City Guide - a directory based WordPress theme
In recent theme releases, we’ve been exploring a few niche environments, instead of the standard business or magazine theme possibilities, in the hope that we can grow the long tail of our themes collection. Based on the success of Postcard, we’ve thus decided to give the geo-location arena another go, with the release of the smashing City Guide theme.
City Guide’s design was masterfully crafted by popular web designer, Sam Brown, who we worked with towards the end of last year (yes: quality takes time). The design itself is shiny in all the right places and Sam did a great job of delivering the Apple influences that we requested, without limiting this theme as an open canvas to morph to your own needs.
The Implementation
Where this theme really starts shining through, is in it’s niche implementation of being a location-based directory.
Using the Google Maps API again, the theme allows you to publish significant landmarks, tourist attractions & restaurants (whatever location you want) in a location-based directory. In our opinion, the theme will work best when used for one specific region, city or even small towns, but it would most definitely also work if you wanted to publish listings anywhere in the world.
The great thing about all of this, is that the extra geo-location bits are integrated into your WordPress write panels, so adding that information just takes a few extra seconds. You can have a look at City Guide’s write panel here:
Your custom City Guide write panel
In addition to the Google Maps functionality, we’ve also integrated the very popular WP-PostRatings plugin. So all of your listings will have an automated rating service enabled if you have the plugin installed.
Making Money
Since this theme sports such a niche purpose, we also believe that the possibility to make money off it is increased. Beyond the different advertising spaces that are scattered throughout the theme, it also offers endless possibilities in terms of selling products & services via affiliate links. Consider this:
If you’ve got a few massive tourist attractions in your directory (powered by City Guide of course), you can include affiliate links to their respective websites and earn commissions when your readers buys some tickets from them.
So whilst we’re definitely not pro’s at affiliate marketing (or creating location-based directories for that matter…), we can surely see a lot of potential here and we’re excited to see some of our users exploiting that!
Mmmm... the City Guide home page design
Enough from us though… Check out the detailed specs for City Guide here or have a little play with the demo. Also – never forget to tell us what you think of our latest release! 
55 Responses to “Your Guide to the City”
One word, AWESOME!
It’s not bad, I think the post layout could be better.
Normally you would see rich content at the top i.e image gallery, videos and then a map.
This has more of a blog style feel to it, if the homepage thumbnails were in grid style layout – that would look very unique and appealing to the user and allow more selection.
The search form could be larger and more in your face, displayed somewhere under the logo in the blue area.. alot of city guides have these nowadays, encourages the user to discover in-depth posts/pages rather than latest ones.
Will be more awesome if it’s buddypress supported, again encouraging user activity and involvement, uploading images, videos etc.
Just a few ideas for your next update
Very nice theme. I really the styling in this theme. Sometimes I wonder if designers get caught up in the design too much that their themes lose some accessibility. Very clean and stylish, great job Woo.
Great Locations directory based theme. Best choice for build Locations Sites. Such as travlling guide sites.
Let me tell you how I *thought* this theme worked when I first saw it….
I assumed that the list of places (attractions, bars, hotels etc) was part of the homepage display panel. So I thought that when I clicked on “hotels” I would see the map change to show all the hotel placemarks. Then if I clicked “bars & clubs” I’d see all of those. Then you’d click on a placemark and go to that post.
Fantastic ! Great way to visualse information ! Instant way to see the relative number of posts on a particular topic
But it doesn’t work like that at all. Those items are just standard navbar elements that go to almost standard posts. And the homepage panel is just a single static page or map
And I wasn’t too thrilled that the menu jumps from under the image on the home page to above the image everywhere else. Call me old fashioned but I think nav bars should never move from page to page.
The map integration just doesn’t seem very useful. There’s no real overview or placemark aggregation, or any way to use the map view as an alternate way to visualise the information.
Is there some functionality that I’m missing here ? If not then I can’t see what the advantage is over the MapPress Google plugin…
Sorry. You know how I hate to be negative.
The tabber idea is not a bad one, but obviously wasn’t how either we or Sam envisioned the theme working. So sorry to disappoint on that point, but guess we can’t please you every time.
And how would the MapPress plugin have been any different to our implementation? Can’t understand why your views are so negative, instead of being constructive… I think we’ve covered all of our bases with this theme and all the other comments we’ve gotten thus far seems to reinforce that.
I thought downsouth comments were constructive and gave some cool ideas for a future theme.
I agree that a map on the category pages would be a nice feature in the future
Is foul language and personal attacks now officially OK on this forum ?
No that was out of line, and I’ve removed the comment. We value all feedback
Do Want. lol, awesome work
I think this theme is great, really flexible and shows the incredible potential of directory sites, let alone directories powered by WordPress!
I do have a couple of improvements:
1. Reviews / Comments: I would like to see all reference to “comments” removed and focus on “Reviews” of the listings. The only place that comments are applicable is the news.
2. Dates: In my experience the published date on a directory listing isn’t very valuable, but the “last updated” date is. Users want to see that the information is current and therefore more accurate.
These improvements might help it to feel less like a blog too.
First of, awesome! Second: If you press “Edinburgh Castle” you’ll get copyright text on the map and on the theme, it is to big for the square..
http://www.mattiasgustafsson.se/map-copyright.jpg
also, is this the same map-feature that the post-theme have?
Yep, it’s the same functionality as Postcard and we’ll be looking into that bug.
Seems like all the widgets gets in the footer aswell..
http://www.newyorktips.se/
Hey ! I personally run a city guide website in French ( http://www.tout-brest.com ) and I might be really interested in this theme. However, I have some stuff that I would suggest you to add.
- I think the general presentation is good but I’d like it to be possible to add a Google map for the place within the article in order to keep a picture of the restaurant/hotel in the Featured content area.
- There’s also a little problem in Webkit http://snapplr.com/vbtz ( Mac, Safari & Firefox )
- Would it be possible to modify the standard text in the Featured Area ( http://snapplr.com/kh6h ) in order to put like Phone number, Email adress, Opening times … instead of Lagitude / Longitude ?
- I totally agree with Christina for her two comments, we should see Reviews instead of comments appart for a specific News category and the date should be the last time the post was edited
- Totally configurable custom fields in order to add some informations within the post like opening times etc …
Anyway, really nice theme and I’m going to launch one or two new sites with it and maybe change my Revolution City that I actually have if the there isn’t too much changes to make
Good work !
Thanks for the feedback; we’ll most definitely consider these and they might be included in an updated version of City Guide.
Hello guys!
First, I need tell you that I try to be positive in my comment.
I think that this theme is a great idea. I remember that I told it to WooTeam a few times…
But I have to say that in my opinion is a theme like another themes of WOO but with the Google map integration (this is posiblle with any plugin…). The theme is a litle minor than the great theme we hope…
Perhaps we are a litle frustated because we expect a HIPERBIG-PHP&VISUAL-AJAX City Guide haha!
But really is a good theme.
(Sorry for my english)
How would you suggest we improve the theme?
The suggestions´Maxime are very goods.
In my opinion this theme may be better with:
- A Photo Gallery in Pretty AJAx in every post (like Object Theme) to show images of restaurant, clubs, etc.
- Any slider with the featured post or the category post at home and at sidebar.
- The map in sidebar may be placed at footer (or hearder?)like a big map (about 800 pixel width), instead placed in sidebar (so litle map…)
- The contact form may be customized to offer the fields to the user write easy their contributions (title, adress, text, link to images (or uploader??!!), phone, etc.).
- The images of thumbnails may be used at post to show a big image above/under the title automaticaly (like at another themes of WOO).
Really, we think that the perfect theme City Guide may be like Aperture, with the Gallery Images of Object and with the Google Map implemenmtation of this theme.
I mentioned this earlier but it was removed for reasons I don’t understand.
May I suggest the developers check out Ellington’s Django-based Marketplace for some great ideas on how this theme should be set up (http://www.ellingtoncms.com/marketplace/). Trust me, if you’re using an open source like WP, then you likely can’t afford anything from Ellington. I only mention it as a reference for a great “guide” type functionality.
Thanks TeeTide
Very interesting your information about elligtoncms
Thanks thanks
Hello,
I run a travel website with multiple (hundred) cities and really like your wordpress theme. I’m searching for a new one as mines is out-dated. Would this theme be suitable for having a lot of different cities, and is it possible to integrate the sightseeing,hotels,nightlife,bars ect in there? Seems so far it’s based and limited to one city only. Would it be possible?
Thanks looking forward hearing your response.
Dave
Hello and congrats for this very useful theme but I Didn’t find the .po for the translation…
Regards,
Didier.
Hello again,
I’ve found the .po in the updated version of Cityguide and I’ve tranlated it today
Regards,
Didier.
I was pretty excited about the release of a city guide theme, however i was afraid that when the theme was released it would not meet my expectations – unfortunately i was right. i think that a city guide is all about color and wowing the visitor with a strong emphasis placed on the categories, there should be top slide shows and videos and large images with lots of colourfull interesting menus. ther should be a whole section of other relevant posts at the end of each post.
This theme is ok but it is far from great.
Its a small thing but what’s with the drop shadow on the text in the footer.
@Andii You asked for suggestions on improving the theme.
Here are a few:
1. http://artfirst.percorsi-emotivi.com/
2. http://www.wilkinsonsworld.com/map/ –needs a lot of design work
Complete interactivity with the posts geo located to the maps. The second website gives more extreme examples of what can be done, as you will notice the side navigation bars are completely dynamic to the area viewed within the map as you move it around.
Move the map out of an area with markers and the list of posts disappears.
Want to categorize areas of interest, use the category system to add visual markers as well.
Then with post_types, you can further extend it to where the user can have custom UI panels to input city ‘attractions, locations, whatever your genre is’, directly into the panels.
(If you don’t run 3.0 then there are a few plugins for 2.9 available. Heck I even coded one of them into the canvas framework, so no sep plugin needed)
Want a gallery or video introduction for a given city object?
Simple.. pull up the custom UI and input the data.
No more limiting categories to just tags and descriptions. You then have custom meta data of any type open to the category combined with UI that any non-coder can work with.
Maybe I am just weird as I don’t really care what your themes look like (appearances are easily changed). I am more interested in the back end functionality like the framework and canvas offer, which is why I am a happy customer of woo already.
Some improvements:
First map on first page (the map in the header) should be a overview map on all the posts. When i vistor clicks on the “pin” they should get a “speach-box” with some info that is fetched from the post. OR! even better custom specified.
Other than that its great..
Agree, this would be a good feature, or atleast a good option…
When will you learn that your designs and not so unique and useful like earlier. All designs are for blogs…. look at themeforest, so unique and awesome designs there
Moreover who will build a blog city website!!!!!!
I’m running a city blog
I run a city blog too.
And this theme suits my needs better than any theme I have found anywhere else.
Me three.
Make it five.
I’m considering setting up one myself as well, a city blog that is. Think small, think niche. Hey, you could hone it down to a district (or area) in a city, if it’s a big one. If you play your cards right, you can make some money with this theme.
Some of the suggestions are good (map stuff). But I think this actually might be a good idea having a more “bloggish” directory. There are tons of directories out there. So nameless and not to mention ugly. Nowadays people are looking for a story, faces, and the ability to have their say.
Imagine it like a city review (and guide) theme. You go to every restaurant, review it and give info about it. Hek, you could ONLY focus on restaurants if you wanted. Use your imagination.
Vaynerchuk’s friend, Delaney, started a review/guide of street food in New York. Just thought I’d throw that out there. Maybe get your minds churning about an alternate use than just a standard directory.
I’m in the process of launching 9 city blogs this month and was hoping to use this new theme.
We’re designing everything on Woo either way, but I do agree that it would be nice to have the function that Mattias suggested above:
“First map on first page (the map in the header) should be a overview map on all the posts….”
I’d also like to have the option to include an overview map in the header.
The latest version of the theme (released yesterday) now supports this. You can also check the demo.
Looks great! Thanks so much.
Thanks, Adii – Perfect.
I like what I see with the theme so far as I am one of those (actually there are quite a few of us) who do run hyper-local blogs.
I didn’t see the City Guide theme in the playground yet. Will it be made available there soon?
I’ve added it now
The sidebar is bad in the index, place in the footer, plese help
Please post in our forum if you have any errors, and make sure you have the latest version of the theme installed.
Awesome theme, might be of some use to me. I’m playing a bit with it, if it turns out useful, I have already a second theme (aside from Backstage) that I’ll get when I buy themes here! Keep it up!
I would love to try this them out in the Playground but I have not received my activation email. It has been all day. Are you guys having issues with the Playground?
Thanks.
No issues that we are aware of… But please drop us a mail and we can check it out.
In single.php it would look better if you would add a clear both and a hr in line 31 and make it look like this:
Did you post a link and / or screenshot?
The web has created a world with little boundaries but most of what we do is all local. Geo sites are everywhere and Geo domains are getting more and more traffic. Nice idea.
Has anyone tried this with integrated Google maps in non-English countries like the middle east or Asia? Do names on the map come up in English or the local language? Is there a toggle for that?
This is a great looking theme and this comment thread and provided some really great ideas. Very enticing!
Sometimes it helps to have a clear goal. I’m working with a specific neighborhood business association that is an organization of business merchants and property owners along a specific street from Point A to Point B. It’s about a 3-mile corridor. They want the site to highlight merchants along the corridor.
Only about 10% of the merchants have joined so far, which is why we want to add some ZING to the website.
Showing all the businesses along the street would be overkill. Showing just the members is ok with 10% membership, but if they get to 50%, it’ll still be too much.
So the ability to have the front-page map tied into Google Places where the visitor can mouse-over and see summary data on the location, then click to see more, would be great.
Then selecting categories would go to a page that shows all of the merchants that fit into that category. Restaurants, Clothes, Specialty retailers, etc.
Then an ability to rotate images through a slider on a random basis to highlight members businesses or products or whatever. The association could charge a little extra for those images, like ads.
Finally, getting the site tied into the official City Tourism Bureau’s site would really help.
With or with out an “official” association (a not-for-profit corp), you could put together small sites like this for a variety of segments of any city, then promote them in any number of ways!
But it would definitely be great to be able to leverage both Google Places AND if they’ve got their own website.
I forgot to add that if you could pull in the listing from Google Places, or base it on their physical address, rather than Lat/Lon, that would be great. Lat/Lon is handy if you’re out and about, but businesses have fixed addresses, and Google knows where they are on the map.
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