✔ Help travellers find a rural homestead in the region they want
✔ Show each homestead’s facilities, services and prices in detail
✔ Let owners add their homesteads themselves through a personal account
✔ Keep a public register of union members and certificates
✔ Share news of the Academy’s courses, the union’s projects and events
✔ Work in Ukrainian and English
The union brings rural homestead owners together under the “Ukrainian Hospitable Homestead” quality mark – from the basic category up to the third, highest one. It needed a website that would be a catalogue for travellers, a workspace for owners and the official face of the organisation, all at once.
I built the portal on my own burum theme for WordPress. Travellers go from an interactive map of the regions to a region page and then on to a detailed homestead page. Owners register and manage their homesteads in personal accounts powered by WP-Recall, and they can apply to join the union online.
The result brings everything together on one website: a homestead catalogue by region and comfort category, a public member register with certificate numbers, a Rural Development Academy section with courses and trainers, the union’s documents, a blog and an English version.
A portal that works both as a catalogue for travellers and as a workspace for union members.
Each region leads to its homesteads, a description of the area and photos
Category, services and prices, rooms, facilities, distances, contacts and directions
Registration, the owner’s homesteads in their profile and private messages from site users
Certificate number, membership type, admission record and category validity date
Courses, trainers, the team and learning materials for homestead owners
Catalogue, Academy, register and blog in Ukrainian and English, with instant site search
I built a portal that is both a guide to rural homesteads and the official website of a non-profit organisation.
The website handles several key tasks:
Guaranteed reply within 24 hours.
The first call is free and with no commitment.
Rural green tourism relies on small family-run homesteads, and it is hard for any one of them to stand out alone. A shared catalogue portal gives travellers an easy choice, owners a shop window and a personal account, and the industry organisation a tool for working with its members.
The Union of Rural Green Tourism of Ukraine is a professional non-profit organisation that represents the rural green tourism sector and brings owners of smallholdings and farmsteads together in a network under the “Ukrainian Hospitable Homestead” quality mark. The homesteads in the network are graded – from the basic category up to the third, highest one.
The website had to serve several audiences at once. For travellers, it had to help them choose a homestead and contact the host. For owners, it had to let them add and manage their homestead themselves. For the union, it had to openly present its statutes, regulations, board, projects, member register and the work of the Rural Development Academy. I built all of this on my own burum theme for WordPress.
The catalogue starts with an interactive map of Ukraine. Each region has its own section: how many network homesteads there are in the area, a short introduction to its history and nature, a photo gallery and a button that leads to the homesteads. Next to them are counters showing how many homesteads there are at each level: three, two and one “flower”, plus the basic category.
The homestead page is built from structured fields, so every homestead is described in the same way and they are easy to compare:
Below the homestead page are other homesteads in the same region, comments and a view counter.
The “Add a homestead” button on the home page leads to the login and registration screen. The personal accounts run on the WP-Recall plugin: registration with a password strength indicator and a password generator, login and access recovery. Through their account, owners add their homestead and keep its page up to date themselves.
Each owner has a public profile with their posts and homesteads – that’s where the “Write to the owner” button on the homestead page leads. Registered users can send the host a private message without leaving the site.
The website helps the union grow. Users choose a membership package – “Business” for accommodation owners and small businesses, “Homestead” for personal smallholdings, “Expert” for teachers, researchers and non-profit organisations – and apply online. The form follows the official application to the board: contact details, address and a description of the planned activity.
The member register is open to everyone. The table shows the member’s certificate number, name, the number and date of the admission record, the membership type, the homestead name and region, and for certified homesteads also the grading date and how long it remains valid. A separate tab shows new applications.
The union runs a Rural Development Academy, which has its own section on the site: the Academy’s regulations, organisational structure, team with contact details, trainers with detailed biographies, volunteers of the “Selo UP” project, learning and presentation materials, and FAQs.
On the courses page, every course is described in full: who it is for, its format and schedule, a module-by-module programme with dates and trainers, what participants get and how the certificate is issued. The course for rural guides, for example, has five participation packages – from basic to premium – plus a free package for union members and a reduced one for war veterans. When enrolment is closed, the page shows straight away that registration has ended.
The section about the union gathers everything a non-profit organisation should keep public: its history, mission and values, statutes, membership regulations, code of standards, board, ambassador regulations, projects and reports.
The blog is split into articles and news – there are already more than 200 posts on the site, each with a view counter. The site works in Ukrainian and English: the language switcher is in the header, and the homestead catalogue, the Academy, the register and the blog are available in both versions. The search on the home page and in the catalogue shows results as you type, without reloading the page.
A business website tells people about the organisation but does little for its members. An industry union’s website becomes truly useful when it works for everyone at once: travellers find a place to stay with union members, owners get a shop window and direct enquiries from guests, and the union gets a public register and a strong argument for attracting new members.
A catalogue portal turns a quality mark into a clear point of reference for travellers. The comfort category, facilities and the host’s contact details on one page inspire more trust than a social media post, and a public register with certificate numbers and grading dates shows that there is a real procedure behind the mark.
Catalogues of homesteads, hotels, tradespeople or association members often start with a beautiful home page, and a year later they are full of empty and outdated listings. To prevent that, I follow a few rules when building them:
