How to organise categories for international travel forum

Hey,

I have been trying to figure this out for a few days now and looked at lots of examples but can't find anything similar to get ideas from.

I have a forum / site for international travel and chat and I am working on adding a directory, the problem is I don't know how to structure the categories.

Because it is worldwide, I can't go too specific.

For example should I start with continents then go down to main countries and then do categories for hotels, travel agents etc.
Or simply start with countries and do the categories..

Or...I really don't know...

I can't add all countries because it is simply too wide an area to add a category for each.

Hopefully someone has a more structured mind than me

Thanks for any help!

 

It would seem to me that the greatest risk is having tons and tons of empty categories.

While others may not agree, I would probably set things up something like North America > USA > Georgia > Atlanta > Hotels. Sure it's many layers deep but it is logically sound. I hate travel sites that have a list of only the big cities and expect me to somehow just know that if I wanted information on my town I would have to search for it among the information for the nearest large city.

Why can't you add all of the countries? Is there a limitation on categories with the software you are using?

Realistically, I understand you may never get submissions from 100% of the countries but why build a directory that you don't expect to become a leader within the niche?

 

I thought about this, but if someone wants to list in a directory and it has 1000's (More likely 10,000s) of empty categories it would put them off.
I wouldn't want to advertise on a site that looks empty in thousands of categories.

The other problem then is if I do make it more generic, I would have to move things to more specific categories in the future, the only way I can find that being any way viable to make profit is to have a yearly fee and it wouldn't be a problem moving items to more specific categories with deeper links, but again, 2 other problems (At least) - They might not want to move moved deeper and not many people would want to pay yearly on a new directory (Even if the main site has visitors, good number of posts etc.) when it is starting out.

Thanks for your reply

 

Unless you have several hundred listings ready to go, building a directory is a slow process. Your's is not a new question. Every new directory owner faces it.

The best strategy is to approach it with a long-term strategy and accept the fact that as your site grows, so too will your categories and subcategories. You may have one category that looks like North America > USA > Georgia > Atlanta > Hotels and another that looks like Africa > Hotels or just Africa. It's the nature of the beast. Your only other alternatives are to pre-build and have hundreds or thousands of empty categories or just lump entire continents or countries together - neither one is likely to entice folks to submit, particularly if you charge a yearly fee.

Adding categories and moving things around is simply part of the overhead of owning a directory. Don't want to do that? Then you're either going to have to hire an editor or should rethink whether or not you are prepared to own a directory at all.

 

I used to run a small travel forum. Here is how I organized my info:

TRAVEL FORUM COMMUNITY (first main category - welcomes, general chat, rules/feedback) - I usually like to have this as my first category.
- Introductions forum
- General chat (all off-topic goes here)
- News and Feed-back (here you place your rules, updates etc.)

TRAVEL FORUMS (the first specialized category)
- General Travel Chat (once you start having tens of threads here, you can add Transportation, Accommodation, Eating etc.) Start with as few categories as possible though, it's better than a huge empty list of categories and forums.

TRAVEL DESTINATIONS (we categorize our information based on locations)
- Europe
- North America
- South America
- Africa
- Asia

Do not start country based categories, unless you have thousands of threads and a lot of action on your forums. Anyway, once you do , you can add sub-forums to each 'continent' and make it all more relevant.

 

Hey,

Thanks very much for the replies, sorry but I made a mistake on the post title!
This was meant to be travel directory, not forum.

I already have my forum setup and it is working fine, I am just doing the main countries, although I am positive I can make that a lot more organised since I only have the main countries included.

I didn't think the site would have so much content and it is something I really need to fix also.

dojodesign, thanks for your reply, it has made me think about adding a few extra forums for continents for forums other than the countries I already have listed - I know I am obviously missing so many by just having the main countries.

I would love to have a look at your site if you could PM please

I think the directory categories are really difficult to setup, for the forum, it could go down to country at the lowest level, but for a directory, it could go to country then to a category for everything, i.e. hotels, b&b, restaurants, attractions etc. It is like having a directory for each country at the lowest / deepest level...

Would still love some ideas for anyone that knows how it can be structured, especially at the start to add new listings

 

You're already ahead of many of the long-term directory owners in recognizing that each category is like a directory of it's own. So many directory owners only see their site as a single entity rather than a group of smaller sites/categories.

While some would disagree about submitting to a category three or four layers deep, I would much rather have my site listed somewhere that your visitors might actually find it because it is in a logical place.

Whatever you decide should turn out fairly well. You're taking the time to think it out rather than just copying something someone else has done.

My biggest piece of advice is to be a little careful of the spammy country-specific and travel sites. There's sadly way more of those than good ones.

 

Thanks for the reply YMC, I did write a long reply but somehow it wasn't posted.

Great reply

I would love to know if you have any recommendations on how the structure should work.
I did have quite a large general directory a few years ago, but that was very easy because it was general, so simple to do the structure.

This is a bit more complex on how to manage it, my brain seems to be dead or running out of ideas anyway

If you have any ideas, I would really appreciate your input

 

I did a quick Google of travel directories. If I were shopping for one (I'm not), of the ones I looked at, I think this one has the best approach - travel dot org.

I think with more content, a nicer template and some effort it could be made into a real resource.

I would break down some of the longer pages into 2 or more pages but the strategy seems like it would work well and you could start small and grow the site as you get more submissions.