We are working on a complete re-write of the plugin that will address the ajax errors and take care of many of the issues mentioned in your comments.

We were nearly complete with the re-write when client requests and other responsibilities took a toll on our schedules. We are planning to dedicate a little time each week to getting the remaining issues resolved and to post a new version for you in about 30 days.

I am sorry for the delay, and for the period of silence. Thank you for your patience!

-Cary

We have discovered that Internet Explorer is having trouble with our chaining of commands. To optimize for speed and efficiency, we combined several commands in our scripting. Think of this as asking your friend to run to the store to pick up ‘milk, eggs and bread’ all in one trip. That’s ‘chaining’.

What we have discovered is that Internet Explorer seems to have a problem getting all the items in a single trip, and would rather that we only ask for one thing at a time: ‘go to the store, get milk, come back, repeat for eggs…’

We’re pretty sure this is the reason many of you are experiencing Ajax errors, and ‘errors on submit’.

This discovery has pointed us in a direction that we think will result in a more robust update and better performance for most of you.

It is hard to say when we think we’ll fully solve for the issue, but we are working on this over the weekend and into the first of the next week and would very much like to have this resolved by March 1. I’ll keep you posted.

Thank you all for your comments and feedback. We are not always quick to get back to you (or at all for that matter), but we do read the comments and emails and we are working on your suggestions and requests.

Thank you for your support.

-Cary

We imagine Apple’s embarrassment as they realized they timed their announcement of the iPad on the same day as ours. Oh well; you can’t win ‘em all.

Anyway, this is a fairly minor update, but may fix a few known issues.

In particular, we have increased our URL handling, made Business Directory compatible with WordPress MU, and fixed a compatibility issue with our own FAQ Builder.

We are not completely certain, but these simple fixes may cascade their compatibility-goodness to other plugins that may not be friendly toward us (or visa-versa, but we’re not about to admit that in public). In other words; this simple update may help in other areas, too.

In any case, this new version is an improvement in a few areas, and a rewrite of several code elements should go a long ways to make things better, today and in the future as we continue to make improvements.

Thanks for your support and we’ll appreciate any tell-a-friends, re-tweets, or social mentions.

It’s just been really busy and the paying projects have taken the priority; though we love working on the Business Directory.

I am happy to report that we are currently working on a new revision to the classic version of Business Directory, and we are again working on the Premium version, which we have been touting since the dawn of man. We have received and are grateful for the many comments, suggestions and bug reports. Please keep them coming.

If you have a feature request that you would like us to consider in the next or premium version, please send a suggestion.

In the meantime, we continue to appreciate any donations you can send our way. Or, better yet, if you would like to support us and get something great in return, please host your next website with Bluehost using our affiliate link. Bluehost provides awesome hosting, great support and outstanding WordPress compatibility for a great price.

Thank you!

• We updated the navigation for WP 2.7. If you don’t have 2.7 yet, it is a must-have.
• We added a footer pagination navigation so that you don’t have to scroll back up to go to the next page.
• We also added a note on the Join Form that reminds your visitors that they need to provide at least one form of contact information.

We’ll be working on things over the holidays, and plan to have more for you early next year. Thanks for all the terrific comments and great feedback.

Although we haven’t been able to replicated this error on our own servers yet, we believe the error is due to a javascript error. Unfortunately, it appears that this javascript error is not our fault (If it were, we would fix it), but rather the result of incompatibility issues with other javascript scripts from other plugins, custom hacks, or themes.

For now; we have updated Business Directory so that the submit button is not dependent on javascript to function properly. If you have been experiencing this error, download Business Directory again and reinstall it.

We have uploaded a quiet update as of October 13 at about Noon.

Details about the update: We have inserted a small bit of code that allows the Submit button to function even if there is a conflict with another javascript (such as, we think, Google Adwords). Users experiencing a conflict will not get the auto-populated instructions in each of the entry fields of the Add Form, but the Join button will still work. Users with no conflict will experience things as normal.

We have a plan for a more robust fix in future versions.

Please upgrade immediately to this latest version; this will solve a lot of issues for you as your readers try to upload their entries onto your site Directory.

We did additional testing specifically for Internet Explorer 7 and fixed the following bugs:

• The Search function on the Directory page was exhibiting unstable behavior. We believe that we found and eradicated this problem. Let us know if you still have trouble searching the Directory.
• The Join Form was not submitting properly, this has been fixed.

I am probably speaking to the choir here, but we like to recommend FireFox for the best experience.

>>>By the way; if you have version 0.6 installed, this update notice will appear in your plugins directory.

I have received a handful of questions about how to change your Business Directory Name. The answer is ‘Yes’, you can change the name of your Directory.

We have posted information on how to do this in our documentation, however I will quickly review the process here, too…

We work with ‘shortcode’, which is the short piece of code that you put on your page to display the Directory on your site.

Normally, the shortcode for the Display page looks like this:

To rename your Business Directory, all you need to do is add a little text to the code, like this:

In the above example, the colored part (blue/red) needs to be added in order to change your Business Directory name. Specifically, the RED part is your new name. In this example, you would be changing the name to ‘Cool Directory‘. Easy as pie.

You can also change the width of your Business Directory. I don’t recommend changing the width unless you are an experienced coder because you will likely end up with some text wrapping or CSS problems to deal with. Regardless, if you want to change the width of your Business Directory, you would change the shortcode to look like this:

In the example above, you are changing the width to ’90 percent of your page width’, and you are also changing the name of your Directory to ‘Cool Directory’. You can change the width without changing the name by simply eliminating ‘name=”Cool Directory” ‘ in this example.

If you have any questions or feedback about this process, please let us know in the comments for this post.

We have achieved just over 750 downloads in our first week, which is pretty exciting for us (we have no idea what we should expect, or what we should consider ‘good’).

We appreciate the feedback, both positive and negative, too. It sounds like most of you have got it up and running, and a few of you have discovered conflicts and a few bugs. We are working on a new update and will keep you posted.

In the meantime, we would appreciate any external reviews and/or pass-alongs. Please tell a friend about our plugin and help us pass the word.

If you know of a way to get the word out about this plugin please let us know.

Thank You!

I want to report them here so more people can find them. Here they are…

Do Not place both the Directory Form and the Add Form on the same page.

The two public forms in this plugin are not designed to be on the same page. Putting them together will cause a failure, and your Add Form will not work (the ‘submit’ button appears dimmed and does not respond, for instance).

There are aesthetic reasons you won’t want them on the same page, too. For example, if you placed your Add Form on top of your Directory listing, your visitors would not realize you have the Directory until they scrolled down past the Add Form. Likewise, if you put the Add Form below the Directory, you will loose the Add Form down the page as your Directory fills up.

Place them on separate pages, and add a little intro text above each with a link to the other.

Do Not use the old version.

You should be using v0.6 or higher. The new version is already much better, and does not require the folder rename. In addition, we have addressed a couple minor bugs that seemed to be generating problems for some users.

NOTE: If you have updated from v0.5, your folders may still need to be renamed. Be sure to read our Update Guide to make sure you have upgraded properly; this could be a problem for you if you had/have our earlier version. Upgrading will be ‘normal’ for all future releases.

Don’t forget to Join Our Directory if you have the plugin installed. Thank you!