WordPress plugin . District 5320 pilot . In development

Rotarian Business Directory

A free public directory where anyone can find and support businesses and professional services run by verified Rotarians and Rotaractors.

Membership comes from each district’s own records, so a listing means the owner is an active member today. Members stay in control of what is public, and nobody needs a password.

What it is

The directory turns Rotary membership into real business connections while keeping member data private and listings trustworthy. It is a WordPress plugin built to serve many districts from one shared platform, starting with a pilot for District 5320, with more districts to follow. A nonprofit is expected to operate it.

How it works

The district supplies the members

A district’s membership export is uploaded, checked and reviewed by an administrator before anything changes. Members are private until they choose otherwise.

Members are invited, never added publicly

An administrator starts invitations, which go out at a steady pace with automatic reminders. Members sign in with a one-time email link and build their own listing.

Members publish when they are ready

Nothing appears publicly until the member reviews it, sets their privacy choices and publishes. Visitors can then search by business, category or place.

Features

What the plugin does today.

For visitors

• Search by name, business type or person, with advanced filters for category, state, city and exact ZIP
• Distance search: within a chosen number of miles of a ZIP code, with remote-service businesses optionally included
• Business profiles with description, services, credentials, photo gallery, hours, website and social icons
• Category pages and a featured-businesses carousel
• Contact me form that never reveals a hidden email address, plus Report a problem
• Shortcodes to place the search box, directory, categories and featured carousel on any WordPress page

For members

• One free listing per member
• Passwordless sign-in with a single-use email link that expires in 15 minutes
• Privacy controls for street address, email and phone: each is private unless the member chooses to show it
• Profile photo and a gallery of up to six photos, with a short description on each for accessibility
• Friendly hours entry: type “9 am” or “5:30 pm” and it is tidied up
• Categories and specialties from a managed list, and links to Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram, X and YouTube
• Draft first: save as many times as needed; publish and unpublish at any time without losing content

Membership verification

• The district’s records decide who is eligible, not the member
• Import with review: every upload is validated, compared with current records and shown to an administrator before it is applied
• Safety checks: a file that would remove too many members is held back, and repeat uploads never extend a member’s grace period
• 30-day grace period when a member is no longer confirmed, then the listing is suspended automatically; the member can still sign in and see their own information
• Flexible file layouts so different districts’ exports can be read without changing the plugin’s core

For administrators

• System, Platform and District Admin levels; a District Admin sees and manages only their own district
• Paced invitations: a daily limit, an even spread over each day, and a large group carried over several days automatically
• Automatic reminders for members who have not signed in, with the timing set by the System Admin
• Pause, resume or cancel a district’s invitations at any time, with live counts of what was sent and what is left
• Hold a listing to hide it from the public without changing what the member wrote
• Problem-report queue and a change log recording who did what and when
• Editable email templates and a test mode that sends all email to one safe address

Privacy and trust

• Private by default: imported member records are never public until the member approves
• Hidden addresses still help: distance search uses the ZIP code area, never a street position
• Explicit consent is recorded each time a member publishes
• Public pages show only approved fields; hidden contact details are never placed in the page
• Not an endorsement: a listing shows that the owner is an active member, not that Rotary recommends the business

Built to be maintained

• Standard WordPress plugin that works inside the site’s existing theme
• Automatic updates through the Plugin Update Checker, served from garryheath.com
• Safe upgrades: database changes run in numbered, repeatable steps
• Styling controls for page width, spacing and the number of business tiles across
• Scheduled housekeeping for grace periods, imports and invitations, with warnings when it stops running

Planned

Designed, not yet built

• Member-controlled erasure of a listing, photos and contact details from the member’s own dashboard
• Passkeys as an optional addition to email sign-in
• Direct connections to DACdb and ClubRunner data to replace manual file uploads
• A screen for adding file layouts for new districts without a code change

Not included in the pilot

Reviews and ratings, advertising and sponsorship, paid upgrades, map view, a mobile app, more than one listing per member, and international rollout. The design leaves room to add them later.

Rotarian Business Directory is an independent project and is not an official product or service of Rotary International. It is currently in development and being tested for a District 5320 pilot. Features listed under “Planned” are not yet available.