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In an earlier post I talked about setting up a community business blog for an organization, group, business network, church group, etc. This is useful if you want to set up a blog with multiple contributors. You can then assign each registered user a different status, like ‘blog author’ (can only post, but not edit), ‘blog editor’, and so on.

Recently, I was contacted by a client asking me if they could add a business directory to their site, in order to give each of the members of their business network a business listing.

Knowing that WordPress developers have created thousands of plugins for the blogging community, I went online and typed “business directory wordpress plugin” into Google.

Sure enough, I found one. It’s called Business Directory For Wordpress and it’s free to download.

The WordPress Business Directory plugin is described by its developers as being “an easy way to host a free directory page for your readers, affiliates, advertisers, community or club members … Listings include company name, a short description, and contact information including a live URL. The plugin includes an admin tab that allows you to approve of listings before they appear live on the site. You can also edit and delete listings.”

According to the plugin developers, they will soon have a premium version of the plugin that allows you to promote a listing upgrade to your directory members, where, for a fee (paid via PayPal), they will be able to upload a logo and appear in the top ‘premium’ section of your directory.

So, I downloaded the plugin, installed it into the client’s site, activated it, and, following the easy installation instructions, I created two pages: one where the directory appears (e.g. “Members Directory”) and one page where the business listing gets created (e.g. “Submit Directory Listing”).

By default most pages get published as “public”. This allows anyone visiting the blog to access the page. Since I knew that my client didn’t want non-members to create a business directory listing on the site, I simply selected the “private” display option for the directory listing form page before publishing it. This way, only the blog administrator can add a listing to the business directory, and they must be logged in to view the form (if you’re not logged in as the administrator and try to go to the directory submission form address, you will get a ‘page not found’ error.)

Here’s what the directory submission form currently looks like (I’ve set it up on a private page – this is why you see the word “Private” in the screenshot below):

To see what the Business Directory listings actually look like, just click on the Business Blog Directory link in the “Pages” section of this blog.

The whole process of adding a business directory to my client’s business blog using the Business Directory For Wordpress plugin took me less than 10 minutes. Adding a new business directory to my own blog took me only about 2 minutes, since I didn’t need to read through the installation notes the second time around.

If you haven’t discovered yet the power of using a blog to grow your business online, then maybe it’s time to do so. I’ve written several posts on this blog describing the benefits and advantages of using a business blog, so feel free to browse through some of my earlier posts.  And if you would like to set up your own professional business blog and start growing your business fast, check out our ’step-by-step’ business blog video tutorials.

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