A curated directory website, with listings you choose
Directories that people use are curated: someone decided what belongs, checked it, and keeps it current. That's what Anticode suits, with listings in a CMS collection, a page for each, and a form for suggestions. It doesn't do self-serve submissions, paid listings or reviews, which is what many directory businesses are built on.
Curated or open
There are two kinds of online directory. Open directories let anyone list themselves, often for a fee, and grow quickly with uneven quality. Curated ones are smaller, edited and more trusted: a list of step-free cafés in one city, accessible holiday cottages, open-source tools for archivists, women-led design studios. A curated directory site earns its readers by what it leaves out.
Anticode fits the second kind. If your plan depends on businesses creating and paying for their own listings, this is the wrong tool; look at dedicated directory software.
Write your inclusion criteria first
Publish the rules on the site, near the top. They decide what's in, tell suggesters whether to bother, and make your choices defensible when someone asks why they were left out.
- Who it's for: "Wheelchair users visiting Edinburgh."
- What qualifies: "Step-free entrance and an accessible toilet, checked in person."
- What doesn't: "Chains with more than ten branches."
- How you check: visited, phoned, or confirmed from the business's own site, and when.
- Whether money is involved: "No one pays to be listed." Readers trust that line.
Listing fields
Keep listings in a CMS collection, with typed fields edited in the dashboard. Each listing gets its own page at /<collection>/<slug>, and the collection page lists them all. The fields are your directory's real design; choose them for the questions readers ask.
| Field | Why |
|---|---|
| Name | The entry's title |
| Category | Lets you group the index into sections |
| Area or city | The second thing most readers filter by |
| Summary | One line used in the list |
| Why it's listed | Your note against the criteria: the part a scraped directory can't copy |
| Website and contact | Links out; the directory isn't the business's site |
| Last checked | A date, so readers know how fresh the entry is |
Group the index by category or area with clear headings. Pages run no scripts, so there's no live search or filter box; for a few hundred entries, good grouping and a split into several collection pages by category work well.
A suggest-a-listing form
Suggestions keep a curated directory growing without opening it up. Use a custom form tied to a site function, with fields such as name of the place, website, area, category, why it qualifies, and the suggester's email, up to 30 plain-text fields. The thank-you page can set expectations: "We check every suggestion in person and add the ones that meet our criteria, usually within a month." Ask for the fields you want and check the preview to confirm they're there.
Send suggestions to Airtable or Google Sheets as a review queue with a status column, or to Notion if that's where you plan. Then add approved listings to the collection yourself. Owners who want to correct their listing can use the same form or the contact form.
Keeping it current
A directory decays: places close, prices change, links break. Set a routine, such as checking a tenth of the listings each month, and update the "last checked" date when you do. Anticode's design gate catches empty links, but not outside websites that have vanished, so click through each listing's link when you check it. Remove closed entries promptly; one dead listing makes readers doubt the rest.
Building it
As a directory website builder, Anticode starts from a description: "a curated directory of accessible cafés in Edinburgh, with a listings collection by neighbourhood, our criteria, and a suggest-a-listing form". The Architect asks up to three questions where the answer changes the build and shows a plan. Swiss (Inter Tight) and Technical (IBM Plex Sans) design systems suit dense, scannable lists.
Limits
- No self-serve listings or owner accounts. You add every entry.
- No paid or featured listings with automatic billing. You could sell a sponsorship by payment link, but label it clearly.
- No reviews, ratings or comments from visitors.
- No embedded maps or live search. Link each listing to a map service.
Questions people ask
How many listings do I need to launch?
Enough to be useful in one area or category: twenty well-checked entries in one city beats two hundred thin ones across a country.
Can I import listings from a spreadsheet?
Collections are edited in the dashboard. Plan for entering listings there, and check what bulk options the dashboard offers before you build a large list elsewhere.
Can businesses pay to be listed?
Not through the site itself. If you sell sponsorship, say so on the page and keep it separate from your criteria.