WordPress Classified Themes Pros & Cons
Is Flynax a WordPress classifieds theme? We've been asked the question many times and every time we got the question we couldn't give a clear answer because we didn't compare WordPress classifieds themes with Flynax. So, in this article, we want to look at the basic pros and cons of WordPress classifieds themes and outline our vision based on our own experience and that of our customers, who moved from the WordPress themes to Flynax. We believe our findings will help you make the right choice.
We'd like to note that we don't compare WordPress itself with Flynax because these scripts have a different designation. We're going to talk about the WordPress classifieds themes that run on the WordPress blog script. Let's start with the pros and learn how the themes take advantage of WordPress.
Pros
WordPress classified themes are based on the popular blog script - WordPress. WordPress itself is the best blog script that was originally designed for starting blogging websites. All current WordPress classifieds themes are offered as extra themes to the WordPress installed along with the WooCommerce and other plugins that allow users to add extra functionality and monetize their sites.
WordPress themes take advantage of the blogging power of the WordPress script giving users the ability to post both listings and blogs. So, you get two sites in one.
The search engines love WordPress for being optimized to their standards and requirements. So, the WP classifieds themes inherit SEO friendliness of WordPress by default.
The major benefit of the WordPress script is that it has a large community that supports it and makes it better. And if you run a WordPress powered site you can easily find someone who could set up or customize it for you.
Cons
After installation of a classifieds theme and corresponding plugins, the WordPress script undergoes some sort of transformation that changes its logic and look to fit the requirements of a classifieds project. Once installed out of the box, the theme is likely to work like charm but the nightmare starts when you get to manage it. Moving elements, adding forms or installing new plugins might easily result in bugs, overlap issues, and other accompanying malfunctions. Any attempts to make it better may result in even more issues because such classifieds themes are a composition of many products developed by different teams, which not always work fine together, and in most cases exhibit instability and compatibility issues. This is the major drawback of the WP classifieds themes that cannot be fully rectified unless all the products are provided by one team. So, the default theme is likely to work fine until you start tinkering with it.
Due to the fact that WordPress doesn't have the Add a Listing module by default, the classifieds themes offer their custom modules for adding listings, which don't look dynamic, nor professional.
Normally WordPress themes come with a number of heavy and unneeded JS libraries and widgets that result in slow pages. The same goes for conflicting CSS files of plugins and widgets that, in some cases, may result in slow pages too and even in layout collapse.
Some of the themes are so heavily packed with graphical elements and animation scripts that their practical usage can be really questioned. They look nice and work fast until you load them with thousands of listings and user accounts.
There is no uniform approach to testing and ensuring stability and good performance of third-party plugins and widgets. And you may expect a problem after updating one of the plugins.
WordPress User Experience
We suggest reading feedback from one of our customers who moved from a WordPress classifieds theme to Flynax classifieds software:
I've been working on my auto classifieds site for well over a year now. It's been through various iterations over that time...mostly involving WordPress. For my site, www.usacarshopper.com, I moved away from WordPress because of database and theme limitations with inventories upwards of 30,000. With WordPress, at 40,000 vehicles, it took 1.5 minutes to paginate (go from page 1 to 2).
I tried various themes but they also experienced significant lag (approx 1 minute) when loading inventory list pages and paginating at plus vehicles. One theme developer offered me a custom option for high inventories using a Laravel/WordPress hybrid. It worked well on the sample site I was shown but in my opinion, it wasn't worth the $15,000 USD to develop it.
With Flynax I have over 100,000 vehicles and pagination now averages 1-2 seconds (down from 90 seconds). I've gotten more accomplished in the past month using Flynax than I have over several months with various WP themes. The script is less resource intensive than WP, so you can accomplish more with less server power. Plus, any issues I've come across have been promptly resolved with help from either the forum community or the Flynax Devs, which have been more helpful and responsive than many of the other companies I've worked with on this project.
The add-ons are of high quality and affordable. They've really covered everything I've needed from a classified system.
Flynax
The major difference between our classified ads script and WordPress themes is that Flynax is a specialized script that was originally designed for starting classifieds websites. Its database is well structured and optimized to handle a number of listings, categories, and accounts. Flynax PHP script is developed based on the MVC architecture representing a unique CMS. It is not WordPress, nor Joomla. As it is written with simple PHP, it can be modified by anyone who knows PHP and is ready to explore new things.
Flynax script offers flexible SEO settings allowing you to optimize listing, category, page and user account pages.
All the plugins are developed and delivered by Flynax Team and are designed exceptionally for Flynax-powered sites, which allows us to ensure 99% compatibility.
Native mobile Apps that we've developed are fully compatible with our classifieds script.
As we mentioned above, WordPress is a good blog script, which we also use to power our blog. We also offer a WordPress bridge to users of our script, which allows them to connect Flynax classified script with the WordPress blog and post the latest posts on the classifieds sites and the latest listings on the WordPress site.
In conclusion, we want to say that WordPress classifieds themes offer a relatively inexpensive way to dabble into classified ads but they are no good for massive and professional projects because the functional core of the classifieds themes is the blog script that has little to do with listings.
Flynax is a professional PHP script that offers all the features and functions to start a successful classifieds portal. You can always boost your site with plugins or get it customized by a developer. We suggest playing with Flynax Demo so you could see for yourself and make your choice.