We’ve all been there.

Staring hopelessly at our computer screens with a ‘what now’ expression on our faces.

Sure googling for the next steps can help. But then you’re left trying to piece together bits of information to build a decent solution.

Things don’t always have to be this way. Especially when dealing with Listify setup!

We’ve done the piecing together of information for you, with simple to follow instructions, sans the developer jargon! 😀

I will guide you through:

And more… without importing the demo content.

Let’s dive right in!

Installing the Theme and Dependent Plugins

Now, I’m going to assume you have purchased the Listify theme and are ready with a fresh new WordPress installation.

Step 0, is installing and activating the Listify theme!

Once you activate the theme, you need to install the needed plugins.

What I would have appreciated after theme activation, would be an automatic redirect to a “Setup Guide” or “Welcome Page”. But that doesn’t happen, so don’t hold your breath for it. 😉

Just navigate to Appearance -> Setup Guide. Find the button ‘Install Plugins’ and click it. Don’t worry, the plugins do not get installed automatically; you are instead redirected to the Install ‘Plugins screen’. (Alternatively, you could directly head over to Appearance -> Install Plugins)

Liftify recommends 10 odd plugins to be installed. However, out of the plugins listed, WP Job Manager and WooCommerce are the only plugins that are required. The others are recommended but not required.

Instead of installing all the recommended plugins, I’d recommend you install only the required plugins to begin with.

With Listify, the listings are completely managed by the WP Job Manager plugin. So, let’s start by installing and activating the WP Job Manager plugin.

Setting Up WP Job Manager

WP Job Manager does provide a setup wizard, but Listify recommends you skip it, and manually create the pages.

Not a problem! Owing to the use of shortcodes, setting up the pages manually is pretty easy.

Creating Listing Pages

You need to create three pages:

1. Submit Listing: Create a page named ‘Submit Listing’ and add the [submit_job_form] shortcode and publish the page. Do note: Submit Listing and Edit Listing pages are required only if you want to allow other users to add and manage their own listings.
2. Edit Listing: Create a page named ‘Edit Listing’ and add the [job_dashboard] shortcode on it and publish the page.
3. Listings: The Listings page displays submitted listings. To create this page, add the [jobs] shortcode on it, and name it Listings. Set the ‘Listings’ template for the page, and publish it.

Once the pages have been created you’ll need to update WP Job Manager settings.

WP Job Manager Settings

Just head over to Listing -> Settings. Here you’ll be able to adjust WP Job Manager settings according to your preference.

Now, you could leave the settings under ‘Listings’ and ‘Listing Submissions’ as default; however I would like to bring your attention to a couple of settings you might want to adjust:

Under Listing Submissions:

1. Account Role: If you’d prefer the account role to be different, for example say ‘Owner’, then you’d have to change the value of this option.
2. Listing Duration: If you do not want listings to have an expiration date, clear this field.

Set Pages

Under ‘Pages’ you will have to set the listing pages you have just created.

1. Set ‘Submit Listing’ as the Submit Listing Form Page
2. Set ‘Edit Listing’ as the Listing Dashboard Page
3. And ‘Listings’ as the Listings Page

Remember to always save any changes made.

Setting Up WooCommerce

WooCommerce is used as the e-commerce cart on your listings website with Listify. Once again, Listify recommends that you do not use the setup wizard, and the reason’s the same. Since there isn’t a conventional store on your listings website, you probably do not need all the pages WooCommerce will create.

But instead of skipping the use of the on-boarding wizard altogether, here’s what I’d recommend. Just skip the first step, so that you do not create any pages. You can set the rest of the options as per your need.

Create My Account Page

Create a new page, add the WooCommerce My Account shortcode [woocommerce_my_account] on it, and publish the page. This page will allows users to login/logout from the frontend, and will also help them track their purchases/bookings.

We’ll not worry about creating a product at this moment. We’ll get to it in some time 🙂

Creating the Homepage

So, up until now, we were focused on the backend. Let’s move our attention to the frontend for a while.

Your listing website needs a super amazing homepage. But when building one, just make sure you do not ignore essential elements. By far the most important element is the search option. If you’ve noticed popular listing websites, this option is placed prominently right when the homepage is loaded. And you must’ve noticed the same on Listify’s homepage demo.

To create the homepage, create a new page and set ‘Home’ as the page template. You should be able to see the search option displayed on the page.

A great feature about selecting the ‘Home’ template, is that you can add additional sections as widgets under ‘Homepage’ widgets. For example, as shown in the Listify demo, you can add a category image grid, and recent listings.

Alternatively, if you wanted complete control on the homepage design, you could use a page builder plugin like Visual Composer and leave the template as default or set it as ‘Home (Visual Composer)’.

Now, once the page is ready set this page as the ‘Front Page’ under Settings -> Reading. Create another blog page and set it as the ‘Posts Page’.

Creating Menus & Footer

Listify offers support for four menu locations:

1. Primary
2. Secondary
3. Tertiary
4. Social (Footer)

The primary menu is the top navigation bar, and is the ideal location to add the login option (or the ‘My Account’ page).

The secondary menu is where your main menu items can be added. By default Listify adds the ‘Browse Category’ menu option to the secondary menu.

The tertiary menu is an optional menu, which can be displayed on certain pages using the ‘Show tertiary navigation bar’ option in Page settings.

This menu is displayed below the page title.

The social menu is added right at the bottom of your page, and is the ideal place to add links to your social profiles. The reason being that Listify automatically displays icons for social networks when the relevant links are added in the menu. You can optionally choose to add links to the “Terms & Conditions’ page, or the ‘Privacy Policy’ page in this menu.

Adding Widgets to the Footer

The Listify theme provides a three column footer. You can head over to Appearance -> Widgets and add widgets under Footer Column 1/2/3 to display information in the footer.

The call to action right above the footer is also part of the footer and can be edited using an option under Appearance -> Customize -> Footer.

There are other options here too, that help you edit the copyright text and allow you to add an ‘As Seen On’ section.

Creating Listings

Moving on to the most important section – Creating a Listing! 🙂

Listings are the focus of your website. But, before we jump to creating a listing, let’s create a listing category. This will save us the trouble of having to edit the listing after creating the category.

Creating Listing Categories

Creating listing categories is pretty simple. It’s just like creating categories for posts in WordPress. Go to Listings -> Listing Categories and add new categories.

Creating a Listing

To create a listing, go to Listings -> Add New.

1. Add the name of the listing as the title
2. Description about the listing in the post description
3. Add the ‘Listing Data’,’Hours of Operation’, ‘Featured Image’
4. Add images for the listing under ‘Listing Gallery’
5. Categorize the listing under ‘Listing Categories’… and publish the post!

Your new listing should be created. Users of your site can create a listing from the frontend itself, using the ‘Submit Listing’ page.

Add Location Map

To add the listing location on the map, you need to add the geolocation coordinates to the listing. These coordinates have to be added as custom fields. For each field below, you have to add a new custom field:

• geolocated – set this to 1 (this indicates that an address is available)
• geolocation_city
• geolocation_country_long
• geolocation_country_short
• geolocation_formatted_address
• geolocation_lat
• geolocation_long
• geolocation_postcode

You should get all of this above information by googling for the listing location. If you do not add this information, the location will not be marked on the map shown on the ‘Listings’ page.

Modifying the Listings Page

Now, we’ve already created the Listings page, and if you are happy with its appearance, good for you! But if not, here’s what you need to do! 😀

First things first, to display the map on your listings website, you’ll have to create and set a Google Maps Geocoding API key.

• Go to your Google Developers Console API Manager, and create a ‘New Project’,
• then go to Google Maps Geocoding API, and click ‘Enable’

Enter the generated API key on your WordPress website under Appearance -> Customize -> Listings -> Map Settings

You could optionally add additional elements in a sidebar on the Listings page, by adding widgets under Appearance -> Listings -> Listings Archive.

Creating Listing Packages

Now, if you head over to ‘Submit Listing’ page, you should be shown the submission form directly. But if you notice on the Listify demo page, there are ‘Purchase Packages’. These purchase packages are created as products in WooCommerce using the WC Paid Listings plugin.

1. Go to Products -> Add Product
2. Under Product Data, add ‘Listing Package’ as the product type
3. Set the price, ‘Listing Duration’ (if applicable), and publish the product.

Customizing the Theme

Apart from customizing the theme’s background, there are tons of other options available to customize the look of the theme under Appearance -> Customize.

• You can change the color scheme under Style Kit, or set custom colors yourself
• You can change the typography, map color scheme, listing layout…. and so on

If you’re good with the default look, you can leave the theme customization settings as is. To customize the theme beyond the options available, such as creating custom templates for Listify, you’ll need to contact a theme developer.

TL;DR

Here’s a summary of the tasks you need to undertake as part of Listify theme setup:

1. Install the theme and WP Job Manager and WooCommerce plugins
2. Create Listing pages (Submit Listing, Listings, Edit Listing) with WP Job Manager shortcodes and update WP Job Manager settings
3. Setup WooCommerce, and create the account page
4. Create the Homepage using the template provided by Listify and add widgets as needed
5. Set the primary, secondary menu
6. Add footer widgets, and customize the footer as needed
7. Create listing categories and listing packages

Surely, there are quite a few plugins (recommended by Listify) which you could use to add more functionality on your website. But let’s save all that discussion for another day. 🙂

For those of you who have used Listify to create their website, feel free to post any information that could be of help to our readers.

And for those of you, who need help setting up Listify, we would be more than happy to help you. Here’s how we can set up the Listify theme on your website. 🙂