WordPress being the multidimensional CMS it is, unlocks the door to countless possibilities. Templatic, a well-known WordPress company has come up with one such amazing example – the Directory theme. This theme is one of the most complete ‘directory solutions’ built with WordPress. Today we are going to review the Directory theme by Templatic, weigh its pros and cons and cast our verdict.
What makes ‘Directory’ stand out?
Given the enormous number of WordPress themes in the market, and the fact that most of them are tagged ‘multipurpose’, we wanted to see what makes this theme stand out.
- The ability to load the theme’s demo data with just one click
- The easy to follow installation video
- Its targeted application
Theme Installation
Instead of unnecessarily showing you how to install the theme, I’m going to review the installation process. Since everybody here likes to save time, I’m going to go with the easy installation method. Check out the awesome installation video and the detailed installation guide.
Before I could install the theme, I am required to download, upload and activate 3 plugins, in the specified order. I’ll be honest – this is kind of an inconvenience.
Upon activating the first plugin – ‘tevolution’, I am asked for a licence key. I copy it from my Templatic account dashboard and the Templatic control panel is activated. This licencing feature prevents misuse of the theme and (obviously) counters piracy. The Tevolution control panel is most impressive – loaded with a plethora of options.
Once all three plugins are activated, I navigate to WordPress Dashboard > Appearance > Themes > Add New > Upload Theme and upload the templatic.zip file.
Demo Data
In my opinion, every paid WordPress theme should come with a demo data file so that the users can get themselves acquainted with the theme’s features. Templatic is no exception. Normally, I’d have to go to WP Dashboard > Tools > Import, upload the XML file, and a couple of settings/click later, the demo data gets populated. In some cases, it doesn’t work – maybe because the host had removed the demo images or an XML configuration error.
Templatic kills in this regard. In order to populate a fresh installation of the Directory theme with its demo data, all you have to do, is click on Install Sample Data found under the Tevolution control panel. You’ll notice that the video says it might up to a minute for the demo data to be loaded. This might be because the person (in the video) was running WordPress from localhost. But it my case, it took around 20 seconds. (I’m running WordPress from a shared hosting server with LiteSpeed webserver).
Once the data has been populated, I can quickly find my way around the theme’s features. The first thing I did was change the theme’s default city to San Francisco. This setting is located under Tevolution > Manage Locations.
Monetization
What good is a directory site if you can’t make a dollar out of it? With the Monetization feature, you can allow the visitor to post a listing in your site – paid or free. More on this is explained under Price Packages.
What’s more you can select multiple payment gateways, set the currency under Payment Gateways. Want to take it even further? You can create coupons as well! The following picture shows the various options available when creating a new coupon. You can set a coupon validity duration and discount type – either percentage or amount.
Tevolution also gives you a Transaction log where each and every user-initiated transactions are saved for future reference. This comes in super handy when it IRS comes knocking on your door. 😉
Email Settings
Another interesting feature in the Tevolution control panel is the Email Settings option. You can use the PHP mail() function or WordPress’ very own mail function – wp_mail(), as your email agent. This page gives you a lot of customization options, some of which include:
- Sending emails when certain actions are completed, like successful post submission, payment confirmation, etc.
- Set the email body when the Email to Friend button is clicked
- Buck load of useful shortcodes which can be used in the email body
Managing Listings in the Directory theme
To create and manage listings, you’ll find an entry under WP Dashboard > Listings. All places, like restaurants, coffee houses, bars, hospitals, etc. fall under the custom post type called Listings.
Each post under listings represents a place. Each such place contains almost all the information one might need about the place.
Creating a new listing is just as easy. Just goto WP Dashboard > Listing > Add Listing. Since this is a custom post type, you’ll have a lot of new options to set in order to reflect the most accurate information.
Custom Permalinks
Introduced in Tevolution v1.1.2, custom permalinks allows you to include city names in your listing’s link. Suppose you want to list a coffee shop in New York called Mocha Mino, your link would be:
Or if you’re listing a bar called Girls Girls Girls in LA, the link would be:
Internally, Tevolution uses custom permalinks to include variables from custom post types.
Addons
Some might think that the developers are ripping you off with useless ‘addons’. On the contrary, the addons available for the Directory theme are very helpful to the right person, and they’re justly priced, given the amount of time it takes to code them.
The Extend addons include Events, MultiRating, AdManager, etc. Refer the official addons page for more info.
My favourite is the Payment Gateway addons which include payment processors like 2Checkout, PayPal Pro, Google Wallet, Stripe and Authorize.net amongst others.
Location and Map Settings
These settings enables you to add/remove countries, states and cities from your directory. You can then filter the results based on your predefined criteria. The City Logs shows the number of pageviews of each city, including the pageviews of a listing in that city. Thus, you can sort out the most popular cities.
The Map settings allow you to modify the map display, with factors like scaling factor, map type and view size.
Theme Updates
A multifunctional theme needs updates from time to time in order to iron out new found bugs. The automatic updates in the Directory theme (and all other Templatic themes for that matter) is another feature I admire. The settings are located at Tevolution > Theme Update.
Support
Templatic takes care of its customers. This statement can be verified with the fact that they provide five forms of support for each of their themes:
- Ticket Submission
- Support Forums
- Advanced Documentation
- Installation Guide
- Paid Theme Installation Service
Conclusion: Applications of the Directory theme
One of the best things I like about this theme is its explicit nature of application. The theme’s tagline says and I quote: “Complete Directory solution for WordPress”. It includes almost all the elements required to support their claim. You can create:
- A ‘yellow pages’ service
- Revamp your travel blog to include locations on the map
- Or even list all your office branches, worldwide or in your locality
The possibilities are endless, yet domain restricted. This concludes our review of the Directory theme from Templatic. If you like what you see, don’t hesitate to buy this theme.
If you enjoyed this post, make sure to subscribe to WP Mayor’s RSS feed.
27 Responses
Bad, very bad template (jobs directory and Directory theme). Needs a lot of work – some features are not totally finished – – some dont work – you need a developer to work on this template.
The support is bad – they answer right after you purchase and a couple of times – then they are gone.
DO NOT BUY this theme unless you are a developer.
Caution – templatic.com – the virus!
Don’t buy – templatic.com !!!
I bought the themes of wordpress July 13, 2018
uploaded it to the website
July 25, 2018 I received a letter from the hosting about a virus (malware Software) on this theme of wordpress from the company Templatic.com
(/wp-content/plugins/Tevolution/js/fancybox/jquery.fancybox-1.3.4.php
Known exploit = [Fingerprint Match] [PHP Upload Exploit [P0898]])
I deleted everything on hosting
I deleted everything on the site
I spent a lot of time on this infected product
July 28, 2018 wrote a claim for a refund – $299
templatic.com – do not return money !
employee Deekshit Nair from templatic.com – ask access to the FTP – nonsense
a lot of problems with templatic.com
DO NOT BUY!
My websites have been hacked 4 times due to vulnerabilities with this theme/plugins & the support staff/management refuse to take any responsibility let alone provide a refund along with a fix. Bhavik the company owner or whatever he is mocked me via email then disabled my licence that allowed me to upgrade the theme and update it.
You can read about the Exploit here:
And you can see here ohw many sites have been hacked (copy paste in Google search):
inurl://wp-content/plugins/Tevolution/tmplconnector
Stay away from Templatic Directory themes and plugins. They are constantly being hacked, potentially as seen as a weak target by hackers and the software cannot communicate when updates are needed or do them properly. No forum, so hiding customer complaints and whilst quick and nice, support just doesn’t read tickets, let alone help. Members get little, than re-hashed themes, they keep changing their focus, dropping the last ‘flavour of the month’ along with the themes and are more interested in adding things members have to pay extra for. A good firm that has totally lost it’s way and doesn’t appear to care! STAY AWAY
The Theme’s are full of errors. You spend hours fixing all the issues with their themes. Customer supports helps you no doubt but as soon as there is an update of word-press or even any of their plugins, your site will crash.We had to run the site with No Upgrades and No updates. Finally it was high time we moved away from their theme. Much Happpy to make that decision
My recommendations for not buying the theme:
Themes very slow even on dedicated Serves.
Updating wordpress will crash the Themes.
Updating their Plugins will crash half of the functions of the site.
Cannot put more than 1500 listings of anything. After that be ready to be contacting customer support everyday.
Third party plugins, you will be asked to remove them by support and half of the time they will blame the Third party plugins when even their plugins do not work every time they update them.
Bottom Line, make a wise choice- Run away from them ASAP.
Thank you for your reviews.
Has prevented me from making a mistake and purchasing this theme + addons.
It looks great, I hope the company can sort out its issues
Hi Roland
Our Showcase only contains websites that people submit themselves. We don’t force users to submit their site into Showcase or anything like. With that said, we recently did a case study with a fairly successful website running Directory. You can read about it here
Cheers
Vedran from Templatic
I would very much like to find some ‘good examples’ of websites using the Directory / Templatic Theme. – I have looked at the showcase and was not very impressed. I contacted Templatic Sales but they were reluctant to point me to any good examples of their Directory.
So if you do know of andy “successful” examples of Communities or Towns using Director please let me know in the comments. I would like to see Directory working in a live production enviroment.
My own website is which is directory / community off sorts and I am thinking of using Directory for another Town. – Tx Roland
First, let me say, I’ve probably only done 75 WP websites – I’m more of a web designer and certainly NOT a programmer. However, that is why nearly all my sites are now WP. I am EXTREMELY analytical and do a great deal of internet research and can work my way through most anything with little or no support. I’ve also had a LOT of experience with databases.
Templatic Directory theme/child theme Cuisine has been one of the worst experiences I’ve ever had. I have a reseller account with HostGator and host/manage the majority of my designed websites. After 6 weeks and who knows how many hours spent reading forums, contacting support, etc. I finally moved my site to WPEngine because my site was SOOOO SLOW – I only had 2800 entries and everyone blamed the shared server.
I would take 2 wk breaks to allow my hair to grow back in and it seemed each time I did, I needed to update and each time I had to go back and tweak – reinstall – always something. One of the benefits of WPEngine is the ease of backup and restore points!
In Templatic’s defense, it is a very robust theme – the more options you have, the more difficult it can be – I understood the learning curve was steep.
Important notes: updates of theme and plug-ins MUST be done in a specific order.
Suggestions: I am not certain how to make the instructions more straight forward, but finding answers even when you know the correct question is not easy. If this is your first attempt at a WP site – hire someone to do it for you, or find another theme.
Defense: In Templatic’s defense – I doubt Vedran sleeps or must have 30+ people who respond to support forums, emails, and sites like this. The effort is there and certainly language barrier can be an issue – so hats off for the effort.
Aggravation: I purchased a Developer pkg and 2 add-on plug-ins for $299 – or so I thought – only to learn I’d been charged the same amount which gave me a “Club Membership” which also included a monthly $19 fee. That also gives you access to all other themes, which I had no interest in. In any case, I got back to the Developer pkg but now I ONLY have support and updates for 1 year. With all the changes, bugs, etc that’s a hefty price to pay to be left in the lurch after a year.
I am now trying to decide what to do – how long will this theme and plug-ins hold up as WP updates? Do I want to spend another 100 hours fine tuning this theme only to hit another frustration point and have to start over?
Conclusion: Sorry this is so long – tried to help the next prospective user what to expect.
The cost is too high for only 1 yr of support/updates.
If you are not a programmer or cannot employ one – think twice.
Even if you are GREAT at reading instructions, I would suggest you have tremendous patience or a larger budget to get help.
This theme is on the edge of being to complex for most amateur WP site builders – i.e. if this is your first – try something else.
I would not buy this theme again unless it offered longer support/updates for the price. It’s sort of like buying Quicken updates – you’re paying for updates that are really bug fixes.
Hope this helps you decide whether this theme is for you or not.
Hi Jean
First off, I’d just like to say sorry for the poor experience you had with Directory and Cuisine. As you mentioned, the theme is very robust making it hard to anticipate performance on any given server. As I type this there is Directory owner with problems running the theme on a dedicated website with crazy amount of resources. Something isn’t configured quite right and the theme isn’t working as it should. However, at the same time there’s a user who contacted me the other day and who just cannot believe how well his site is working on a shared site5 server. Even tried visiting his site… it’s loading quite fast.
Since we cannot predict exactly how the theme will run on a given server we have 0 problems issuing a full refund to such customers. Bottom line, if the theme is super-slow on a more-than-adequate server we’ll issue a full refund.
When it comes to the billing issues involving Club membership, that was most likely caused by a human error while your purchase was being transformed into a different product type. It has been resolved since…. we definitely won’t be billing you $19 per month.
Lastly, updates and support aren’t just for 1 year. Every member can renew the license (each year) at a 70% discount. In short, you’ll never pay the full price again, only a third of the original price.
I also want to point out that you were correct in saying that Directory might be too complex for WordPress newcomers. Directory really is massive. The theme is more complex than probably 95% of all other WP themes. This does mean you get a lot of bang for your buck, but it also means there’s a learning curve associated with the theme.
If any of you are interested in getting Directory I highly recommend testing it out on test.templatic.com and contacting our pre-sales department with any questions that come up during testing. The time you spent testing won’t be in vain… it will help you (A LOT) if you end up getting the theme.
Kind regards
Vedran
I find this less of a “review” of the theme/plugins, and more of an “overview” or even a promotional article. I would have appreciated more information than simply a run-down of the features that the theme purports to provide, and the summary of what you see after running an install — that’s information I can easily get from Templatic’s website.
For a better understanding of how this theme is meant to work, I found the following functional review very helpful. It also helps explain the high-level strategy you should be thinking about when planning out your Directory site using this theme.
Otherwise, for an overall review of the developer including problems you might encounter or that others have encountered, I suggest the following review:
Overall, the impression I get from the reviews and comments on all these sites is the following: this seems a very promising theme/set of plugins with a great deal of flexibility and functionality — but it also means it is NOT a “beginner’s” theme. If you’re only doing configuration, you’ll still need to carefully plan out your website and strategy before beginning, and possess an analytic mindset to set it up correctly and create a user-friendly site that will work for your registered users. If you intend to customize at a deeper level (ie get into the code), you’ll need someone very experienced to assist — and preferably someone who speaks the developers’ native language.
Vedran (Templatic’s representative) has been actively addressing negative posts on many sites regarding Support issues and reported bugs, and as a potential customer I find this encouraging. His tone and manner is generally to be commended — he takes negative criticism better than most and offers help (including his email address) regularly, which is more than I’ve found most developers or company representatives doe when they’re under fire.
That being said, the gist of the matter is that he also admits that Templatic have had issues with the technical capabilities and language proficiency of their Support department, and he is sometimes a bit cavalier when he suggests that complex software is bound to have many bugs. I’ve worked with Enterprise-level software for 25 years. Yes, bugs happen — but we’re talking about WordPress themes/plugins here: it shouldn’t take months and a rocket scientist to bring up a site, and “updates” every couple weeks is excessive, if they’re needed that often to address problems. He does note that the company is actively making changes to address Support lag and bugs, and he cites several actions they’ve taken that he believes are improvements but I am still seeing recent negative comments from about 1/2 to 2/3 of customers who post. Still, it would be difficult to determine whether some of these issues are lack of sophistication/capability on the part of the user (ie they’re in over their heads), issues due to code customization, etc.
My suggestion to others is to proceed with caution, as I intend to. I’d very much like to try this theme and plugins to see if it works as described in an “out of the box” installation, but I’d be very hesitant to commit $299 + $19/mo without some iron-clad buyer protection.
My suggestion to Vedran and Templatic: knowing you have so many frustrated customers and negative reviews to overcome, I would very seriously consider dropping the $299 initial fee for a while to get people back on board and writing positive things about the product if you really feel you’ve made so much improvement. I know I’m unlikely to invest so much money and time without some pretty serious guarantees that I could get a site up and working within a couple of months of purchase.
I think this is hands down the most in-depth comment I ever read about Templatic or a specific Templatic theme. Thank you for that!
To help potential customers who are on the fence regarding buying Directory (or any other Templatic theme) I’ve been offering guaranteed refunds (the company usually has a no-refund policy). So, anyone who gets a theme, tries is and isn’t happy, just contact me within 2 weeks of purchasing and we’ll issue a full refund. During that time you’ll have access to both the theme and our support portals (Helpdesk and Forums). That should be enough time to determine whether you can use the theme for your website.
If you’re interested in this refund offer or simply want to know more about Templatic & Directory, please contact me via email at any time
Take care
Vedran
Agree with complaints. Steer very clear of this theme which doesn’t work, has many many coding errors and will cause you days of frustration trying to customize it a little bit.
Hey Cebcoder
I am actually on a mission to improve that very thing; customizing Directory. Few days ago I published a new article that explains how to use hooks for customizing Directory. You’ll find it here
Can you send me an email with details on the thing you’re trying to customize? If it’s something I know how to do… I’ll definitely help you out.
Cheers
Vedran
Hello everyone,
I was planning on buying the Directory theme but I’m glad I’ve read the conversation.
How I wish there was a simple way to develop a theme without all these conflicts.
The reason why I wanted to buy Directory theme was simply the theme I was using had great ambitions but has been poorly coded.
Just after buying the theme and being granted access to the support forum I quickly discovered with simply by reading threads’s titles i was already discouraged: so many issues.
I hope the theme developers will be more transparent with the quality of their themes. It is a deceptive practice to sell a product full of errors and bugs. To Manuel and Moris I can understand your frustrations because I’ve experienced that too.
I start to believe that for the developers, we the clients are actually the products.
…Let’s create a theme (buggy or not), shiny, with cool videos and graphics, making sure that it has a functional but limited demo and we will sell thousands and when we make a lot of money we can actually hire good developers and create something more serious…
Being a big fan of wordpress for over a decade now, I wonder if this platform should simply focus on what it is meant for: bloggin. The only wordpress site I have very little issues with were the ones that I used to publish nothing but blog posts and nothing more.
I’m going to see if woothemes has some directory theme. If not I will probably turn to Joomla for that as it is more fit for that purpose.
I’m getting so frustrated with those theme developers that I’m nurturing the idea of starting a theme development business. Because there is such a huge market for unsatisfied/frustruated wordpress customers.
– GM
Hi GM
I understand your frustration. However it’s not like we enjoy experiencing problems like this. They are a drain on the whole company. From support who needs to engage the customer to the development who needs to fix whatever issue popped up. They happen because it’s very hard to avoid them.
Comparing directory themes with simple “blog” themes isn’t really fair. In a complex theme there is just sooo much that can go wrong. As the complexity increases so does the number of reported issues.
If you’re unhappy with your purchase please send me an email and I’ll issue a full refund. We’re not in this business to trick people out of their money…
Cheers
Vedran
@Vedran
Hi Vedran,
“…the great majority of people using Directory are happy with it…”
Do you know that only very few of unsatisfied customers (from 3 up to 7% in most industries) dare to express their insatisfaction in a formal way?
Well, when I look into forum’s for reviews of Templatic Directory and see so many unsatisfied users writing about it, if I were you I would be careful before saying that “…the great majority is happy…”.
I too am one of these unsatified customers. Why ? After 6 months of problems following each update my website is still not launched and I am again (yes, rightnow, again…) waitin for your support to fix following updates problems…
regards,
Moris
I don’t think the percentage you provided is true. It’s possible that “formal way” means contacting the actual party who provided the product/services, but it likely doesn’t mean sharing the experience in general. Several studies find that unsatisfied customers are actually over 30% more likely to share their experience compared to satisfied customers. Here’s one of those studies
I do believe that most Directory owners are happy with their choice. The situation inside our own forums would be very much different if it were otherwise.
Kind regards
Vedran
THANKS FOR THE REPLY
ABOUT YOUR QUICK ANSWER…
Frankly, I appreciate. If Templatic support could react as fast as you do, I probably would not be here typing this at this very moment but rather busy with my website development!
But Templatic support does not react as fast as you do unfortunately…
ABOUT CONTENTS OF YOUR ANSWER…
However, I do not read, I can not find a single word about what caused my unsatisfaction – as a Templatic customer – in your answer…
NOT A SINGLE WORD about my problem. (The very fact that after six months I can’t publish my website because of so many updates – introducing so many problems at each time… ). Not a single word about “new problems” following “each Directory update”…
It looks like your only concerns are to be resumed in “I am right” and “you are wrong”. And this attitude is exactly what is so hard to deal with when you have got to deal with Templatic’s support… (see ticket 76211 and you will understand what I mean…)
ABOUT THE STATISTICS
The (only one) survey you mentioned was done on american households and the % you mentioned do not reflect “formal” ways of expression but WOM (Word-Of-Mouth -> to friends, family…). WOM, effectively do not represent formal complains to the provider, and of course even less complains and criticisms posted on a forum… But you know that: you mentioned it yourself. Then why do you try to make it look like a valid contradiction? Just to make my criticism looks like an inconsistent one?
ABOUT WHAT REALLY MATTERS (OR SHOULD) TO TEMPLATIC [YOU] AND TO YOUR CUSTOMERS [ME]
I don’t have nothing to prove with statistics and I am not interested to go on in such a discussion. This said, I am very, very interested and very curious to see the way you will choose now to handle my complains as one of your customers…
Regards,
Moris
Hi Moris
If you read any of my other comments on the internet (about Templatic) you’ll see that I don’t mind admitting I was wrong or admitting the company as a whole made a mistake. This whole conversation is nothing but proof that we messed up somewhere.
The reason why I didn’t comment on your problem is because there was nothing I could do about it. All I can do is offer a generic reply and say that we will fix the problem. Now that I have a ticket number I can see what the problem is… thank you! Although, that ticket has been closed for over 2 months and the issue appears to be resolved.
In my opinion, voicing your discontent on a public forum is closer to word-of-mouth than it is to a “formal way”. Forums are the word of mouth of the internet. But, let’s not dwelve on that further.
The next time you have a problem that requires support, please submit it inside our forums and Helpdesk and then send me the thread URL or the Helpdesk ID. If I know the answer to your question I will reply as soon as I can. My email address is this:
PS: The reason why you should first post to Helpdesk/forums and then send a link to me is so that I can easily assign the issue to someone else (in case I can’t come up with a solution).
Kind regards
Vedran
Hi Vedran,
Whatever you wrote on the Internet and whatever you admitted, it looks to me that you just pretend to ignore the fact that Templatic Directory theme becomes a source of problems for its license owners as soon as you update it. Unfortunately you (Templatic) update it very, very often… Thus my question is : why so often? And why so many problems after each update?
The basic fact is that after buying Templatic Directory theme I am still unable to publish my website more than 7 months later. Why ? Because of so many new problems created by the last theme and plugins updates, once again. That’s all I know for certain.
This said, you did not read ticket 76211 I mentioned aboved. If you had read it, you would have seen what it contains. And what does it contain? It shows an arrogant and agressive response (and a 5 days “hold up” on my website) of Templatic’ Support that gives all responsibilities to the customer (me) while HE (Templatic’s Support) was mistaking and confusing all way long! It’s a bit hard to call this “support” isn’t it?
Mentioning this ticket was supposed to illustrate (for you only, but you force me to make it public) this “primo attitude” you seem to all have at Templatic : “I am right” and “you are wrong”. It was not supposed to refer to a current (or closed) ticket as you tried to make it look like. I am ready to publish it here if you allow me…
But I am sure you didn’t read it, did you ? Because if you did read it, then I would be forced to doubt your goodwill…
Regards,
Moris
PS : WOM is never written. It is (as it says) coming out of the mouth… Writing something you’re ready to defend, anywhere, even and maybe especially on Internet’s forums, is very formal as a matter of fact. But, let’s not dwelve on that further…
Hi Moris
Directory theme is updated once or twice a month. I don’t think that’s too often considering the size and scope of the theme. Directory isn’t completely free of issues, bugs do pop up but we are continually updating and fixing them.
When it comes to your ticket… no, I didn’t read it at first (I read it now). Initially I read the last 2-3 replies and saw that the issue was resolved. When a ticket is closed there isn’t really much that I can do so I didn’t think it was necessary to read it whole.
The 4-5 days of wait time at one point in the ticket was definitely unfortunately. Support times are often longer when developers have to get involved (like it was in your case), but even this was too long. Please accept our apology for that. When it comes to general confusion within the ticket, that was a mistake on Umar’s part for which he apologized in the end. Mistakes happen, it sucks, but there isn’t all that much we can do about it; especially after all this time.
Kind regards
Vedran
@ Vedran,
9 DAYS WAITING…
YOU WROTE (just here above) :
“The 4-5 days of wait time at one point in the ticket was definitely unfortunately. Support times are often longer when developers have to get involved (like it was in your case), but even this was too long.”
Now, how do you explain the 9 DAYS I’ve been waiting (after you wrote what you wrote) for Templatic’support to really investigate the new issue I discovered about Templactic’s Directory information boxes links not working with Safari* ?
I still can not launch my business (after 7 months) because of the bugs in Templatic Directory… Once again, I am waiting for Templatic to fix a theme’s bug issue…
Regards,
Moris
* [see post in Templatic forum here :
or refer to ticker number : 80168]
I wasn’t aware of this Moris, thank you for letting me know. I created a priority to-do for our developers and instructed them to fix this asap. You will most likely hear from them tomorrow.
OK Vedran,
Looks like Templatic Support finally solved the problem. (Code issue). I am gratefull to you and to them.
What I still regret is that it took so long…
I am sure that all of you guys do their very best to make it work. But I would say that Support definitely have to improve their trust in customers. We are not here only to bring problems to them…
Again this morning Support tried to escape by giving me an analyse involving a modification I made on size of icons/images…
If they could give us a little more confidence, that would save time and energy, and help to build up a more efficient cooperation.
However, thanks to you and to Templatic Support, I should be able to launch my website now.
Regards,
Moris
PS: for other readers, I would still choose Templatic Directory if I had to strart this project again ; but, just a piece of advice : if you have to customize a lot, do not update too long…
Hi Manuel
First off, I’m sorry to hear your experience with Directory hasn’t been all that great. While it’s definitely possible there were issues you mentioned, they were fixed the first change we got. Directory is routinely updated (at least once every 2 weeks) as it’s our biggest and most important theme.
When it comes to documentation, there is actually a wealth of content available for developers. It’s available in the Docs site; it’s possible you missed it.
Because of it’s complexity Directory can be a bit scary. The sheer size and scope of the theme also increase the likelihood of experiencing issues. With that said, the great majority of people using Directory are happy with it as it allowed them to create a fairly complex website with a very small cost and effort.
If you’d like to discuss this further, feel free to email me at any time. I can even help with some technical issues. The email is:
Kind regards
Vedran from Templatic
I bought this theme for a client as sincerely it really looks promising in the website and with all features.
It really helps to have a listing website.
After 1 month of configuration of this theme I have realize that it have several problems which are not expected for a product like this considering the price.
Latest version until 13 MAY 2014 have problems with the monetization module. It allow anyone to post unlimited listings for free packages. Paid packages contains errors as instruct user to pay for a subscription when they already have paid for one.
Newsletter widget works partially and inconsistently, I ended up using a plugin to configure the newsletter functionality.
The translation is really messy as translation files are in different folders and there is no professional documentation about where things are in which files, basically you have to trace the stuff and spend a lot of time customizing.
Code is really bad written and not documented, after 10 years of coding experience, configuring out of the box systems this is one of the worst code I have ever seen, even for open source programs.
Support in forums is not spectacular and sometimes you face the wall without short term solutions.
If you will need to customize this theme you will face a lot of problems and spending time and money fixing what they have to fix.
If you don’t need to customize it too much and you want a free website, go ahead as it contains several features.
Don´t get me wrong the theme offer a lot of things but as some are badly tested or broken one of them can really hurt you if you need them.
And yes they offer a fully functional front end and back-end, though is not really functional and you cannot really test all the process, receive all the emails and register stuff (at least for directory theme)
They said that in the past they make mistake and the latest version have fixed problems, but I still experience problems, maybe they have a private version which I would be happy to receive.
Lastly, this apply to the directory theme, so maybe for other themes you can have different experience.