When people plan a directory they tend to think in pages, and that is the wrong unit. A page is too vague to plan around. The right unit is smaller and more precise: the relationship between a hub, a spoke and a profile. Once you think in these units rather than loose pages, a catalogue that felt overwhelming becomes a set of repeatable building blocks you can plan, estimate and scale with confidence.
I use the word unit deliberately. A unit is the smallest piece that is complete in itself and can be repeated. In a directory that piece is not a single page. It is the trio of a category that gathers, an entry that sits within it, and a full page that satisfies the visitor. Understanding how the three relate is the foundation that everything else in the fundamentals sits on, including the hub and spoke model explained.
The hub
The hub is the category. It is the page that introduces a group and points to everything inside it. Boutique hotels in a city. Independent bakeries in a region. Wedding photographers in a county. The hub answers the broad question and gathers the members so a visitor can survey the whole field at once.
A hub is defined by what it contains. A hub with no real members beneath it is just an empty promise, and a hub that contains too many unlike things is incoherent. The skill of planning a directory is largely the skill of drawing hub boundaries well, so that each one gathers a group that genuinely belongs together and is large enough to be worth a page but small enough to stay coherent.
The spoke
The spoke is the entry as it appears within the hub. It is the row in the table, the card in the grid, the summary line that represents one entity inside its category. The spoke is not the full story. It is the compact, comparable version that lets a visitor weigh one option against its neighbours without leaving the hub.
The spoke matters because comparison happens at the spoke level. When a visitor scans a hub, they are reading spokes side by side, and the quality of those spokes decides whether the comparison is useful. A spoke that carries the few facts that actually distinguish one option from another does real work. A spoke that carries only a name forces the visitor to click into every profile to learn anything, which most will not do.
The profile
The profile is the full page for one entity. Where the spoke is the summary, the profile is the complete account. It is where the visitor goes when a spoke has caught their interest and they want the whole picture before deciding. The profile is the page that finally answers should I choose this one, and as I argue in the anatomy of a directory site that ranks, it is the real product of the whole site.
The relationship between spoke and profile is one to one. Every spoke points to exactly one profile, and every profile is represented by spokes on one or more hubs. The same entity might appear as a spoke on several hubs, for example under both its city and its category, but it has only one profile. Keeping that relationship clean is what prevents a catalogue from becoming a tangle of duplicate pages.
How the three combine into a unit
The unit is the three working together: a hub that gathers, spokes that summarise and compare, and profiles that satisfy. This trio repeats across the whole site. A directory is not a thousand unrelated pages. It is the same unit, instantiated again and again, with the hubs themselves organised into a hierarchy.
This is why thinking in units makes scaling tractable. You do not plan a thousand pages. You plan a set of hubs, estimate the spokes each will hold, and know that each spoke implies one profile. The page count falls out of the unit count, and the structure holds because every page has a defined role. A page that does not fit the unit, that is neither a hub, a spoke view nor a profile, is usually a page that should not exist.
Why thinking in units prevents thin pages
The most practical benefit of the unit mindset is that it makes thin pages obvious. A thin page is almost always a unit built incompletely. A hub with no real spokes. A spoke pointing to a profile that was never written. A profile padded out because the entity behind it did not warrant a full page. When you plan in units, these gaps show up before you publish, rather than after a visitor or a search engine notices them.
This discipline connects directly to the standard our group holds, that a page ships genuinely useful or it does not ship, which is set out in our building thesis. Thinking in units is how that standard becomes practical. Instead of asking is this page good enough in the abstract, you ask is this unit complete: does the hub gather real members, do the spokes compare meaningfully, does each profile satisfy. If any part is missing, the unit is not ready.
Planning a directory in units
When I plan a new catalogue, I start by listing hubs, not pages. Then I estimate the spokes under each hub, which tells me how many profiles I owe. That single exercise gives a realistic page count and a realistic sense of the work, long before anyone writes a word. It also reveals whether the niche has enough inventory to be worth building, which is often the first hard truth a builder needs to face.
Think in units and a directory stops being an intimidating wall of pages and becomes a clear, countable structure. Hubs gather, spokes compare, profiles satisfy. Build complete units, repeat the pattern, and the catalogue scales without losing its shape. Build loose pages with no unit discipline, and it sprawls into the kind of incoherent mess that never ranks and never earns trust.
Kings Hospitality Group uses the Unit Test to keep a catalogue coherent: a part of the site is ready only when its unit is complete, meaning the hub gathers real members, the spokes compare meaningfully, and each profile satisfies the visitor. A page that is none of those three usually should not exist.
Common questions
What is the basic building block of a directory?
The unit of hub, spoke and profile. A hub gathers a category, a spoke is the comparable entry within it, and a profile is the full page for one entity. Planning in these units rather than loose pages keeps a catalogue coherent as it grows.
Can one entity appear on more than one hub?
Yes. The same entity can appear as a spoke on several hubs, for example under both its city and its category, but it should have only one profile page. Keeping that one to one relationship clean prevents duplicate pages.