Our Temples: Temple Directory Website Design on WordPress

About the client

Our Temples helps devotees, pilgrims and travellers discover temples and plan visits, with hundreds of temples catalogued across Indian states and international destinations.

What the website needed to do

• Organise hundreds of temple listings so visitors can browse easily
• Let people search by location and by deity
• Build a community around videos, slokas and festival guides
• Allow temple owners and guests to register

What I built

• Directory structure with temples by state and by deity (25+ deity categories)
• Search and browse by location, deity or state
• "Recently added" temples with photos
• Videos and slokas/mantras sections
• Blog with festival guides and pilgrimage routes
• User login and registration for guests and temple owners, and multilingual (Telugu) content

The problem

A temple directory and travel guide needed a structure that let pilgrims find temples by state, deity or location, with room to grow as new temples were added.

How the directory is organised

The homepage opens with the line "Discover amazing temples everywhere you go" and then offers three ways into the directory. "Explore Temples by Deity" shows a grid of deity cards, each with the number of temples listed under it; "Explore Temples In India" shows a card for each state with its own count; and "Explore Temples In Other Countries" covers listings abroad, starting with Thailand. A "Recently Added Temples" strip with photos sits between them, so returning visitors can see what is new.

The main menu repeats those routes, with Temples, Temples by Deity and Temples by States alongside Videos, Sloka / Mantra, About Us and Contact, plus a Destinations dropdown that lists each state. The deity list runs to 25 categories, from Lord Shiva, Lord Hanuman and Venkateshwara to Durga Mata and Sai Baba, because devotees often look for a temple by the deity they want to visit as much as by place.

Finding and planning a temple visit

Each deity and each state has its own archive. The Lord Shiva archive, for example, shows how many results it holds, then paginated cards with a photo, the temple's name and address and a link to its state. Visitors can narrow the list by neighbourhood or state, use a "Near Me" option, sort by newest, rating or featured listings, or switch to a map view, which helps a pilgrim plan several temples into one trip.

Single temple pages answer a visitor's practical questions in a fixed order. They open with a photo gallery and the address, then show a map with directions, contact details, travel highlights such as the nearest airport, bus, train, taxi and parking, and opening hours with an "Open now" status. A More Information block covers temple history, sub-temples, things to see, dress code, pooja details, festivals, a travel guide and announcements, and a short FAQ answers questions such as how to reach the temple. Similar places close the page.

Content, community and languages

Content around the listings gives people a reason to come back between trips. The blog publishes festival guides that gather temples for an occasion, such as Shiva temples for Maha Shivaratri, Ganesh Chaturthi temples in Hyderabad, Surya temples for Ratha Saptami and the Pancharama Shiva temples of Andhra Pradesh, along with a general guide to temples by state and deity.

The site is not limited to English. The Sloka / Mantra page presents the Hanuman Chalisa, Aditya Hridayam and Dakshinamurthy Stotram in Telugu script, temple pages give the temple name and sections such as history, pooja details and festivals in Hindi and Telugu as well as English, and a Telugu-language article on Ranganatha temples for Vaikunta Ekadasi sits among the English posts.

Visitors can register as a guest or as a temple owner, and log in from any page through a popup. The footer links to the project's Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, Telegram and X accounts and its WhatsApp channel, and lists separate email addresses for general and business enquiries.

What other directory websites can take from this

Decide how people will search before building the directory, and give each route its own archive: here that means deity, state and country, each with a visible count so visitors know how much they will find. Add filters, sorting and a map view to any archive with more than a page of results.

Use one template for every listing so each entry answers the same questions, such as timings, directions, dress code and festivals, and publish occasion-based guides that send readers back into the directory. If your audience reads more than one language, put it in the listings themselves, not just the menu. This site does that with WordPress, Elementor, the Golo directory theme and Rank Math SEO.

The result

The live site organises temples by state and by more than 25 deity categories, offers search by location, deity or state, shows recently added temples with photos, and adds videos, slokas and a blog of festival guides and pilgrimage routes.

Want something similar?

If you want a Temple Directory & Travel Guide website like this on WordPress, see the websites for temples and NGOs page linked below, or send a short brief through the contact form at the bottom of this page. You get a free review of your current site and a fixed quote before any work starts.

Related reading

• How to Build a Directory Website on WordPress: Listings, Search and Filters, SEO for Thousands of Pages, Speed and Monetisation
• Online Donation to Temples, Trusts and NGOs: How to Set Up Online Donations on Your Website
• Multilingual WordPress Websites in Hindi, English and Regional Languages: Plugins, URLs and SEO
• Seasonal and Festival Campaigns on Your Website: Landing Pages, Offers, Gift Guides, Speed and Tracking for Diwali, Rakhi, Navratri and Wedding Season
• WordPress Categories and Tags for SEO: When to Index, Noindex or Improve Them