Are you looking for an easy way to build a WordPress blog directory? It can be a great help to your fellow infopreneurs. Learn how to create one!
Blog directories are doing an incredible job of quality outreach for blog sites around the world. New blogs usually don’t have many visitors. The bloggers have to spend most of their time creating content. Blog directories help here with targeted reach and visitors.
A blog directory is much more than just a listing site. It can give a strong backlink to a new blog which is helpful for its reputation. The listed blogs get instant exposure to their potential audience thanks to categorized arrangements.
Besides being an authentic traffic source to blogs, a blog directory can be an asset to its owner as well. Here are some reasons why you would want to run a WordPress blog directory.
- You’ll help new bloggers get exposure to their audience.
- You can accept paid listings and make money from the site.
- Offer different features in different directory pricing options.
- Display ads on the site and monetize your directory traffic.
- You can provide content marketing services as well.
What to expect from a WordPress blog directory
A blog directory site is expected to offer the following stuff:
- Category based blog listing
- Blog site URL
- Blog description
- Age of any listed blog
- User rating
Not much, right? Your visitors will be happy if you offer the above information about the listed blogs. But if you want, you can add more.
Best tools to make a WordPress blog directory
This blog directory will be a website where we’ll list blog sites from our target sectors. WordPress will be our web platform to build this site. We’ll also need a directory system to use with WordPress. It will be a directory plugin.
In case you’re new to WordPress, plugins are extensions that add new functionalities to your site. A WordPress site won’t come with any directory features out of the box. So we have to use a plugin.
At a glance, here are the tools to make our WordPress blog directory:
- A WordPress website
- Business Directory Plugin
So, WordPress is going to be our website platform in this tutorial. As the directory system, we’ll use Business Directory Plugin, the best WordPress directory plugin.
Business Directory Plugin has a free version along with several premium plans. The free version is great for a basic blog listing site. But if you need blog ratings, dedicated directory templates, flexible payment options, and so on, a premium plan is needed. We’ll use a premium version in this post.
Learn More: The Best Article Directory WordPress Plugin
It’s time to see how to create a blog directory in WordPress.
How to make a WordPress blog directory
To start the procedure, we need to have a live WordPress site and Business Directory Plugin premium.
You can get a fresh site from our recommended WordPress hosting companies. There are several web hosts to choose from per your requirements. Also, get Business Directory Plugin premium from its pricing page.
Once you’ve managed to get them, follow the steps below.
Step 1: Install and activate Business Directory Plugin
Log in to your WordPress dashboard and install Business Directory Plugin. You’ll need to install and activate both the free version and the premium version you’ve bought. The installation part is very easy. If you’re a newbie in the world of WordPress, please find detailed installation instructions in our documentation.
Step 2: Create necessary blog directory pages
We need to create 2 directory-related pages for our blog directory. One is the main listing archive, and another is the list submission form. Both of them are standard WordPress pages.
Main listing archive: Go to WordPress Dashboard and click Pages → Add New. Create a new page with the [businessdirectory] shortcode on the top. This shortcode will show the blog directory categories and a search tool.
A bunch of directory buttons will also be displayed.
Add Listing page: This will be a front-end form. You and your visitors will be able to add or submit blog listing items using this form. To create this, simply add a new page and put the [businessdirectory-submit-listing] shortcode on its top.
Make sure that both of the pages are published. The main listing archive page can be set as the home page of your blog directory. And, you can link the listing submission page from your menu bar or wherever you want.
Step 3: Get customized form fields
Form fields are an important part of Business Directory Plugin. It collects listing information via these fields. The plugin has a few form fields built-in. You can edit, add, or delete form fields from WordPress Dashboard → Directory → Form Fields.
Let’s edit our existing form fields to get the following fields.
- Blog Title
- Description
- Blog URL
- Age of the Blog
On a form field’s settings page, you can decide whether this should be displayed on the excerpt view or detailed view. Or, you can show a field on both views.
Step 4: Add blog directory categories
When you write a blog post, you assign it to a category, right? Because it helps keep the blog posts organized.
Business Directory Plugin does the same with its listing items. It has a special category system called Directory Category. Each directory item belongs to a category.
As a manager of the WordPress blog directory, you need to add some directory categories to keep the blog listing items organized. You can do it from Directory → Directory Categories.
Business Directory Plugin has the Enhanced Categories module to power up your categories. It adds functionalities like category hierarchy, custom category presentation, category thumbnails, etc. You can use this module to enrich your blog directory.
Step 5: Configure the directory system
At this point, we want to set up the directory system. We’ll do it by customizing the Business Directory Plugin settings. For a public blog directory, we don’t need to do a lot of work on this.
You can access the directory system settings from Directory → Settings. Most of the default options will work for a public directory like this one in our tutorial.
You can explore and tweak the options as you like.
To accept paid listings, we need to add pricing plans and a payment method to the directory.
Adding pricing plans: Like any other service, your paid listings should have a pricing plan. While adding a blog listing item to your directory, a visitor will see these pricing options and choose one.
Go to Directory → Plans to create and manage pricing plans. It would be pretty easy. Plus, a free plan is built-in. See our plan documentation if you need some help.
Integrating a payment gateway: Business Directory Plugin offers Authorize.net support by default. If you want to use that, you can add your Authorize.net account right away.
Or, you can also add PayPal, Stripe, and more using our dedicated modules.
Visit Directory → Settings → Payment. Add and edit your payment gateways there.
Should you need some help, please see the payment docs.
Step 6: Style your directory with a dedicated template
We offer several exclusive directory templates to make your directory site beautiful. Explore our theme collection and get one for your blog directory. These templates can be used on any type of listings site. In this tutorial, we’ll choose the “Restaurant” theme.
You can install a theme from Directory → Themes.
After the installation, activate the theme to see it in action. Need some assistance with themes? We’ve got detailed documentation for that!
Step 7: Add blog directory items
Now that we’ve prepared our WordPress blog directory to add listing items. We can visit the listing submission page to create directory items. Remember the Add Listing page from the 2nd step? Yes, we’ve created this page in step 2. Open that front-end form and add blog listings.
Just provide the blog site information and publish the listing item. Your visitors can also submit listings using this page. All of their submissions will be saved as pending by default. Please check out listing settings to get more controls (like whether you want to review edited items as well).
Final output – WordPress blog directory
We’ve successfully created our WordPress blog directory. Here’s a screenshot of the directory front page.
Now, look at a blog directory archive view.
And this is a single blog directory item detail page.
It doesn't matter whether you are a WordPress beginner or a pro, you can create a directory website easily with our free WordPress directory plugin. For more features like a directory WordPress theme, custom field-based pricing options, flexible payment gateways, and more, a premium plan would be required.
You can create any kind of directory with Business Directory Plugin. It can list businesses, web pages, real estate agencies, and more.
After launching your directory site, regularly check its traffic stats and take actions to ensure desired growth. You can use a tool like Google Analytics to get these stats.
Wrapping up
We believe this tutorial was able to show you how to create a blog listing site easily. Hopefully, you’ll take the opportunity to help your fellow infopreneurs with your brand new blog directory in WordPress. Plus, the monetization potentials are also remarkable. So, why the wait!
And yes, please let us know your thoughts about this tutorial. We want to hear from you. Don't press the cancel reply button without saying what you wanted to tell already 😉
Get Business Directory Plugin premium with a 14-day money-back guarantee! Your investment is well protected. Start your WordPress blog directory with confidence.
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