: Allow site visitor to submit entries to your directory. Also provides frontend editing support.
• Link :: Links a WordPress user to an entry so that user can maintain their entry with or without moderation.
• ROT13 Encryption :: Protect email addresses from being harvested from your business directory by spambots.
• SiteShot :: Show a screen capture of the entry’s website.
• Widget Pack :: A set of feature rich, versatile and highly configurable widgets that can be used to enhance your directory.

Premium Templates

Connections Business Directory comes with a couple templates to get you started which fully support the Template Customizer. In addition to these free templates there are many premium templates available to take your business directory the level visually.

• Circled :: A simple but bold template specifically designed for displaying small team or staff directory.
• cMap :: Our most popular go to template for a business directory and chamber of commerce business directory, featuring full Template Customizer support.
• Excerpt Plus :: Simple design which features a directory entry name, photo thumbnail and excerpt.
• Gridder :: Another simple but bold template which displays the directory in a grid layout. Perfect for displaying a small team or staff directory
• Slim Plus :: Specifically designed to take up as little space on the page as possible.
• Tile Plus :: This template was purposely designed to display the directory in a grid or column layout.

Developer Friendly

• Open development on GitHub.
• Access to 180 action hooks and over 300 filters … and counting.
• Term API.
• Custom Metabox and Fields API.
• Template Engine and API.
• Fragment Cache API.
• Log API (stateless and stateful).
• Admin Notices API.
• Email API.
• Settings API.

Connections Business Directory has a very flexible template engine. The loading of template and CSS are context aware. This means you could create specific templates that load when a user visits a specific entry, category, postal code and more.

Templates and CSS overriding is very granular and update safe. Check out these links for the details:

• Custom Core CSS
• Custom CSS for Templates
• Custom Template Override File

Languages

Connections Business Directory has been embraced around the world and has been translated by its users in the following languages.

• Arabic [60% Complete]
• Catalan [52% Complete]
• Croatian (Croatia) [22% Complete]
• Danish [31% Complete]
• Danish (Denmark) [29% Complete]
• Dutch (Netherlands) [49% Complete]
• Finnish [78% Complete]
• French (France) [90% Complete]
• German (Germany) [86% Complete]
• Greek (Greece) [69% Complete]
• Hebrew (Israel) [61% Complete]
• Hungarian (Hungry) [52% Complete]
• Italian (Italy) [58% Complete]
• Norwegian [13% Complete]
• Persian (Iran) [52% Complete]
• Polish (Poland) [52% Complete]
• Portuguese (Brazil) [77% Complete]
• Portuguese (Portugal) [24% Complete]
• Romanian (Romania) [69% Complete]
• Russian (Russia) [40% Complete]
• Serbian (Latin) [2% Complete]
• Spanish (Latin America) [49% Complete]
• Spanish (Mexico) [99% Complete]
• Spanish (Spain) [99% Complete]
• Sweden (Swedish) [96% Complete]
• Turkish (Turkey) [58% Complete]

Credits:

• Connection Business Directory was based off LBB, “Little Black Book”; which was based on Addressbook, both of which can be found in the Plugin Directory.
• vCard class is a modified version by Troy Wolf.
• Update Notice in plugin admin inspired by Changelogger 1.2.8 by Oliver Schlöbe.
• Screen Options class by Janis Elsts.
• $.goMap() jQuery Google Maps Plugin by Jevgenijs Shtrauss.
• MarkerClustererPlus jQuery Google Maps Marker Clustering Plugin by Gary Little.
• Validation jQuery plugin by Jörn Zaefferer.
• Chosen jQuery plugin by Harvest.
• qTip jQuery plugin by Craig Thompson.
• Email and URL validation methods by Gizmo Digital Fusion.
• Social media icons by WPZOOM.com; license CC BY-SA 3.0.
• iTunes icon by Paul Robert Lloyd; license Attribution-ShareAlike 2.0 UK: England & Wales (CC BY-SA 2.0).
• Podcast icon by schollidesign; license GNU/GPL.
• CSS theme and image used for the jQuery UI Datepicker by helenhousandi.