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My Rant about DealerInspire.

One of the wonderful things about Wordpress is the versatility and if DI supports this, they can swap out your HTML editor to something that's more drag and drop, maybe something like Elementor. There's a ton out there.

I thought they had moved to Gutenberg, but her site is using the DI editor. Looks like a customized WYSIWYG, I didn't see any block support.
 
Hey @Aimee ! Saw your post here and we'd like to help. There's a message for you at your mainline (and an email in your inbox) from our team who can quickly get you up to speed when you've got a minute to reply.

Also, wanted to thank @craigh @Chris Cachor and @CarlAutofusion for helping you out. Appreciate it, guys!
Hi Bruce,

I asked for help from your support team (DI) on Tuesday and did not get a response back beyond "Katie will reach out to you"... It is now Friday and it took me stumbling across this forum before I got any help and it wasn't from you guys. I sent Katie an email back just now to set up additional training.

Thank you again Craig, Chris, and Carl!
 
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Can somebody please tell me what is going on at / with Dealer Inspire??? They're getting more and more sloppy. This is becoming ridiculously absurd. Almost a month with no way for visitors to filter cars on mobile. After running into a wall of no one doing anything to fix and solve the issue (which was originally caused by them), we changed back to the lightning inventory on their recommendation and then they don't set it up properly on the freaking VDP. So the VDP's (Last time I checked was pretty a important page) had zero images of the freaking inventory. Didn't someone in the thread say that they QC their work? Seriously? Not trying to be mean but, this is getting ridiculous. I have to go back and check everything they do. I highly advise any of you that have a DI website to do the same. You simply cannot trust that they will do it right!!
 
@Rick Buffkin As you know, we always strive to be the best at what we do and am sorry you ran into an issue with photos not populating. I am seeing inventory photos on the website as of this morning and would love to chat further on filtering options we have implemented on a few other websites with lightning. I left you a message and shot you an email and am available today for a call.
 
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Can somebody please tell me what is going on at / with Dealer Inspire??? They're getting more and more sloppy. This is becoming ridiculously absurd. Almost a month with no way for visitors to filter cars on mobile. After running into a wall of no one doing anything to fix and solve the issue (which was originally caused by them), we changed back to the lightning inventory on their recommendation and then they don't set it up properly on the freaking VDP. So the VDP's (Last time I checked was pretty a important page) had zero images of the freaking inventory. Didn't someone in the thread say that they QC their work? Seriously? Not trying to be mean but, this is getting ridiculous. I have to go back and check everything they do. I highly advise any of you that have a DI website to do the same. You simply cannot trust that they will do it right!!
Since you recently made the switch to lightning, I'd suggest checking your VRP filters list to make sure you have all these filters enabled:

  • Year
  • Make
  • Model
  • Trim
  • Mileage
  • Body Style
  • Exterior Color
  • Interior Color
  • Drivetrain
  • Transmission
  • Cylinders
  • Fuel Type
  • Doors
  • Features
  • Cab Type

For some reason, a lot of common filters are disabled by default with lightning.

Also, the mobile filtering experience on lightning candidly could use some improvement. It's not the easiest to use, especially when you compare it to the mobile filter experience on a Dealer.com website. That being said, DI is actively working on a new UI for lightning and the preview I've seen is a huge improvement!

In regards to your frustration with support, I think it's primarily a result of them being swamped with all the new GM sites and upcoming Ford sites. DealerInspire received the largest chunk of GM dealerships so it's been quite the influx of additional workload. With explosive growth comes the growing pains of new employees who sometimes make mistakes.

But why did they receive the largest chunk of GM dealerships? I still strongly believe DealerInspire is the best mainstream automotive website platform available for dealers. The Wordpress platform gives progressive dealers like us, the power to do some pretty amazing things that aren't possible on any other platform.
 
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The Wordpress platform gives progressive dealers like us, the power to do some pretty amazing things that aren't possible on any other platform.
I agree that Wordpress is a great platform (I use it constantly), but I can't agree that it does things no other platform does.
Both other open source content management platforms and other premium frameworks or website platforms can do as much and more.
Wordpress simply stands out because it was brought heavily into the automotive industry and it blows automotive-specific platforms out of the water (most of the time).

If you've ever built a site with Squarespace or other Wordpress competitors, it really shines a light on how poor content management in Wordpress is.
The reason I use it is because it's both free and incredibly easy to extend Content Types to make a website out of thin air in a handful of hours.
 
I agree that Wordpress is a great platform (I use it constantly), but I can't agree that it does things no other platform does.
Both other open source content management platforms and other premium frameworks or website platforms can do as much and more.
Wordpress simply stands out because it was brought heavily into the automotive industry and it blows automotive-specific platforms out of the water (most of the time).

If you've ever built a site with Squarespace or other Wordpress competitors, it really shines a light on how poor content management in Wordpress is.
The reason I use it is because it's both free and incredibly easy to extend Content Types to make a website out of thin air in a handful of hours.
100% agree when it comes to non-automotive websites.

Dealer E-Process has perhaps the worst CMS I've ever used. DealerOn, DDC, Sincro, etc are all just mediocre. Wordpress definitely gives DI a leg up on the competition and is the main reason we use them.

That being said, 99% of dealers won't utilize the full potential of Wordpress and will get easily confused when adding staff/coupons/sliders/etc.
 
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Completely agree.
Would have been cool to see some vendors use Drupal, some use Wordpress, some use a headless option like Butter CMS.
But instead everyone used Wordpress and only some of them managed to better the experience for dealers.
 
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