Custom SaaS Development
A custom directory plugin built to run itself
Bite PGH connects Pittsburgh residents with local, independent, and underrepresented-owned businesses across the city. The directory is the heart of it: a searchable list people use to find somewhere to spend money close to home.
A directory is easy to launch and miserable to maintain. Businesses apply, details change, listings go stale, and every one of those becomes a job for whoever runs the organization. Off-the-shelf directory plugins either did too little or buried the work in settings nobody had time to learn.
Two things made the standard options a poor fit. Bite PGH classifies businesses along four separate axes at once, including how a business is owned, and visitors filter by combinations of them. And they run a rewards program on top of the directory, where visitors check in at a business and earn credit toward a leaderboard.
We wrote a custom WordPress plugin for it rather than bending someone else's. Businesses apply through a form on the public site, and the application lands in a queue with a count badge in the sidebar, so the person running it knows there is something waiting without going looking. Approving a listing is one click from the list.
The four classification systems are separate and each one is editable, so the organization can rename or retire a category as the directory grows without us touching anything. Listings can be bulk imported from a spreadsheet, with a preview that shows exactly what would be added, changed, or skipped before a single row is written. The whole directory exports back out to CSV.
The rewards check-ins and leaderboard run inside the same plugin, so the program and the directory share one list of businesses instead of drifting apart.
Then we wrote them a manual for it, in plain language, aimed at the person doing the work rather than the person who built it.
A count badge in the sidebar shows how many businesses are waiting. Approving is one click, and reviewing first is one more.
A spreadsheet import previews exactly what it would add, change, or skip before it writes anything, so a bad file is caught before it lands.
All four classification lists are editable in the admin, so the directory can change shape over time without a developer.
Screens from the software itself, running with sample data.
Businesses that applied through the public form, waiting on a yes. Approve, edit, or turn down from the row itself.
A CSV import that previews changes before writing, an export of the whole directory, and the shortcodes that place the public directory, the application form and the rewards check-in on any page.
Every project here started with a conversation about what the business actually needed. Yours can start the same way.
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