New to the community? Start here

Reverse Directory Listing?

I’m looking to create a local site for users and it would be somewhat like a reverse of a directory listing where consumers list what they need done and the businesses quote/bid on the service. I guess it’s kind of like 99designs idea but for local services needed in a city.

For example, a homeowner needs a new roof and instead of going down the list and calling each roofer for a quote, they just post their needs online, any roofer interested can bid or express interest, and the homeowner picks the winning roofer to do the job. After a while, each business should also get reviews on how they did with each job and be given a chance to respond to reviews. There would be a monetization part, but I haven’t decided where it would be yet.

Would the directory plugin work for this? If not, would there be a combination of plugins that can fit this project?

Thanks!

Christina

Sun, 4 Sep 2011 19:23:28
  • Chris
    • The Bug Hunter

    My take on this is that it sounds more like you would want a forum than a directory for this, with each job a topic, and businesses quoting via replies.

    Monetizing this would be a little more tricky – if you want people to be able to list jobs for free on the forum, but only paid businesses to be able reply to jobs. Manual moderation may be the best way to manage this, short term.

    In terms of ratings, you could then use a user rating plugin. Again, I’m not sure of the best way to do this – don’t know of a good user review/rating plugin.

  • Charris42
    • Flash Drive

    Thanks for the idea Chris. I don’t see it being a forum though, but more like any of the postings out there for like elance, 99designs, odesk, where someone posts their needs and several bid to win that job. I was hoping I could put together a few different plugins from here to make it work, but it might be my own project posted in elance, ironic :slight_smile:

  • DavidM
    • DEV MAN’s Mascot

    Hi Christina,

    I see you’ve already added your vote to the thread on a reverse auction plugin, which I think would succinctly cover this query as well, no? And that thread does seem to be gaining some support. :slight_smile:

    That said, Directory doesn’t provide any auction type features itself. It would require quite a bit of coding to get it to work that way, I’m afraid.

    Cheers,

    David