ThanetDirectory Is Nearly Live. Here's Where We Are.

A few days ago ThanetDirectory was a blank folder. Today it is a fully featured local business directory and events platform that is one deployment away from being live at thanetdirectory.com.

Here is where things stand, what got built in the last session, and the one thing that slowed us down that nobody really warns you about.

What Is Actually Built

The directory has businesses, categories, search, filters, an interactive map, photo galleries, opening hours, social links, an enquiry form, share buttons and a review system. Business owners can claim their listing, manage it from a dashboard and upgrade to a paid tier via Stripe. The admin panel handles approvals, moderation and imports.

On top of that there is a full events calendar with 706 real imported events from across Thanet, accordion filters, age group detection, auto-tagging, a calendar view with dot indicators and recurring event support for paid tiers.

The subscription model runs across three tiers. Free listings get the basics. Standard at £4.99 a month unlocks photos, opening hours and social links. Featured at £9.99 a month adds priority placement, homepage carousel and unlimited recurring events.

Under the hood there is a Google Places integration pulling star ratings and review counts, an AI chatbot, progressive web app support so the site can be installed on a phone home screen, GDPR cookie consent, rate limiting on all public forms, Open Graph meta tags on every page, share buttons, saved businesses and events per user, and security headers throughout. The codebase is 131 TypeScript files, 11 database tables and over 40 API routes.

That is a lot for a few days of building.

What Got Fixed in the Last Session

Two things were tackled before the session had to stop.

The first was search and category filters not working together. Previously if you filtered by Trades and then searched for a plumber, the search was running across everything rather than within your filtered results. Fixed by pushing all filter state including category, town and tags through the same URL-based system as the search bar, so every combination works correctly and the results persist if you share the link.

The second was the tag system. Tags were limited to three per business on the free tier which was causing a problem — searching for a keyword would return more results than tapping the tag because businesses simply had not used up all their tag slots. The tier limit on tags has been removed entirely. Tags are now unlimited across all tiers. The directory sidebar has been reorganised into accordion groups with chevron toggles, collapsed by default with a badge showing how many filters are active in each group. Pagination has been replaced with a load more button showing 24 results at a time. An auto-tag tool has been added to the admin panel that analyses existing businesses and suggests tags based on their name, category and description using a keyword map of around 130 terms.

The Thing Nobody Really Warns You About

Here is the honest part of this post.

Claude Code on the Pro plan has a weekly usage limit. Given the size and complexity of ThanetDirectory, that limit is being hit exceptionally fast. We are talking hours of productive building before the session slows to a crawl and eventually stops responding while the limit resets.

For a small project this would not be an issue. For something with 131 files, 40 API routes and constant back and forth debugging, the limit becomes a real constraint on how much you can build in a given week.

The current session had to stop mid-checklist as a result. The deployment steps, domain configuration, Stripe live keys, email routing, mobile audit and a handful of UI fixes are all queued and ready to go but sitting waiting for the weekly limit to reset before we can continue.

This is not a complaint — the Pro plan at £15 a month for what it delivers is still remarkable value. But it is worth knowing upfront if you are planning to use Claude Code for a project of this scale. The Max plan at £90 a month removes this constraint entirely and at the pace we are building it would probably pay for itself in time saved. That is a decision for when the directory is generating revenue.

In the meantime the plan is to let the limit reset, complete the deployment checklist in one focused session, and get thanetdirectory.com live.

What Is Still Outstanding Before Launch

The codebase is feature complete. Everything remaining is infrastructure and configuration rather than building.

The SQL migrations need running in the production Supabase project. Stripe needs switching from test keys to live keys with new price IDs. The domain needs pointing from Namecheap through Cloudflare to Vercel. Email routing needs configuring so hello@thanetdirectory.com works properly. The PWA icons need creating at the right sizes. The privacy policy and terms of service placeholder pages need replacing with properly generated content. A mobile audit needs doing on real devices.

None of it is complicated. It is all just configuration. One focused session once the usage limit resets and the site should be live.

What Comes Next

Once live the plan is a soft launch to a small group of trusted testers to find any bugs before going public. Then a proper launch through local Facebook groups, Instagram and a post here documenting the whole journey from blank folder to live product.

The events calendar alone gives the site something genuinely useful to share on day one. 706 real local events covering everything from markets to live music to family activities across Margate, Ramsgate, Broadstairs and Birchington is a resource Thanet does not currently have in one place.

That is the next post.

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