Directories guide
Places you list, with their own pins, opening hours, a store locator and visitor suggestions.
Adding a listing
A listing is a post (or a page, or an item of another type you put on the map) with a location. In the editor, the Map location box sits beside the post. Type a name, address or postcode and press Find, or click the map to drop the pin, then drag it to the exact spot. The address, town, postcode and country fill themselves in; anything you type yourself is never overwritten.
Choose its listing type in the same box. The line at the top of the box always says where the listing stands: not on the map, waiting for a location, held back, ready, or live. To take a listing off the map without unpublishing it, untick “Show on map”.
The pin uses the post’s title, featured image and link; the card text is its SEO description, or its excerpt. Add more pictures in the Gallery and they become a gallery to swipe through. A listing can also have its own pin, a built-in icon or your own picture, in place of its type’s.
Listing types and pins
Listing types sort your listings: Restaurants, Shops, Events and so on. Each has a name, a colour, a pin and its own section of cards. Visitors filter the map by them from the bar above it.
Set them up first. A listing picks its type in its Map location box, so having them ready saves going back. You can add, rename and reorder them at any time. A listing with no type still shows, with a plain pin, under “More”.
Each type is one line showing its pin and how many listings use it. Press Edit to change its name, colour and pin: choose a built-in icon (it takes the type’s colour), upload your own picture, or use a plain pin, and the preview shows it on the map as you go. Drag the lines by their handle to set the order of the sections and filter buttons. Under More, “Kind of place, for Google” helps your listings show properly in search results.
Its own details are facts every listing of a type can have, one per line: “Dog friendly: yes/no” for a tick, “Price: £, ££, £££” for a choice, “Rooms: number”, or just a name for any text. A detail called Price also gives visitors price filters on the map, and the type can be sorted by it.
Imports, automation and AI assistants that name a type you don’t have yet create it there and then, with a colour and a plain pin. Check them here afterwards.
The order listings appear in
Under Order, choose how each listing type is sorted, like a shop sorts its products: newest, oldest, A to Z, Z to A, by town, by rating, by any of the type’s own details (such as price, low to high), or Custom order, where you drag the listings into place.
Featured listings always come first while they are featured. Visitors can also re-sort the cards themselves with the Sort menu on the map.
Opening hours, contact details and services
Switch on Business details under Directory settings, and each listing’s Map location box gains phone, email, website, opening hours and services. List the services once (Parking, Wheelchair access…), then tick them on each listing.
Visitors see Open now or Closed · opens 09:00, worked out in the listing’s own time zone, with Call, Website and Email buttons. The bar gains an Open now filter and a button for each service. Hours are typed like 09:00-17:00, or 09:00-12:00, 13:00-17:00 for a lunch break, or closed.
At the end of each listing’s post, its details show as tidy cards: Contact, Opening hours, About, Services and Location with a small map and Get directions. Choose that, or just a small map, under Blog maps → At the end of each listing.
Directory and store locator pages
Store locator: [pinscribe layout="locator"], or the Store locator layout in the block. The list starts open and follows the map as visitors move it, with search and Near me, and no cards, ad or form.
Directory page: [pinscribe layout="listings" group="types"], or the Listings page layout. Your listings laid out like a blog with the filter bar, a section per type, and “View on map” on each card.
Find your nearest: [pinscribe_find] on a homepage, header or footer. Visitors type a postcode or town, or use their location, and land on the main map sorted by distance.
Events and the calendar
Give a listing one or more dates in its Map location box and it becomes an event: its card shows the next date and its pin carries a small gold dot. Past dates stay, as many events come round every year.
The calendar is a section like a listing type: on Listing types & pins, tick “Show a calendar section”, give it a heading (“What’s on”), and drag it into place. It shows every event month by month.
Placing lots of listings at once
Posts that have the map category but no location wait under Need a location. Press Find all: each is looked up by its address, or its name and town, and each place found drops a pin on the map beside the list. Drag any pin that is slightly off, then Accept them one by one or all together. For one it could not find, search for its town or postcode instead.
To bring older posts onto the map, give them the map category first: on Posts, tick them, choose Bulk actions → Edit, add the category and press Update.
Or use a spreadsheet: download the template with your posts, fill in addresses or coordinates, save it as CSV and upload it. Excel, Numbers and Google Sheets files all work.
With Pinscribe Pro, Import also brings in places from Google My Maps, a GPX or KML file, or another directory plugin.
Pages, branches and locations already in ACF
Listings don’t have to be blog posts. Under Directory settings → More options → Other content on the map, tick pages, or a “Branches” or “Venues” type from your theme or another plugin. Each gets the Map location box and goes on the map as soon as it has a location.
If your site already keeps each place’s location with Advanced Custom Fields, choose that field under Locations already in ACF, and the map reads every location from there without changing anything.
View areas and regions
A view area is any stretch of the map you choose: a state, a city, a food trail. Type a place and press Frame it, or draw a box by hand and drag its corners. Copy its code to show just that area on a page, or link to it with ?map_area=.
The six continents are built in, with nothing to set up. At world view the list beside the map offers them first, each with its count, and each glows on the map to be picked.
To keep every map to one place altogether, such as Wales or Texas, use Map area under Settings.
Suggestions from visitors
Under the map, visitors can suggest a place or event. Nothing they send appears until you approve it. Approving one makes a draft post with the details and location filled in, ready to write up and publish.
The form is protected against spam without a puzzle to solve. Suggestions hold a name and email address, so they are included in WordPress’s Export and Erase Personal Data tools. To leave the form off one map, use submit="no".