A city guide website worth trusting over a list of search results
Anyone can list the top ten cafés in a city; search engines and map apps already do. A guide earns readers by knowing things those lists don't: which café has room for a pram, which bar is quiet on Fridays, which museum is worth the queue. Write from your own visits, date every entry, and organise places so a visitor can plan an afternoon from one page.
What makes a guide worth reading
The best local guides have a point of view and a reader in mind: a neighbourhood guide for new arrivals, a city on a budget, a guide for families with toddlers, for wheelchair users, for people visiting for a conference with one free evening. Pick yours, say it on the home page, and let it decide what's in and what's out. A travel guide website for everyone ends up useful to no one in particular.
Places in a collection
Keep places in a CMS collection, one entry per place, with typed fields edited in the dashboard. Each place gets its own page at /<collection>/<slug>, and the collection page lists them all. Fixed fields stop the guide becoming a pile of uneven paragraphs.
| Field | What goes in it |
|---|---|
| Name and category | Eat, drink, see, shop, stay, do; or your own categories |
| Area | The neighbourhood, so readers can group a day's plans |
| The note | Why it's in the guide, in your words: what to order, when to go, what to skip |
| Practical details | Price level in words ("cheap", "a treat"), step-free access, child-friendly, booking needed |
| Map link | A link to the place on a map service, since maps can't be embedded |
| Website | Their own site for opening hours |
| Visited | The month and year you were last there |
Leave opening hours to the place's own website or map listing and link to it; hours change more often than you'll update the guide, and wrong hours send people to a locked door.
Writing entries from first-hand visits
- Specific beats glowing. "Order the lamb flatbread; the cakes are better at the bakery next door" is useful. "A hidden gem with amazing vibes" isn't.
- Say who it suits. "Loud and busy; great with friends, hard with a baby."
- Include what you didn't like where it helps the reader decide.
- Don't list places you haven't been, however famous. If a landmark has to be in, say plainly you're including it for completeness.
- Disclose freebies. If a place gave you a free meal, say so in the entry.
This is where a guide written by a person beats generated listings, and it's worth guarding. Anticode's design gate blocks stock AI phrases and placeholder text from publishing, but your notes are what make the guide worth visiting; write them yourself.
Pages that help people plan
Beyond the place pages, a few hand-written pages turn a list into a guide:
- Neighbourhood pages: a paragraph on each area and the places in it, in walking order.
- Itineraries: "A rainy Sunday in the Old Town", "An evening near the station", linking to place pages.
- Getting around: transport passes, the airport route, which areas are walkable.
- About: who writes the guide, how places are chosen, and that nobody pays to be in it.
Photos
Take your own: they're the clearest sign the guide is first-hand, and they show what the place really looks like on a normal day. Upload them to the build; the model sees the photos and places them, and you can correct the alt text so it describes the scene. Don't copy photos from a venue's site or social accounts without permission. Anticode's curated Unsplash library works for general city scenes on the home page, never to stand in for a specific place.
Building it
Describe the guide: "a city guide website for Porto aimed at families with young children, with places by area, three itineraries and a getting-around page". The Architect asks up to three questions where the answer changes the build and shows the plan. Editorial (Geist) suits a writerly guide; Playful (Fredoka) suits a family one. Publish on your own domain on a paid plan if you plan to keep it for years.
Limits
- No embedded maps. Link each place to a map service.
- No reviews or comments from readers. Take tips through the contact form.
- No live opening hours or booking. Link to the place's own site.
- English only. Visitors from abroad may need a translation of their own.
Questions people ask
How many places should a guide have at launch?
Enough to fill a day in two or three areas, perhaps twenty to forty. Add more as you visit them.
Can I earn money from a city guide?
Some guides sell a printable or PDF version through a payment link, or take clearly labelled sponsorship. Keep sponsored places separate from your own picks.
How do I keep entries current?
Revisit a few places each month and update the visited date. Remove closed places as soon as you hear.