Features
What Web Directory Software does
A complete directory: visitors find sites, owners submit and pay for them, and you review, publish and write the news, from one admin.
Listings and categories
The core of the directory, with the tools to keep it tidy as it grows.
- Unlimited categories and subcategories, with descriptions and meta descriptions
- Submission form with captcha and a review queue; owners get e-mails when their listing is received, approved or rejected
- Regular, premium and reciprocal listings
- Page address for every listing, made from its title (for example
/info/riverside-plumbing.html) and editable - Search, latest listings, premium listings, click counting, comments and ratings
- Link checker for listings whose websites have gone away
Paid listings
Sell placements without a separate shop.
- Premium listings paid with PayPal, as one-off payments or subscriptions
- Payments, renewals and refunds recorded with each listing
- When a paid term ends, the listing stays and its links switch to nofollow
- Choose how paid links are marked: sponsored, nofollow or followed
Business pages
An add-on you can sell with a premium listing.
- A full page per business: about text, services and prices, opening hours, address with a map, photos, logo, video and FAQ
- Owners write it through a private edit link; you approve it before it goes live
- Local business markup for search engines
- Price and minimum length set in the admin
Articles and news
Fresh content for every category page.
- Article editor with headings, lists, links, tables and pictures
- News pages per category and for the whole site, with RSS feeds
- "Latest news" on category pages and "In the news" on the home page
- Drafts, review, scheduled publishing, and noindex per article
- News article markup, sitemap entries and social sharing tags
AI news desk
Optional. Uses your own Anthropic (Claude) API key; you pay Anthropic per article.
- Reads RSS and Atom news feeds; uses only each story's headline and summary
- Topics: one category, or a group of categories that take turns
- Each article credits and links its source, adds why it matters to the category, and is checked for length and copied wording
- Articles wait for your review by default
- Pictures: stock photos (Pexels or Unsplash), AI illustrations (OpenAI) or your own
- Daily limits, a monthly cost cap and a record of every cent spent
- Runs on a schedule (server cron or an outside pinger), or when you press a button; scheduled runs can use the half-price batch service
Search engines and analytics
The basics done properly.
- XML sitemap, canonical addresses and breadcrumb markup
- Indexing rules: which pages search engines may index and follow
- Google Search Console verification and Google Analytics, pasted in the settings
- Old page addresses redirect to the new ones
The admin
Made for daily use, on a computer or a phone.
- Dashboard with what needs attention
- Table views with filters, search, sorting, quick actions and bulk actions
- Branded e-mails to listing owners, with editable templates
- Two site designs included, with a preview before switching
Requirements
- PHP
- 7.4 to 8.4. The AI news desk needs PHP 8.1 or newer.
- Database
- MySQL or MariaDB
- Web server
- Apache with mod_rewrite, or nginx in front of Apache (as in HestiaCP)
- PHP extensions
- mysqli, GD, curl, mbstring
- Optional
- A cron job for the news desk; PayPal account for paid listings; API keys for Anthropic, Pexels, Unsplash or OpenAI
- Licence
- Free software under the GNU GPL v2 or later (details)
See it on a real directory
Directorio Digital runs on Web Directory Software. Browse it, then tell us about yours.