Adding Places

Places are the individual locations you recommend to your guests -- a favorite restaurant, a hidden beach, the nearest supermarket, or a must-visit attraction. Each place includes a name, description, photos, map pin, contact details, and tags so guests can find it easily and know what to expect.

How to add a place

1. Go to the Local Guide section in the sidebar.
2. Click "Add" (or open a category first, then click "Add" within it).
3. Fill in the place details (described in full below).
4. Click Save.

Place fields

Title

The name of the place (e.g., "Trattoria da Mario", "Playa de las Canteras", "Lidl Supermarket"). Keep it clear and recognizable -- this is the headline guests see when browsing. A URL-friendly slug is generated automatically from the title.

Category

Select which category this place belongs to (e.g., Restaurants, Beaches, Shopping). A place can also be left uncategorized, but assigning a category is recommended for better guest browsing.

Short description

A brief summary of 500 characters or fewer. This text appears in list views and category browsing, so make it count. Focus on what makes the place worth visiting:

• What type of food or cuisine (for restaurants)
• What makes it special or different
• Best time to visit
• Price range, if relevant

Body content (rich text)

A longer, detailed write-up using the rich text editor. Use this for in-depth descriptions, practical tips, directions, opening hours, or anything else guests should know. The rich text editor supports headings, bold, italic, lists, links, and images within the body.

Icon

Each place has a FontAwesome icon that appears on the map and in list views. The default is fa-solid fa-location-dot (a standard map pin). You can change this to better represent the place -- for example, fa-solid fa-utensils for a restaurant or fa-solid fa-umbrella-beach for a beach.

Featured image

Upload a photo to represent the place. This image appears in the place listing, the detail view, and (if the place is highlighted) in the featured carousel.

When you upload an image, three optimized sizes are generated automatically:

• Large -- Used in the detail view and full-screen contexts
• Medium -- Used in list cards and category browsing
• Thumbnail -- Used in compact views and map popups

Images are compressed automatically to keep page load times fast. When a place is deleted, its images are cleaned up automatically.

TIP

Use a horizontal (landscape) photo for the best results. The featured image is displayed as a card, so vertical photos may be cropped awkwardly.

Location and map

Address and city

Enter the street address and city. These are shown to guests in the place detail view.

Google Maps URL

Paste a link from Google Maps and the coordinates (latitude and longitude) are extracted automatically. This is the easiest way to place an accurate map pin.

Supported URL formats:

• Standard Google Maps links: https://maps.google.com/... or https://www.google.com/maps/...
• Shortened links: https://goo.gl/maps/...
• Mobile app share links: https://maps.app.goo.gl/...

How it works: When you paste a Google Maps URL, hejGuide follows the link (up to 5 redirects), extracts the @latitude,longitude coordinates or the place name from the URL, and stores the latitude and longitude automatically. Only Google Maps domains are accepted for security.

Step by step:

1. Open Google Maps on your phone or computer.
2. Find the place you want to add.
3. Tap or click Share and copy the link.
4. Paste the link into the Google Maps URL field in hejGuide.
5. The coordinates are resolved and the map pin is placed automatically.

Latitude and longitude

If you prefer, you can enter coordinates manually instead of pasting a Google Maps link. Use decimal format (e.g., 28.1235 for latitude, -15.4363 for longitude).

WARNING

Double-check your map pins after adding them. An incorrect address or a broken Google Maps link may place the pin in the wrong location, sending guests to the wrong place.

Contact details

Phone

A phone number for the place. Guests can tap this to call directly from the guidebook on mobile devices.

Website

A URL to the place's website or social media page. Shown as a clickable link in the guest view.

Status and visibility

Published / Draft

Toggle whether the place is visible to guests. A place set to draft is only visible in the admin view and will not appear in any guidebook, regardless of linking. This lets you prepare content in advance and publish when ready.

Host Tip

Mark a place as your personal top recommendation. Host Tip places:

• Display a special Host Tip badge in the guest view, signaling your personal endorsement
• Are sorted to the top of results, appearing before other places in the same category
• Help guests quickly identify your very best recommendations

Use this sparingly -- if every place is a Host Tip, the distinction loses its value. Reserve it for the 2-3 places per category that you would recommend to a friend.

Highlight (Featured)

Flag a place to appear in the featured carousel at the top of the Local Guide guest view. Highlighted places:

• Must be published and have a featured image to appear in the carousel
• Up to 10 items are shown in the carousel at any time
• Items are selected randomly from all eligible highlights, so the carousel varies between page loads
• Are a great way to showcase your absolute top picks across all categories

TIP

Host Tip and Highlight serve different purposes. Host Tip affects sorting within a category list (always shown first). Highlight controls whether the place appears in the featured carousel at the top of the page. A place can be both a Host Tip and a Highlight.

Tags

Tags let you add a second layer of filtering beyond categories. Select one or more tags for each place to help guests narrow down results.

Default tags

Seven tags are pre-loaded for you:

• Family Friendly
• Budget
• Luxury
• Walking Distance
• Reservation Required
• Hidden Gem
• Must Visit

You can rename, delete, or add to these at any time.

Global vs. guidebook-specific tags

• Global tags are available across all your guidebooks. If you tag a restaurant as "Family Friendly", that tag appears in every guidebook where the restaurant is linked.
• Guidebook-specific tags are only available within a single guidebook. This is useful when a tag only makes sense in a specific context (e.g., "Near the Beach House" would not be relevant in a city apartment guidebook).

Tags also have a color (hex code) and support translations in all 22 languages, so they display correctly for international guests.

How guests use tags

In the guest view, tags appear as filter buttons. Guests can select one or more tags to narrow the list of places. For example, selecting "Family Friendly" and "Walking Distance" shows only places that have both tags.

Translations

Every text field on a place supports translation into 22 languages:

English, Dutch, German, French, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, Polish, Czech, Danish, Swedish, Norwegian, Finnish, Russian, Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Arabic, Hebrew, Turkish, Greek, Hungarian, Romanian, and Ukrainian.

The translatable fields are:

• Title -- The place name in the target language
• Short description -- The 500-character summary
• Body content -- The full rich-text description

To add translations:

1. Open the place for editing.
2. Find the Translations section.
3. Select a language and enter the translated title, short description, and/or body.
4. Repeat for each language you want to support.
5. Save the place.

The guest's browser language is detected automatically. If a translation exists for their language, it is used; otherwise, the default content is shown.

Filtering and searching in the admin view

The admin list view provides several tools to manage large numbers of places:

• Search -- Find places by title or city using the search bar.
• Filter by category -- Show only places in a specific category, or filter for uncategorized items.
• Filter by status -- Show all places, only published, or only drafts.
• Filter by tag -- Show only places with a specific tag.
• Filter by highlight -- Show only highlighted places (or only non-highlighted).
• Filter by Host Tip -- Show only Host Tip places (or only non-tips).
• Sort -- Order results by title, category, city, published status, highlight, Host Tip, or creation date, in ascending or descending order.

Reordering places

Places within a category are displayed in the order you set. To change the order:

1. Open the category containing the places.
2. Drag and drop places to rearrange them.
3. The new order is saved automatically.

Put your top recommendations at the top of the list so guests see the best options first. Note that Host Tip places are always shown first regardless of manual sort order.

Editing and deleting places

• To edit a place, click on it to open the detail view. Update any field and click Save.
• To delete a place, open it and use the delete option. The place and its images are removed immediately.

Related

• Local Guide Overview
• Setting Up Categories
• Linking to a Guidebook
• Guidebooks -- Display your local recommendations within a guidebook