A 1,200-listing business directory for the W4 community

What the site is

The Chiswick Directory bills itself as “your comprehensive guide to businesses serving the W4 community” — a searchable, categorised directory of over 1,200 local listings. The biggest categories give a feel for the scale: 200+ building services and trades, 200+ health, beauty and wellbeing, and hundreds more across retail, food & drink and twenty other categories.

What it does

Search and browse. Visitors search by name or browse 24 major categories, with additional filters to narrow results.

Self-service listings. Businesses create accounts and add or manage their own listings — the directory grows without an administrator typing every entry in.

Part of a local ecosystem. The directory sits alongside the Chiswick Calendar — the daily community news site — and cross-promotes its news, events and Club Card membership programme.

How it’s built

The directory runs on the Directorist plugin, heavily customised to the client’s specific needs — right down to how the navigation works. That’s the same philosophy as my other builds: when a customisable plugin already does 80% of the job well, the sensible move is to bend it to the remaining 20%, not build a directory engine from scratch. Finished in 2025.

Built with

Built in partnership with Dawn Wilson of DW Multimedia — the same collaboration behind the Chiswick Calendar. On the Directory we worked as genuine co-developers, Dawn covering design and development alongside me.