Venue Manager — A WordPress Plugin for Interactive Venue Directories
A WordPress plugin that turns any site into a fully-featured venue directory: automated geocoding, an interactive Google Maps archive with custom marker info windows, a synchronised gallery slider with full-screen lightbox, and Schema.org LocalBusiness markup generated automatically for every listing.
The Use Case
Venue directories are a common requirement — hospitality groups, event platforms, tourism sites, local business guides — but the options are usually either a heavyweight directory plugin with a subscription model and a hundred features you don't need, or building something custom from scratch. This plugin sits in the middle: purpose-built for venues specifically, with exactly the right feature set and nothing that gets in the way.
What It Does
Venue Manager registers a venues custom post type with a dedicated admin UI, a custom taxonomy for categorisation, and a rich meta box covering everything a venue listing needs: address, phone, email, website, logo, social media links (Facebook, Instagram, X, TripAdvisor), and a multi-image gallery. Add a venue, publish it, and the plugin handles the rest.
Automated Geocoding
The most immediately useful feature for site administrators is that they never have to touch a map coordinate. Enter a physical address in the Venue Details meta box and hit publish — the plugin calls the Google Maps Geocoding API on save, retrieves the latitude and longitude, and stores them automatically. The admin can see the resolved coordinates, but they never have to find or type them manually. Every venue is map-ready the moment it's published.
Interactive Archive Map
The venues archive page renders all published venues on a global Google Map. Each venue becomes a marker, and clicking a marker opens a custom info window showing the venue logo, address, and a link through to the full listing. It's the natural way to browse a venue directory — far more useful than a paginated list — and it works without any configuration beyond the API key.
Gallery System
The single venue page uses a two-part gallery system that's a step above the standard WordPress gallery. A Slick Carousel runs as the main image slider, synchronised with a thumbnail navigation strip below it — clicking a thumbnail snaps the main slider to that image. Clicking any image in the main slider opens it in a PhotoSwipe lightbox: full-screen, touch-friendly, with swipe navigation between all gallery images and pinch-to-zoom on mobile.
It's the kind of gallery experience that venue photography actually deserves, assembled from well-maintained open-source libraries (Slick Carousel and PhotoSwipe) and wired together cleanly so it just works.
Schema.org Markup — Automatic
Every venue page outputs a LocalBusiness JSON-LD block in the <head> automatically — no configuration required. The schema includes the venue name, featured image, website URL, telephone, email, postal address, geocoordinates, and sameAs links for all connected social profiles. This gives every listing the best possible chance of appearing in Google's rich results for local business searches, with zero effort from the content editor.
Technical Details
- Custom post type
venueswith archive, REST API support, and theme-overridable templates - Hierarchical
venue_categorytaxonomy for filtering and organisation - Automated geocoding on save via Google Maps Geocoding API using
wp_remote_get() - Google Maps JavaScript API for the interactive archive map with custom info windows
- Slick Carousel for synchronised main/thumbnail slider; PhotoSwipe for full-screen lightbox
- Schema.org
LocalBusinessJSON-LD injected intowp_headon single venue pages - WordPress media library integration for logo and gallery image selection
- Admin settings page for Google Maps API key and default map centre coordinates
- BeTheme compatible — specifically tested and styled for one of the most popular premium WordPress themes
The Result
A venue directory plugin that covers the full experience from admin data entry to public-facing presentation: maps, galleries, contact details, social links, and SEO — all from a single plugin installation. The automated geocoding alone removes a significant friction point from content management, and the Schema.org output works silently in the background to improve search visibility for every listing without requiring any SEO knowledge from whoever is managing the site.
Project Links
Categories
Let's Work Together
Ready to Build Something Remarkable?
Whether you need a bespoke website, a full digital marketing strategy, or a technical partner who understands business — I'm here.