Public Directory Development

There is a difference between a list your office keeps and a list the world can search. The first is a record. The second is a publication. Once a directory is open to people who have no relationship with your organisation, you are no longer only keeping information. You are putting information out.

That shift is what this page is about.

What Changes When Strangers Can Search It

An internal register is read by people who already know the context. They know which entries are old. They know which names have changed. They know that a particular phone number has not worked for months and that someone is meant to fix it.

A public directory is read by people who know none of that. They see an entry and treat it as true. If the number does not work, they conclude the organisation behind the directory is careless. If the business closed two years ago, they conclude the directory is useless. If a professional is listed without their knowledge, they may never realise it, but the professional will.

So the question is not whether the directory looks good. The question is whether the entries can be trusted, and whether the people in them agreed to appear.

Who Ends Up In It, and How They Got There

Directories fill in one of three ways, and most end up using more than one.

Businesses put themselves in. A form is opened, businesses enter their own details, and the directory grows from the bottom up. This works at scale, but it produces a mix. Some entries are careful and complete. Some are thin. Some are duplicates of an entry that already existed. Some are not real businesses at all.

Your staff go out and collect. Information is gathered from the field, from registration exercises, from partner organisations, or from records the organisation already holds. This gives better control over quality. It also takes time, and it depends on someone actually doing it.

Records you already keep are moved across. If your organisation already holds a register of businesses, members, or suppliers, those records can form the first version of the directory. The work involved depends on how those records look today, and on whether the people in them have agreed to be published.

The Decisions That Cannot Be Postponed

A public directory built on undecided questions will be rebuilt. Not because the first attempt was bad, but because the assumptions underneath it were never settled.

Who is allowed in. Every business in a sector. Only registered ones. Only those who submitted themselves. Only those your organisation has checked. Each rule produces a different directory, and the rule has to be chosen before the first entry is loaded.

What is shown about each one. A name and a category is one thing. A phone number, a street address, a contact person, a photograph, a list of services, and opening hours is another. Every extra field makes the directory more useful and exposes the person listed a little more.

Who can see the contact details. Everyone, registered users only, or nobody, with enquiries passing through a form instead. This decision affects how much use the directory gets and how much contact the listed businesses receive.

Whether entries are checked before they appear, and by whom. A directory that publishes anything is fast and unreliable. A directory that checks everything is slow and dependable. Most organisations settle somewhere in between, and the place they settle should be written down.

What happens when a business wants out. Some will ask to be removed. Some will object to being listed at all. There needs to be a route for that, and a record that the request was handled.

What happens when an entry turns out to be wrong. Someone has to fix it, and someone has to answer the person who reported it.

What We Ask You to Hand Over

The records you already hold, in the state they are in. Do not tidy them first. How they look today is what tells us how much work the migration will be.

One or two entries filled in exactly the way you want every entry to look. This settles more arguments than any written specification.

The categories and locations your organisation actually uses. Not a general list borrowed from somewhere else.

Your answers to the decisions above. If some are still open, that is normal. They need to be closed before development starts, not during it.

A named person on your side who can answer questions and make calls without waiting for a committee. Without that person, the project will slow down regardless of how good the plan is.

What We Do and What We Leave With You

We design the directory, build it, move the data we agreed to move, set up the search, the access rules, the submission route, and the review step as specified, and hand it over with documentation.

What we do not do is keep it honest afterwards. We do not contact businesses to confirm their details. We do not chase stale entries. We do not handle removal requests. We do not decide what may be published about a business or a person, and we do not advise on consent, data protection, or anything else connected to publishing information about third parties. Those matters belong to your organisation and its advisers, and they weigh more heavily in a public directory than in any internal system, because the people listed are not your staff and did not necessarily agree to appear.

Ongoing support and further development can be discussed separately. It is not part of the initial service unless it is written into the agreement.

When the Answer Is No

Sometimes the honest answer is that a public directory is the wrong tool. When nobody in the organisation will maintain it. When there is no capacity to check entries. When the people to be listed have not been considered at all. When what is really needed is an internal list that staff can search, and publishing it would add risk without adding value.

In those cases an internal directory, or a spreadsheet, or a document will serve you better. We will say so rather than build something that will be abandoned in a year.

First Contact

Write to us with two things: who the directory is meant to serve, and who you intend to list. Not the design. Not the features. Just the people on both sides.

If it sounds like something we can build, we will suggest a conversation. If it sounds like the wrong tool for what you are trying to do, we will tell you that too.