Vantage 4 – Custom Map Pins
Welcome to Vantage 4.x Custom Map Pins.
Take control of your directory site and your category icons.
This plugin lets you quickly and easily add a custom icon to your map for your individual categories.
- NEW – Added support for YOAST SEO plugin and primary categories (for when listings are in multiple categories, you can choose which category icon to use)
- Unique pin icon for each category
- Unique pin icon for feature listings
- Set height of category map header
- Set height of single listing map
Watch the video for a quick run through.
Q. What happens when my listing is in multiple categories?
A. If your listing belongs to multiple categories, it will use the pin that is first in the alphabetical order of categories. For example your listing is in the categories, ‘bars’, ‘entertainment’, and ‘nightclubs’. The pin icon it would use would be from the category ‘bars’.
Note, I’ve now added support for YOAST SEO plugin. So if you’re listing is in multiple categories, you can choose from the back end which category is the primary category and the plugin will use this icon.
- Download plugin
- Upload and active plugin on website
- Go to your listing categories in the WP-Admin to add new pin icons
- Go to Vantage > Custom Pins to set map heights, and featured listing pin
support provided via the forum
25th April 2017
- Added support for YOAST SEO plugin and primary categories.
13th April 2017
- Version 1.0 released.
2 reviews of “Vantage 4 – Custom Map Pins”
Works just as it’s supposed to, and I think it’s one of the vital plugins for Vantage, especially if you’ve got a big site with loads of categories.
Great support too.
This is a great way to augment the appearance of your Vantage directory using cool, creative and colorful pins – it also allows you to modify the map(s) as the demo video shows. (which is quite helpful – but not the reason I purchased 🙂 You can quickly and easily find really cool category icons (let’s say – from a place like thenounproject, which has thousands of them for free) and really dramatically enhance the visual style of your site – with custom pins that add an audience engagement element (and the aura of interactivity) to your map listings that makes the old way…..look boring and bland. The real appeal to this (for me, anyway) is that it opens up some creative monetization ideas when it comes to featured listings – or special categories – etc – that stand out on the map – and on a busy site, can make all the difference to your members when choosing to pay for X – or not. Highly recommend!
Comments (18)
This works just as designed great job! I love being able to add different pins by business type and category.
Thanks dsffenny!
works great … thanks
Hi there,
Yoast SEO plugin, which is really popular, allows you to choose a ‘primary’ category if a listing is in loads of categories. Yoast use it for the breadcrumb but I think it’d be great for this plugin too.
I see your plugin chooses the first category alphabetically, but do you reckon it’d be possible to select the ‘primary’ category instead, which I’ve already set in Yoast. I’m guessing I’d just need to change a line in your plugin, but nothing is ever as easy as I’d hope!
Otherwise most of my posts are going to have the ‘aardvark’ pin instead of the ‘zoos’ pin 🙂
Hey John,
I’m assuming ‘Zoo’ is the parent category, and ‘Aardvark’ is the child category yes?
Is the listing in BOTH categories (both categories ticked)?
Or is it added to the ‘Aardvark’ category which falls under the ‘Zoo’ category?
If it’s added to the ‘Aardvark’ category only, then it will show the ‘Aardvark’ category pin.
If it’s added to the parent category AND the child category, then yes it will show the pin for ‘Aardvark’.
Just to confirm this is how it would look if the user or yourself only submitted it to a child category:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/x7yf7cutbvl8udu/Screenshot%202017-04-23%2023.33.05.png?dl=0
I will have a think about ‘primary category’ I had thought about this before on the previous Vantage 3.x version of the plugin, but the dificulty is that who sets the ‘primary category’? This would involve adding another option to the add listing form. Would it let the user select from all categories, or would it have to populate only the categories the user has selected (if selecting multiple categories).
Yeah, zoo and aardvark is a bit of a simplification, in reality it’s ‘animals’ as a main category and ‘aardvark’ through to ‘yak’ as subcategories, and i have both category and subcategory selected.
So as you say, it’ll show the ‘aardvark’ when i want it to show ‘animals’.
Seeing as loads of people use the Yoast SEO plugin and it already provides the ‘primary category’ functionality I thought you may be able to piggy pack on that
http://www.joshuawinn.com/using-yoasts-primary-category-in-wordpress-theme/
But as you say, for people not using Yoast SEO plugin, or who haven’t ‘primary categories’ for every post it’s going to complicate your plugin and bloat it up with more options that aren’t necessary to most users.
So yeah, it sounds more complicated than i thought at first 🙂 I’ll let you know if i find a simple solution and I’ll let you know.
Hey John,
Just rolled out an update, so should be available to download soon.
Added support for users using Yoast SEO plugin. Now, when you choose a primary category from the admin area on a post, it will use the icon from that category.
So it doesn’t matter how many, or what categories your listings are in. You set the primary category through Yoast, and that’s the icon that will be used.
Thanks for the suggestion and I hope this helps.
Awesome. Works brilliantly thanks 🙂
Hello Dale,
I purchased your updated plugin however the colorful pin icons are not being shown.
Can you advise where can I get those icons.
Thanks
You can download the colorful pins here:
http://thewpguru.com/download/freepins
More info here:
http://thewpguru.com/product/vantage-custom-map-pins/
Thanks
Dale.
Is this just for Categories..?
Can you assign a custom pin design to an individual companies ad?.
Would be really good if each individual listing company had an option of their own pin.
When I activate Yoast, you see the old bookmarks … how do I solve this?
Thank you
_________
Cuando activo Yoast, se ven los marcadores antiguos… como soluciono esto?
Gracias
Hi Dale,
I’ve just installed the plugin and I can’t seem to get the featured pins to show? Any ideas?
Thanks.
Richard.
Hi- I can’t make this work. I’ve watched the videos but my admin looks nothing like the one in the video. I have very few options. The only Settings option I have is to change the map height and add a pin for featured listing (which also doesn’t display on the map). I can define a custom pin for a category but they don’t display
Does this plugin work?
Am I missing something?
Any help would be appreciated. Thanks!
Hello Dale,
Very cool plugin but it seems no longer available. Are you fixing it ?
Will it be soon available for download ? Would you have a release date ?
Thanks in advance,
Laurent
Hello Dale,
can you sell the Plugins again? Because your Plugin is very interesting for us!
Hello Dale,
can you sell the Plugins again? Because your Plugin is very interesting for us!
Thanks in advance
Tom