The directory theme is designed to let you create local as well as global directories. The directory that is convenient for both, the directory owner as well the users. Location based features of the Directory theme are beneficial for both, for you as an admin to add the listings based on locations, as well as for the users of your website to find the listings that are relevant to them.
Location based features of the Directory theme are streamlined in order to provide relevant results to the users. That’s what directory is all about. Providing meaningful and useful results to the users when they need. One such location based feature is the “Nearest city” feature.
As the name suggests, the “nearest city” feature will show the results based on the nearest city of the user location.
How it works?
It works based on IP address of the user. The nearest city to the user is calculated based on the his current location through the IP address. This way the location of the user is estimated and his distance from the cities added into your directory website is calculated. The city that falls in closest proximity of the user’s location will be considered the nearest city and the listings added for that city will be shown as the most relevant results.
Advantage of this feature
The advantage of this feature is that the users will be provided with the results that are useful to them. They will be shown the listings closer to their locations. So instead of browsing through random listings, and wasting time on something that doesn’t mean anything to them, the users will see the listings that are meaningful to them.
This increases the usability of your website as the users will be quickly able to find useful listings.
How to enable it?
On you dashboard, navigate to Tevolution >> Manage locations >> Homepage displays. This is where you can choose to display the “nearest city” results.
The nearest cities should not be empty
This is quite logical! How can you show the results if the listings are not added to the nearest city? This feature provides the best result when you have listings under every city added to your website. So that when the “nearest city” is discovered, it has some listings under it to show to the users.
The feature uses the cached data
Consider a visitor visits your site for the first time. With the “nearest city” feature enabled, the visitor will be shown the listing results of the nearest city. However, if the visitor then selects a city from the ‘city selector drop-down’ on the header, the directory will start showing the results of the city that has been selected manually. In this case, the results shown will not be of the “nearest city”.
The next time the visitor accesses your directory from the same, he will still be shown the results of the previously selected city. The preference of the visitor will be stored in his/her browser cache. So, the results won’t change until the cache is cleared. Once the cache is deleted, and there’s no city selected, the visitor will again see the listings based on the “nearest city”