If you already use the Field-Bound Boxes plugin on your site then you will be pleasantly surprised with the improvements that we’ve made to the new version of the Plugin. If you didn’t know about the impressive functionality that the Plugin offers, then you may consider installing that powerful and at the same time free module.
The new version of the Plugin is a powerful addition whether you run a used car, property, or classified listing site. To evaluate the changes that we’ve made to the Plugin let’s recall the functionality of the previous version. All the functionality of the previous version boiled down to the ability of the Plugin to show values of the selected field in a separate box in the form of categories with the listing counter in the brackets. Technically, the Plugin worked as a value-related filter that could display listings on a separate page at the click. Therefore, if your site has a field, values of which might be a top priority to your users then you may offer them access to such listings in one click, which is quite convenient and fast.
The new version not only kept all the functionality mentioned above but also was significantly strengthened with new features and functions. In particular, we’ve added new functionality and SEO tools and improved visual options of the Plugin. Let’s go over all the changes and improvements made to version 2.0.0. Let’s start with the visual part.
Visual Improvements
Apart from the standard links that were available in the previous version, we’ve added another three display modes for links in the box, which made the Plugin look more professional and attractive.
Text links with icons
Now you can display icons next to text links. You may choose if you want to show an icon before or after the link. You can manage the dimensions and position of the icon in the box settings from the Plugin manager. If you don’t have any available icons you may use our built-in gallery of responsive SVG icons.
Only icons
If the icons communicate all necessary information and there is no need for the text links then you may enable only icons in the field-bound box. You also can add a listing counter next to icons to show the overall number of listings with the field value. Enabling the mode makes sense if the icons are self-explanatory. Due to the mode being compact allows you to put a number of icons or links in the box.
Responsive photos
For better visualization, we’ve added the ability to show responsive photos, which communicate much more information than small icons. The photo itself represents the background. The white links contrast with responsive icons. Using the responsive pictures you may display whatever you want in the box be it cars, breeds, cities, or others in landscape or portrait view.
Renewed Functionality
We extended functionality for creating pages, the new version generates separate pages for every element/link in the box, which allows you to control page settings from the back end, for instance, you may enable geo-filtering for pages/links and optimize them to search queries.
We also tried to foresee the situation when a link might not offer any listings after launching the site. To avoid the situation when a user opens an empty page with no listings, we’ve added the ability to grey out such links.
We believe that you will find the ability to hide elements that don’t offer a lot of listings useful too. The Plugin allows you to enable the elements later. You also have the ability to manage the order of the elements in the box.
SEO Settings
We also tried to pay enough attention to optimizing the Plugin to the search engines. That is, all the pages generated by the Plugin are now added to the sitemap.xml file automatically, which is generated by the Google and Yandex Sitemap plugin.
Setting up metadata patterns
To improve the SEO score of the site we integrated special metadata patterns, which offer flexibility and include two modes for setting up.
Default Pattern. If the box offers similar elements and there is no need to create a separate pattern for every page you may add a default one for all the elements in the box, where the element name will be replaced with the variable {item}. The default option allows you to set up just one pattern for all the elements that will be applied to all the pages with listings.
Custom metadata. If you’re good at SEO techniques and interested in optimizing every page generated by the Plugin then you may add an individual metadata and title for every page. In case of the availability of custom metadata, the system will ignore the default pattern that was built for the entire box. Therefore, you will be able to fill out metadata for all the important pages while the pages with lower priority will be filled out with the default pattern.
The Plugin improves the structure of internal links on your site, this way improving the SEO score of your classified site.
Interaction with other plugins
We believe that your users will enjoy the ability to filter listings by different criteria that you may configure from the Filter manager. For this reason, we connected the Field-Bound Box plugin with the Filters and now your users not only can find listings by a field value but also narrow down their search by filtering listings, which allows them to get a result in two clicks.
We’ve been getting a number of requests recently for showing locations, that is cities in a separate box so that users could search for listings by their locations. We connected the Plugin with the Multifield plugin, which allows you to show cities in the box on any page of your site. The Plugin offers quite flexible settings so you may display regions and countries in the box.
We believe that you will like the new version of the Plugin; in addition, we’ve fixed all the reported bugs and issues in a few versions after this major release and the current version is quite stable.