Hereabout

Hereabout is a block theme for city guides and local directories: the independent cafés, makers, stays and services of a town, each with its own page. It looks like a well-loved paper map: warm paper and pine ink, a friendly serif, map contour lines, persimmon pins, and a night-map dark mode.

A directory, built in

• Places (a "Places" menu in the dashboard) with a tagline, address and map, phone, email, website, social profiles, a main button (Book a table, Apply now, Get tickets), a photo gallery, a price list or menu, amenities, ratings and verified/featured flags. A place can also be a stay (hotel class, check-in and check-out, price per night), a job (company, salary, employment type, deadline), a classified ad (price, condition, open to offers) or an event (dates, tickets).
• Opening hours and "open now": hours per day, split shifts and nights past midnight, 24/7 or by appointment. "Open now · Closes at 22:00" is worked out in your site's time zone and stays right on cached pages.
• Search and filters: keywords, category, area, open now, price range, amenities, verified, and sorting (recommended, top rated, newest, price). Results update the address bar, so filtered lists can be shared.
• Category and area pages with their own icon or photo, sub-categories and the same filters.
• Place pages: a photo mosaic that opens in a lightbox, facts, hours with today highlighted, the menu with dotted leaders, amenities with icons, a map that loads only when the visitor asks for it, directions, related places, and an inquiry form that adapts to the place (inquiry, booking request with dates and guests, job application, offer). Messages arrive under Messages in the dashboard.
• Structured data (schema.org) on place pages for search engines.

The listing details are edited with the free Secure Custom Fields plugin; the theme offers to install it with one click. Pages render without it.

Also built in

• Demo content: Appearance → Import demo creates a sample guide to a small harbour town (12 places, categories, areas, pages and a menu) and removes it again with one click.
• Forms: contact, newsletter, "list your business" and "suggest a place", with spam protection; messages are saved in the dashboard and emailed to you.
• Galleries with Masonry and Carousel styles and a lightbox slideshow; a background-video hero with a pause button.
• Motion: gentle entrance animations, count-ups and marquees, calmed down for visitors who prefer reduced motion.
• Light and dark: follows the visitor's system and has a switch in the header.
• Style variations: Paper (default), Night map, Seaside, Olive grove and Monochrome.
• Patterns: 6 heroes (search over the map, harbour video, photo collage, featured place, open right now, neighbourhood bento), category and area grids, featured places, open now, search with results, place spotlight, how it works, about, team, stats, testimonials, FAQ, galleries, video, newsletter and contact forms, owners' call to action, journal posts, footers and full pages (Home, About, Contact, For business owners, List your business).
• Templates: place, places archive, category, area and amenity pages, blog home, single post, page, archive, search, 404, and the custom templates Landing page (no title), Wide page and Explore (search with results).