The reason the WordPress PAD was off for a couple of weeks recently is because I was working on a new project dear to my heart. Oh, My! Oakland is a blog, directory and all around homage to the City of Oakland, where I live, work and play. Months and months ago I wanted to create a directory of Oakland businesses because I love Oakland and unlike other major and more organized surrounding cities like San Francisco, Oakland has a scattered web presence as far as websites dedicated to Oakland entertainment, information, business or anything for that matter outside of newspapers and official City of Oakland websites. A couple of weeks ago I decided to take the Oakland Photo Blog I created months back and expand it to a website completely devoted to promoting the positive in Oakland which includes a directory of other websites that are Oakland-centric. using a fabulous WordPress Directory Plugin that is truly impressive and customizable.

The plugin comes with a widget to place a form others can fill out to suggest a website (or whatever your directory is for) to add to your directory. The plugin itself creates a page to list the directory (a regular WP “page”) by category and subcategories. In the admin area for the directory you can add one directory entry at a time with title, link, category, description, email, notes, and choices to add a screenshot and to display the particular entry as a sponsored site. You can also go to the “options” screen of the directory administration area to set how many columns and subcategories to display on your directory page. It’s a great and simple enough to use plugin that can get your directory up and running in minutes. The only additional feature I wish it had is the ability to add multiple entries at one time. But, it’s not a big deal.