We are proud to release Business Directory for WordPress v0.8 Beta. It has been submitted to the gods at WordPress and should appear in your auto-update soon. In the meantime, here’s a quick rundown on what you will see, namely: Categories!

New in This Version

1. Added Categories: you can now create your own categories, assign listings to categories, sign up into a category, and search by category.
2. Fixed Bugs: We fixed a few issues that were troubling some of you, and found a few items that we improved under the hood.

This version is a little more stable, and sets the stage for future development of some nifty features that will let you take advantage of categories.

Upgrading Instructions For Current Users

1. Back up your database.
2. Seriously; while we are pretty confident in our stuff, we don’t want to be responsible for ruining yours. Back that thing up.
3. Deactivate your current version of BizDir from within your Plugins Admin.
4. Upload or Auto-update the new version 0.8 Beta.
5. Reactivate BizDir.
6. Add categories, assign categories, tell all your friends.
7. Seriously; tell all your friends.

New users can simply add the new plugin as you normally would, though we still recommend the back up.

Here are some screen shots for you…

^On your Business Directory page you will now have the ability to search for categories. This is a great feature for now, and sets up the ability in future versions to create separate pages in your blog for each category. Stay tuned…

^In your Sign Up page you will notice a new field for Category. Your visitors are required to select a category before their submission will be accepted. This assures that all new sign ups are assigned to a category. You can name your own categories in the BizDir Admin panel.

^In your BizDir admin panel, you can assign or change categories for your users before or after you approve them.

^In the BizDir admin panel you now have the ability to add as many categories as you want. We create a category called ‘General’ for you, and assign all your existing listings into that category when you upgrade or install this new version. You have the ability to change the name of the General category, or can delete it. Note that your visitors will not be able to submit a listing unless there is a category for them to choose, so make sure you always have a category in there.

WARNING: Deleting a category will ALSO delete all the listings in that category. We warn you about this before we allow you to go through with it, but it is a good think to think about before you go deleting all your categories and flush your listings along with them. To avoid this, simply re-assign all the listings in a particular category to a new category. We’ll tell you how many listings are left in a category before you delete it, so you can be assured that you have cleared everyone out.

Did I mention backing up your database before doing any of this is a good idea?

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.