You will need to get the payment gateway module updates if you are using version 1.8 and above and you’ve previously purchased a copy of either the PayPal gateway or the 2Checkout gateway. The gateways for version 1.7 and under will not work correctly with version 1.8 and above.

To update the version 1.8 compatible copies of the payment gateway modules please use the contact form to send a request. Please include the transaction ID from your PayPal purchase, or include the email address under which your purchase was made.

Unfortunately there are still some problems with the latest major update of the plugin. This new problem was affecting new installs and prompted one user to call the plugin a messed up disaster. I can fully appreciate his frustration and sincerely apologize to anyone else who had a similar experience. You can click here to see the details of the issue

To rectify this problem I’ve had to remove the automatic creation of the business directory page and sub pages from the installation process. That means when you install the plugin for the first time you will need to go to your dashboard under the “Pages” tab and manually create the Business Directory page following the instructions included in the README.txt file.

This tutorial is for Version 1.8 and above. If you are using version 1.7 and under please see http://wpbusinessdirectorymanager.businessdirectoryplugin.com/2010/06/15/where-do-i-setup-the-categories-for-my-business-directory/ and/or http://businessdirectoryplugin.com/blog/2010/04/22/specifying-which-wordpress-categories-wp-business-directory-should-use/

Adding categories to the Directory Version 1.8 and above

Adding categories to the Directory works similarly to the way you add categories to your normal WordPress Blog. The steps to take:

1. Access your Dashboard

2. Look for the Directory section in the menu. It should have been added when you activated the plugin. Click for visual example

3. If it is not opened to reveal the sub menu options, Click on “Directory” to see the sub menu options. Click for visual example

4. You should see under “Directory” the options:

1. Add New
2. Categories
3. Tags

5.  Click on Categories. This page works the very same as the “Categories” link under “Posts”. Your Directory Categories will work the same as your Post Categories only they are separated from your post categories so they will not create any conflicts between your Directory posts and your normal WordPress posts.

Too many people are having a problem with the conversion of their directory listing posts from the non-custom-post-type format to the custom-post-type format so I’ve removed the conversion process and updated the plugin to version 1.8.3. If you are upgrading and you only have a few listings in your current directory you will need to do over those listings. If you have too many listings to have to do them over one by one please use the contact form to reach me about getting your listings converted.

I’ve released another quick update to the plugin, Version 1.8.1 in order to correct some problems with version 1.8. If you are going to upgrade I ask again that you backup your data first. Upgrading to Version 1.8 and above from a previous version involves an attempt on the part of the plugin to convert your directory listings to the new custom post type. This attempt somethings goes awry and the plugin converts posts that are not directory listing posts. Someone had all their posts converted so they essentially ended up with zero[0] normal posts.

If the above has happened to you, please uninstall the plugin then go to your phpmyadmin and run the following query:

UPDATE wp_posts set post_type=’post’ WHERE post_type LIKE ‘%wpbdm%’;

That should restore all your posts to the normal post type. If you don’t know how to do this please contact me for assistance.

If you didn’t upgrade using version 1.8 then you should hopefully not have that problem with version 1.8.1, but you might have to manually convert your directory posts as 1.8.1 is still not guaranteed to complete the conversion.

Version 1.8 of WP Business Directory Manager is ready. Please read and heed the following before you upgrade:

Backup before you upgrade.

Version 1.8 of WP Business Directory Manager requires WordPress 3.0 and above.

Version 1.8 makes use of WordPress custom post type and custom taxonomy features. When you upgrade, the plugin will attempt to convert your previous installation to the new format. It is important to note that a clean conversion is not guaranteed. If you have a directory with numerous categories and listings that you cannot afford to have to do over manually if the conversion does not go through smoothly, you should consider sticking with the pre custom post type version of the plugin.

This is a first release of a major update. It is possible there will be bugs. If you encounter problems with the plugin please post them to the forum

Working towards releasing an update to WP Business Directory Manager in the next few weeks. Currently trying to decide how best to move to a custom post type structure. The main concern is that in mass updating current listings to change the post type to the new custom post type, errors may occur where posts that are not related to the directory also get modified due to mix-ups with the categories. So not sure yet how best to move forward.

Well here is my problem when the information from the directory is displayed to the users the link is not clickable.
For example instead of having <a href=”http://www.google.com“>http://www.google.com</a> it is displayed http://www.google.com.

In your directory samples you put on your website links are appearing fine for a company listing page, but in my case they are not, i wonder then how can I activate the link and make it clickable.

Currently if you add links in your text area fields in the format http://xxx.xxx.xxx that link will not be clickable. If you want users to provide a URL that will be clickable the better option is to create a field for that specifically. The plugin will make the URL clickable if it validates as a URL, but a URL that comes in as part of a non-url string will not validate and therefore will not be clickable.

If you have URLs in text fields and you need to make them clickable you will have to manually modify some files for now until an update is released. I will make the links in text clickable for the next update but I don’t have a time frame for the release of the next update so you need to do it manually in the meantime

Files you will need to edit

1. plugins/wp-buisness-directory-manager/posttemplates/wpbusdirman-single.php
2. plugins/wp-buisness-directory-manager/posttemplates/wpbusdirman-index.php
3. plugins/wp-buisness-directory-manager/posttemplates/wpbusdirman-category.php

FIND
<a href=”<?php the_permalink(); ?>”><?php the_excerpt(); ?></a>

REPLACE WITH
<?php $wpbusdirman_the_excerpt=get_the_excerpt(); ?>
<?php $wpbusdirman_the_excerpt=preg_replace(“/(http://[^s]+)/”,”<a rel=”no follow” href=”$1″>$1</a>”,$wpbusdirman_the_excerpt);?>
<?php echo $wpbusdirman_the_excerpt;?>

FIND
<a href=”<?php the_permalink(); ?>”><?php the_content(‘ ‘); ?></a>

REPLACE WITH
<?php $wpbusdirman_the_content=get_the_content(); ?>
<?php $wpbusdirman_the_content=preg_replace(“/(http://[^s]+)/”,”<a rel=”no follow” href=”$1″>$1</a>”,$wpbusdirman_the_content);?>
<?php echo $wpbusdirman_the_content;?>

It is recommended that you only attempt to apply the fix it you know how to edit PHP. If you’re not confident you can make the change without breaking the script please wait for the update.

I can’t get your Business Directory plugin to recognize that the Turn
On Payments? option is selected unless I put the payment gateways into
test mode. Payments are definitely turned on, but if I go to the
Manage Payments screen, I get the following message: “You are not
currently charging any payment fees. To charge fees for listings check
that option in the manage options page.” Can you please help?

Even if you have payments turned on but you do not have any actual fees setup you will get the message that you are not currently charging any fees. The default message needs to be a little bit clearer to let you know that you need to turn on payments and also add some listing fees. If you have payments turned on and you also have listing fees set and you’re still getting the message please leave a comment about it.