kid_city_guide
Kid City Guide
A network of local guides to things to do with kids, which started as a single site and now covers 21 cities.
- My role
- Technical lead. Architecture, planning, and coordinating the development team.
- Stack
- WordPress Multisite, Elementor
(enlarge) The starting point
It was one WordPress install on a commercial directory theme, where each city was a filter inside the same site. Every new market added weight and complexity to a single installation.
What we did
One city, one site
In 2021 we split each city into its own site within a network. We built Denver first on staging and, once it was validated, repeated the process for the others.
(enlarge) Rebuilding without losing ground
In 2023 we redid the base with a custom theme. Each city was migrated with its spreadsheet of posts and places, normalized categories, and redirect checks. And opening a city became a repeatable checklist.
(enlarge) A decision we reversed
In 2024, following an SEO request, we moved the cities from subdomains to subfolders. Google ended up mixing the new structure, and traffic took a big hit. Within a few weeks we went back and reversed the redirects. Today each city is still on its subdomain.
(enlarge) Events with less manual work
We designed a flow that gathers events by city, puts them in a spreadsheet, and generates descriptions and categories with AI, with editorial review before publishing.
(enlarge) By the numbers
- 21 active cities
- More than 7 years of continuous evolution