Want to build a webinar directory? A webinar listing site would be a great place for the audience to find helpful webinars. Learn how to create one!
With the rise of remote work culture, online meetings and webinars are gaining immense popularity these days. There are lots of resourceful webinars hosted every day with valuable information and insights.
The sad truth is, many from the target audience can’t attend those webinars. This is just because they don’t know these are happening! Webinar directories are doing a great job to solve this problem.
A webinar directory contains a list of webinars. It’s like any other directory site that presents a collection of listing items. Visitors can also submit webinar listings to display on a webinar directory.
Benefits of having a webinar directory
As we’ve noted earlier, a webinar directory can help people learn something new. Webinars play a vital role in spreading knowledge. The locations of the hosts and the participants don't matter.
A webinar directory has plenty of benefits for you, the site owner as well. Let’s have a quick overview.
- You can help spread knowledge by listing webinars.
- Sell webinar-related tools and courses on the site.
- Generate revenue from paid listings of webinars.
- Display ads on the site and monetize the directory traffic.
- Offer better directory features in higher fee plans.
Convinced? You must be! It’s time to move forward with our main goal- building a webinar directory.
Best tools to make a webinar directory
You might see several options and tools to make a webinar directory. But we would suggest the best ones. And these are:
- WordPress as the web platform
- Business Directory Plugin as the directory system
WordPress is a popular website building platform. It’s a go-to choice for creating any kind of website these days. You get a huge community of WordPress users. They are helpful to find the solution to any issue.
WordPress is famous for having tons of extensions. These are called “plugins”. To add the directory features to our WordPress site, we need a plugin.
Business Directory Plugin is the best WordPress directory plugin. You can use it to create any type of directory website. The plugin comes with a free version and several paid plans.
We can create a basic webinar directory with the Business Directory Plugin free version. But to utilize beautiful directory designs and powerful listing options, we’ll choose a premium plan. The premium versions also offer better monetization options.
What to include in a webinar directory
Visitors would expect some standard webinar-related stuff from your listing site. No worries, you don’t need to provide any webinar broadcasting system. You’ll just provide the webinar links, timing, and other details.
Simply follow the list below. You'll be good to go.
- Webinar title
- Date and time
- Resource persons
- Webinar description
- Webinar platform
- Link to the webinar
How to build a webinar directory using WordPress
You need a live WordPress site. Do you have a domain name for your site? Or maybe you need to move to a new domain?
If not, don't worry. There are many domain name providers. Find one, and buy a domain name.
To have a website on your domain, you need a hosting server. Choose a hosting provider from our tailored list of WordPress hosting providers. Then contact their support team to get your WordPress site up and running.
Once your WordPress site is live, follow the steps below to create a WordPress webinar directory.
Step 1: Install and activate Business Directory Plugin
Get a premium plan of Business Directory Plugin. Install and activate the plugin on your site. Also, install and enable the Enhanced Categories module.
Do you need some help with installing the plugin? Please check out our detailed documentation on getting started with Business Directory Plugin.
Step 2: Create webinar directory pages
We need to create 2 webinar directory pages. One, the main webinar archive home page. Two, the webinar listing submission page.
Directory home page: The webinar archive home page creation process is easy. You’ll get a dashboard prompt to create this after activating Business Directory Plugin. Follow that to make this page. Later, you can find it from WordPress Dashboard → Pages.
We’ve renamed it to Webinar Directory. It's now more relevant. You can set it as your site's home page.
Listing submission page: We’ll use a Business Directory Plugin shortcode to create this page. Let’s make a new WordPress page from Dashboard → Pages → Add New. Then add the [businessdirectory-submit-listing] shortcode on the top of the page. Publish it.
We’ve got our directory submission page. We can link it from anywhere we want.
Step 3: Customize the form fields
Business Directory Plugin has 10 built-in form fields. These are used to collect and display listing information. We’ll add a few fields, and delete the unnecessary ones. Let’s do the following tweaks to the form fields.
- Rename the filed “Title” to “Webinar Title”.
- Add a new text form field “Date & Time”.
- Add a new text form field “Resource Persons”.
- Keep the Description field as it is.
- Add a new text form field “Webinar Platform”.
- Add a new URL form field “Webinar Link”.
If you want to allow the list submitters to embed iFrames, you can turn the iFrame option ON. You'll get this option in the Description field’s settings (most relevant).
However, it’s not recommended due to security concerns.
Please learn more details on how to manage the form fields from our documentation.
Step 4: Set up the webinar directory WordPress plugin
Business Directory Plugin comes with some default settings that should be fine for you. Still, you need to tweak some fee plans and payment stuff.
Working with fee plans: To accept paid listings, Business Directory Plugin has a pricing plan system. These pricing plans are called fee plans. We can add and edit fee plans from Dashboard → Directory → Fee Plans.
A free fee plan is built inside the plugin. We need to add paid plans as we require. Please note, to see the paid fee plans active, we have to enable the payments and integrate a payment gateway. Don’t forget to check out our fee plans doc.
Activating payments: If you want to offer paid listings to your visitors, first, add a payment gateway.
You can use Authorize.net, PayPal, and more to accept payments. Please see our payment documentation to learn more.
Step 5: Add webinar directory categories
Listing categories are necessary to present the webinars organized. We can add webinar categories from Directory → Directory Categories.
Also, we’ll add category images to display the categories better. To ensure that the category images are showing properly, let’s go to Directory → Settings → Enhanced Categories.
Then select the Display the category list using images option. Define a thumbnail size as well.
Take a look at the directory home page with the category thumbnails.
Step 6: Add webinar listings
We can now add webinar series or single listings to our directory. Let’s visit the listing form that we’ve built in step 2. Provide the webinar information and add the listing. As many as you want. It’s that much easy.
Step 7: Get a better design for the webinar directory
Business Directory Plugin works with any standard WordPress theme. If you want a more professional directory design, we recommend using our native directory templates. Explore our theme collection and choose which you like.
For this tutorial, we’ve used our Elegant Business theme. Please look at the screenshot below to see our directory archive styled by the Elegant Business theme.
Here’s a single webinar view.
And that’s it! This is how we can create a webinar directory in WordPress.
Learn More: How to Create a WordPress Link Directory
Wrapping up
Webinars are now in the mainstream to share expert opinions and knowledge. To ensure their maximum reach, webinar directories can play a great role. We hope you’ll find this article helpful while building a webinar directory.
Covering both physical and virtual events? A WordPress event directory can be the solution. Best wishes for your endeavors. Please share your thoughts and questions via comments.
Business Directory Plugin is the best tool to make a webinar directory in WordPress. Get a premium plan of Business Directory Plugin and build your webinar listing site today.
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