If you have an interest in a certain field and you think you have a database of valuable information for those in the same interest, maybe it's time to turn it into a business.
Yes. In the creator economy, you can make money by just sharing what you know. You only need to pick the right format to share the information. And a directory website can be a great format for two main reasons.
First, you don't need to hire a developer to create a directory website. You can create it with WordPress. Second, you can have multiple revenue sources from one business asset (your website).
Sounds interesting? Then read on. I will show you how to create a directory website with WordPress the easy way.
Shortcuts ⤵️
- Why WordPress?
- What it takes to create a directory website
- Creating a directory website with WordPress
- Adding and organizing listings
- Monetizing your directory website
- Summary
Why WordPress?
There are probably some platforms out there designed specifically to create a directory website but WordPress is still the best solution to create a business website.
With WordPress, you will never be locked down into a platform. You have total control over your website. You can do anything you want to do with your website. Including moving it to another hosting provider when necessary.
When it comes specifically to a directory website, you can add as many listings as you want.
If you use a closed platform to build a directory website, you will usually be limited about how many listings you can add, unless you subscribe to a higher plan which, of course, costs you more.
With WordPress, you can also extend the functionality of your website using plugins.
Want to drive organic traffic? You can publish as many blog posts as you want.
Freedom and flexibility are the main advantages you will get if you build your website with WordPress.
What It Takes to Create a Directory Website with WordPress?
Two main things you need to prepare to create a directory website with WordPress are a hosting and a domain name (e.g., mydirectorysite.com).
Depending on how you plan to grow your listings. If you want to allow users to add new listings (meaning you allow user registration on your website), I strongly recommend you to use a hosting service designed specifically for WordPress.
Avoid using a shared hosting service with limited inodes especially if you plan to publish blog posts on a regular basis as this affects how many files (images in particular) you can add to your blog posts.
If you are clueless which hosting service you should use, you can pick one of my recommendations on this page.
For domain name, you can get one on services like GoDaddy, Namecheap to Hover.
Once your hosting and domain name are ready, the next step is to pick the right WordPress plugin to create a directory website.
My recommendation is HivePress. I strongly recommend you to use HivePress because it is free and modular.
A Brief Intro About HivePress
HivePress is a WordPress plugin designed to create a directory, listing, or classified website. As I have just mentioned above, you can use it for free.
Paid and free extensions are available if you want to extend the functionality of your directory website.
HivePress is a reputable plugin. It has 4.9 (out of 5) stars on the official plugin directory of WordPress. Also, it has over 10,000 active installs to indicate that it is a popular plugin in this particular category.
The company behind HivePress also has a good reputation.
HivePress has all the necessary features to build a directory website. Including search/filter and custom fields.
Creating a Directory Website in WordPress
Until here, you should already know what you need to build a directory website with WordPress. Now is the time to put everything into work.
By the way, if you are completely new to WordPress, you can also try it for free on your local computer first before you build a real website on a paid hosting service. There are several tools you can use. My recommendation is WordPress Studio.
Here are the steps to build a WordPress-based directory website with HivePress.
Step 1: Add WordPress
The mechanism to add a new WordPress varies depending on the hosting service you use. If you use Cloudways, you can add a new WordPress website by clicking the Add Application button on the Application tab.
On the appearing popup, select a server you want to add your WordPress to and click the Add Application button.
Next, you can select WordPress on the WordPress dropdown (you can select either the Optimized WordPress or Basic WordPress option).
Give your application a name and select a project you want to assign the website into. End by clicking the Add Application button once again.
Wait a moment while Cloudways is preparing your WordPress website. Once done, you can get the details of your website from the My Applications panel in the Cloudways control panel.
You can read this post to learn more about how to use Cloudways.
Step 2: Install HivePress
Once your WordPress website is ready, the next step is to install HivePress.
As I mentioned, HivePress is a free directory plugin distributed via the official plugin directory of WordPress so that you can install it directly via your WordPress dashboard.
First, login to your WordPress dashboard and go to Plugins -> Add Plugin to add a new plugin.
Type "hivepress" on the search box to find HivePress. As you can see, there are several plugins with the name "HivePress".
The one you need to install at this stage is "HivePress – Business Directory, Listings & Classified Ads Plugin". Other plugins are the extensions of the HivePress core. You can install them per your needs once you are done creating your directory site.
Click the Install Now button to install HivePress on your WordPress website.
Activate the HivePress plugin right away once it's installed by clicking the Activate button.
I also strongly recommend you to enable auto-updates to keep your HivePress plugin updated when new versions are released.
To enable auto-updates, you can simply click the Enable auto-updates link on the HivePress plugin.
Step 3: Install the Right Theme
HivePress is compatible with any WordPress theme. But for maximum experience I strongly recommend you to use one of WordPress themes from the developer of HivePress.
There are six themes from the HivePress developer that you can use. From free to paid. If you are not ready with a paid theme, you can start with a free theme.
To install an official theme from the HivePress developer, you can go to HivePress -> Themes on your WordPress dashboard.
In this example, I will show you how to use a free theme so you can click the Install button on the ListingHive theme.
Wait a moment while WordPress is installing the ListingHive theme. Once done, you can click the Activate link to activate it on your website.
After activating the ListingHive theme, you will have a website with a proper header which you can further customize later. You will find a sign in and add a listing button.
Basic Design Tweaks
If you use the ListingHive theme, your directory website will have green buttons (including the button on the header) and yellow links. To change these colors, you can go to WordPress theme customizer.
On the theme customizer screen, you can open the Colors settings block.
Simply click the color picker to set a different color for the links and buttons. Primary Color is the color for links and the Secondary Color is the color for buttons.
From theme customizer, you can also set other basic settings like typography, site name, site logo, site icon and so on.
Make sure to click the Publish button to apply the changes you have made.
Step 4: Create the Core Pages
Basic design settings are done. Next, you can move on to create the core pages of your directory website.
The core pages you need to create are not much different from other website types. Commonly, the core pages you need to create on a business website are:
- Homepage
- About page
- Contact page
- Legal pages (privacy page, terms of service page, etc)
- Etc
You can use any editor to create the core pages of your website. Be it the WordPress default editor (Gutenberg) or a page builder plugin like Elementor.
If necessary, you can also create a login page and user registration page for your directory website.
If you want to use Gutenberg or Elementor to create the core pages of your website, HivePress offers some useful elements that you can add to your pages.
You can use the above elements according to the elements you want to add to your page. If you want to display listing items, for instance, you can add the Listings element.
If you want, you can also populate your website with demo content that HivePress provides. Doing this will make it easy for you to use features like search and filter.
You can then populate your website with the actual listings once you are done building it.
You can learn more about the importing steps on this documentation page that HivePress offers.
Here is the screenshot of your website after you are done importing the demo content.
Setting Up the Homepage
Once you are done creating the core pages of your website (including the homepage), the next step is to set the homepage of your website.
Homepage itself is the page that the visitors see when they access the root domain of your website (e.g., yourdomain.com).
In WordPress, you have several options to set the homepage of your website. The most common one is via the Reading Settings screen.
First, go to Settings -> Reading on your WordPress dashboard.
On the Reading Settings screen, select the A static page option and then select the page you want to set as the homepage on the Homepage dropdown.
End by clicking the Save Changes button.
Step 5: Install the Necessary HivePress Extensions
As your website grows, you may want to add a certain feature or functionality to your website. For instance, you may want to add a membership feature and apply listing access restrictions based on membership plan.
Or you may want to offer a smoother registration experience by allowing your users to login to your website using their social account.
HivePress is a modular plugin. You can extend its functionality via extensions.
A HivePress extension is a WordPress plugin designed specifically to work with HivePress. Some HivePress extensions are released for free. Some are paid.
The good thing is, HivePress allows you to get paid extensions with a one-time option.
To install a HivePress extension, first, go to HivePress -> Extensions on your WordPress dashboard.
After clicking the above menu, you will be taken to a screen where you can view all of the HivePress extensions.
As you can see, there are extensions with a Purchase label and Install label.
To install a paid extension (the one with a Purchase label), you need to make a purchase first and install it manually.
To install a free extension, you can simply click the Install button just like when you are installing other WordPress plugins.
Up until here, you already have a fully functional directory website. Now, let's move on to the next section to learn how to add and organize your listings.
Adding and Organizing Listings
If you are already familiar with WordPress, then adding and organizing listings in HivePress should not be a problem as you can add new listings and organize them the same way you used to be doing with articles.
For instance, you can also use categories to group listings into a broader topic.
To make it easier for your users to find certain listing as your directory site grows bigger, you can also use attributes.
Understanding how to use attributes properly is super important when you build a directory website with HivePress. You can use attributes as a filtering parameter to make it easy for your users to find your listings.
Category vs Attribute
As mentioned above, you can use categories to group listings into a broader topic.
Attributes, meanwhile, represent custom fields to allow users to create different custom fields to tailor listing info to your niche.
To make it clearer, I will give a real use case of how you can use categories and attributes in HivePress.
Say you want to create a lodging directory website.
In this particular case, you can use categories to group lodgings based on their types (e.g., hotel, villa, apartment, etc) and use attributes as a filtering parameter to allow users to filter lodgings based on the features they have (e.g., gym, parking, restaurant, swimming pool, wi-fi, etc.).
As you can see on the above screenshot, you can use both categories and attributes as the filtering parameters on your directory website.
For a cleaner and narrower filter, you can also put attributes into a specific category.
As your directory grows, it becomes harder for users to find the listing they are looking for if you don't enable this filtering option.
Creating Categories and Attributes
Both category and attribute are available as the core features in HivePress so that you don't need to install an extension.
Here is how to add categories and attributes in HivePress.
Categories
In HivePress, you can add and manage categories the same way you do with WordPress native categories (for articles).
To add a new category, first, go to Listing -> Categories on your WordPress dashboard.
If you already have categories, you can see the list on the right column.
To add a new category, you can simply type the category name on the Name field on the left column. Click the Add Category button to add a new category. If you want, you can also add an image for your category.
To edit and delete an existing category, you can hover your cursor over the category you want to edit/delete and select an action you want to apply.
Attributes
In HivePress, an attribute works the same way as a custom field rather than a tag. When you add a new attribute, it will be automatically assigned to listings.
You can add as many attributes as you want according to your needs. HivePress itself support 15 attribute types as follows:
- Attachment
- Checkbox
- Checkboxes
- Color
- Date
- Embed
- Number
- Phone
- Radio buttons
- Select
- Text
- Text area
- Time
- URL
To add a new attribute, first, go to Listing -> Attributes on your WordPress dashboard.
On the Attributes screen, click the Add Attribute button to add a new attribute. This will take you to another screen where you can edit your attribute.
Give your attribute a name and select the attribute/field type. If you want to add the attribute as the filtering/search parameter, you can open the Search settings block and tick the available options.
You can also set where the attribute to be displayed from the Display settings block. Click the Publish button to publish the attribute.
A little note. If you select a field type where users can pick multiple options (e.g., checkboxes and radio buttons), a new button -- the Edit Options button -- will show up after you click the Publish button. You can click the button to edit the options.
You can add the options the same way you can do with WordPress tag and category.
Adding Your First Listing
Once you are done creating categories and attributes, you can start to add your first listing. To do so, you can go to Listing -> Add Listing.
Give your listing a title and write the description.
To add images, you can click the Select Images button. To add a category and attributes to your listing, you can scroll down to the Attributes block.
Once you are done writing the description and making some settings, you can click the Publish button to publish your first listing.
To manage your existing listings, you can go to Listing -> Listings on your WordPress dashboard to view all of the listings you have published. On the Listings screen, you can hover your cursor over the listing you want to edit and click a link according to an action you want to make.
By the way, you can also add a new listing via frontend with the same process as the one you can do via backend (WordPress dashboard).
And that's it. You can launch your directory website once you have added some listings.
🎁 Bonus: How to Monetize Your Directory Website
The best part of building a directory website is that you can apply multiple monetization models. The most common one is by asking a certain fee for a business to get listed on your directory website.
As your directory website grows bigger, you can also apply a membership model where you ask your members to pay a certain amount of money to view certain listings.
You can even turn your directory website into a marketplace where users can sell listings.
HivePress itself has some extensions that you can install to apply some monetization models on your website.
Here are some ideas of monetization models you can apply if you build your directory website with HivePress:
- Membership. You can charge users to access certain listings and features.
- Marketplace. You can allow users to sell listings. You can earn by charging commissions from vendors, users, or both.
- Claim listing. You can charge users for claiming listings.
Apart from the above models (which you can apply via extensions), you can also apply common monetization models like installing display ads or promoting affiliate products.
Summary
HivePress is a great solution if you want to create a directory website with WordPress. It's a plugin designed specifically for this particular purpose.
You can create a directory website with it without needing to touch a single line of code. And the best part, you can use it for free.
When you build a directory website with HivePress, you can apply multiple monetization models as your website grows. HivePress is a modular plugin. You can extend its functionality via extensions.
HivePress itself is one of the most popular directory plugins for WordPress with over 10,000 active installs. It also has an active, growing community forum where fellow users create and share HivePress-specific plugins and custom functions.
If you enjoy using AI, HivePress also offers an AI assistant you can make use of.
