The problem
The Kingsville Visitors Center's previous site was about six years old and had been shaped under three prior tourism directors — no one on staff today had built it, and it no longer matched how the center communicates. It ran on a purchased tourism theme driven by WPBakery and Revolution Slider, held together by a fragile stack of plugins. Every restaurant, hotel, and attraction listing was hand-typed and went out of date the instant a business changed its hours; the newsletter ran on manual CSV imports; and the event slider had to be CSS-hacked to look presentable.
What we built
As a long-standing client whose site we've rebuilt and evolved across multiple generations, we knew the organization well enough to build the right thing this time. We built a ground-up custom WordPress site on a purpose-made Kingsville theme with roughly 30 tailored page-building components. The headline integration is a live business directory powered by the Google Places API — restaurants, hotels, shops, and attractions pull their name, hours, photos, and reviews directly from each owner's Google Business Profile, so listings stay current with no site login. We added an integrated Trip Planner that saves favorites and builds a day-by-day itinerary aware of real opening hours and dated community events, plus an events feed that pulls automatically from Texas A&M–Kingsville, Facebook, other city properties, and moderated public submissions through a filter that learns from staff decisions. We also curated a 16-building downtown historic walking tour and captured original drone photography and video of local events and parks.
What changed
Local businesses now keep their own information current just by updating Google — staff no longer re-type listings, hack the event slider, or import newsletter lists by hand. Visitors can plan a real day in Kingsville before they arrive, saving spots and building an itinerary that knows what's open and what's happening that weekend. And for the first time, leadership gets automated weekly and monthly reports blending Google Analytics, Search Console, and the site's own data, with a built-in before/after-launch comparison — so the new site's impact is measurable, not assumed.
The numbers
02More from this project
03
Questions we get asked
04Can a website pull business hours and photos directly from Google?
Yes. We integrate the Google Places API so each listing mirrors the business's own Google Business Profile — name, hours, photos, and reviews stay current automatically, with no one logging into the website to re-type anything.
How do businesses keep their own listing up to date without a site login?
They simply update their Google Business Profile, which most already maintain. The website reflects those changes automatically, and we build a guided onboarding page that walks owners through claiming and updating their listing.
Our current tourism site relies on WPBakery, Revolution Slider, and a pile of plugins — can it be rebuilt more sustainably?
Yes. We replace fragile page-builder-and-plugin stacks with a purpose-built custom theme and real integrations, so maintenance stops being manual and the site does the work of keeping content accurate.
Can visitors plan an itinerary that knows what's open and what events are happening?
We built an integrated Trip Planner that lets visitors save favorites and build a day-by-day itinerary aware of each place's real opening hours, with dated community events dropped in automatically.
Related work
All work
Texas A&M University - Kingsville Alumni Association
The Alumni Association and the Foundation (the university's Institutional Advancement / giving side) were running on Blackbaud NetCommunity — a platform that…
Gulf Coast Humane Society
Gulf Coast Humane Society was running on Wix and hitting its edges. Staff spent time fighting an increasingly complex builder just to…
Working around a platform that won’t move?
That is the conversation we have most weeks. Tell us what is stuck and we will tell you, plainly, whether it is worth building around or worth leaving behind.
Start a project