Razvan Antonescu

How to add your business on GPS apps

Tonight a client was asking where he can add his business to the GPS apps and units. After a little digging, here are my results.

There are only a few POI (Points Of Interest) databases and listing your business is fairly quick and free (beware for the websites asking for a fee)

  • Google Maps: This is a must. Not only it will show your business on their Maps app and all the other apps that use their API, it will also might show you on local search results
  • Navteq: Navteq is a subsidiary of Nokia that operates independently and provides data for portable GPS devices made by Garmin, Lowrance, NDrive and web-based applications such as Yahoo! Maps, Bing Maps, Nokia Maps, and MapQuest. To list your business there use Map Reporter
  • Tele Atlas is a Netherlands-based company founded in 1984 which delivers digital maps and other dynamic content for navigation and location-based services, including personal and in-car navigation systems, and provides data used in a wide range of mobile and Internet map applications. To list your business on their database, go here
  • Just to be safe, also add your business to OpenStreetMap.

Adding you business to GPS apps through POI databases can be considered as real life SEO and should be done by every local business owner.

Why Social Media fails

Not so long ago, the trend within companies was to jump on the social media train. And most of them did that because their competitors and everybody else was doing it. They just jumped without knowing where they were going, how much the ticket costs and what to do during the ride.

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How to show post related content in a sidebar using the Custom Field Widget

Sometimes, for different reasons, you want to display blocks of information outside a regular WordPress post/page. In order to achieve this install the Custom Field Widget. This plugin will allow you to insert the desired information in a custom field and have that information displayed in a sidebar only on that specific page or post.

How to show post related content in a sidebar using the Custom Field Widget

Adding custom blocks of information using the Custom Field Widget

Use cases for the Custom Field Widget:

  • Show a map for each post (make sure that you have the correct width of the sidebar when adding the embed code)
  • Show alerts or important information related to the post
  • If you are using guest authors display their information (including G+ authorship) without creating a new user
  • Showcase products related to the post content
  • Add some post specific downloads

Extra tips:

  • The widget is conditional. That means that you can create more than one custom field and add multiple widgets to the sidebar. Each time a matching custom field is found in a post, the content will be displayed
  • If you don’t want to show the whole custom fields section in the editor, use the More Fields plugin to have a nice area to entry your aside text.

NOTE: Even though the Custom Field Widget was last updated in 2008, it works perfectly in 2012 with the latest version (3.4)

WordPress Subpages Menu Widget: How to handle a WP with hundreds of subpages

WordPress is one of the CMSs available on the market, but has its share of limitations. Unfortunately one of the biggest limitations is on the area where it stops being a blogging platform and you use it as a CMS.

The main difference between blogging and CMS is the first is focused on posts (time based articles) while the later focuses on pages (generic articles that are no time dependent).

WordPress has been built and in it is being built with a fairly limited number of pages in mind (Contact/About etc). With a standard installation you can go to an apx 5-10 of pages and if you use custom menus and dropdown menus is ok to go up to 25-30  pages (5 main pages each with 5 subpages).

But what do you do when you have, let’s say 300 static pages? The first answer will be: who needs 300 pages in a CMS? Well, on an academic website you can reach that number very easy. There are a lot of programs, departments, classes and staff and posts (or custom posts) are not the solution.

For this type of project I used a 3 columns theme and i wanted a simple feature: have one main menu on a column, and on a second column show subpages, but only when available. For a few years I have used a unupgraded version of GD Navigator. Once I have upgraded both the WP and the plugin a few errors started to appear: the GD Navigator widget was gone and when I have re-added it, no matter of the configuration random subpages kept appearing.

The best solution for WordPress Submenu Widget

Looking for an alternative wasn’t an easy job, most of the alternatives being either dead or too complicated. Finally I have found the simplest, working plugin, BE Subpages Widget by WP Consultant Bill Erickson . The plugin is extremely easy to use and has only two options:

  • Title – this one is optional and I don’t recommend you to use it. Basically you could put in there something like “Submenu”
  • Use top level page as section title. – Check this instead of using a title. It will show the parent page and can be used as a breadcrumb
  • Make title a link – Also check this to make the parent page act as a true breadcrumb

There. Problem solved. A working implementation you can see over here 

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