Location Discovery

The "Near a Place" Sidebar Filter

Both the classic route finder page and the V2 (split-panel) route finder now have a "Near a Place" section in their filter sidebar, alongside the existing Club Groups, Distance, and Activity Type filters.

How visitors use it

1. They type a postcode, town, or place name into the search box (or click the locate button to use their device's current location).
2. A short list of matching places appears. Because place names repeat across the UK — there might be an "Ashurst" in Hampshire, Kent, and West Sussex — each result shows how many routes are actually nearby, so visitors can tell them apart at a glance rather than guessing from the address alone.
3. They pick the right match, which shows a small "chip" confirming the selected place and a radius slider (in kilometres).
4. The route list narrows to routes within that radius, combined with any other filters (club group, activity type, distance, and so on) they've already set.

Controlling visibility

Like the other filter sections, you can control whether "Near a Place" appears and how it behaves by default:

1. Navigate to Routes → Config → Filter Options tab
2. Find "Near a Place" under the Filter Sections group
3. Choose one of:
   • Always visible — shown with no collapse control
   • Shown by default — visible, but the visitor can collapse it
   • Not shown by default — collapsed, but the visitor can expand it
   • Not shown — hidden entirely
4. Click "Save Changes"

This is the same option (rfcc_filter_show_near_place) and the same four-state pattern already used for every other filter section on this tab, so it will look familiar if you've configured Club Groups or Activity Types visibility before.

Route Shortcuts: The New "Location" Type

The existing Route Shortcuts feature (documented on the Grouping & Filtering page, configured under Routes → Config → Route Types) now has a fourth filter type: Location, alongside Include, Exclude, and Show All.

Where Include/Exclude/Show All shortcuts match keywords in route titles, a Location shortcut matches routes geographically. It turns into a one-click quick-filter button on the main finder page — for example, a button labelled "Near Sevenoaks" that instantly shows every route within a radius you've chosen, with no typing required from the visitor.

Setting up a Location shortcut

1. Navigate to Routes → Config → Route Types tab
2. Add a new shortcut (or edit an existing one) and set its Type to Location
3. Use the same search box used everywhere else in this feature: type a place name, wait for the results (each annotated with its own nearby-route count), and click the one you mean. You can also click "Use my location" if you're setting this up from the area in question.
4. Set the radius (in kilometres) for how far from that point routes should count as "near"
5. Optionally, tick one or more activity types to lock the shortcut to (for example, a "Local Gravel Loops" shortcut that only ever matches Gravel routes, even if a road route happens to be nearby too). Leave every activity type unticked to match all activity types.
6. Give the shortcut a Shortcut Name (the button label, e.g. "Near Sevenoaks") and tooltip text as usual
7. Click "Save Changes"

Once saved, the button appears on the main finder page's shortcut row exactly like an Include/Exclude/Show All shortcut — visitors don't need to know it works any differently under the hood.

Gutenberg Blocks & Shortcodes

Three new blocks are available in the block inserter under the Route Finder category, for embedding location-based route discovery anywhere on your site — not just on the main finder pages. Matching shortcodes exist for anyone who prefers typing over using the block inserter, or who needs to paste into a page builder or widget that doesn't support blocks.

Route Finder — Route Card (refreshed)

The existing single-route card block has been simplified. It still embeds one specific route (picked by name) anywhere on a normal page, but now offers:

• A photo option — uses the route's featured image if one is set, and falls back to the GPX map automatically if not
• A genuine live preview in the block editor, so you can see roughly what visitors will see without leaving the editor
• Simplified settings: a single Style preset (Compact, Standard, or Photo-led) plus a small number of grouped "Show" toggles (key stats, badge, description, destinations, and so on), rather than the roughly twenty individual checkboxes the block used to have. An Advanced section is still there underneath for anyone who wants to override an individual setting by hand.

See the Shortcode Management page's Route Card tab for the shortcode builder, or search for "Route Finder — Route Card" in the block inserter.

Route Finder — Location

This embeds the same full, interactive filter panel visitors see on your main finder pages, but inside any ordinary page or post. You can either:

• Leave it blank, so visitors search for their own place when they land on it — useful for, say, a "Find rides near you" page linked from your main menu; or
• Pre-seed it to a specific place, radius, and/or activity type using the block's own address-search control in the Inspector panel (the same disambiguated search used everywhere else in this feature)

Either way, the panel is fully interactive once the page loads — a visitor can always search a different place, widen the radius, or change any other filter, exactly as they could on the main finder page.

Shortcode equivalent: [rfcc_location_filter]. See the Location tab on the Shortcode Management page for a point-and-click builder.

Route Finder — Location Preview

This is a smaller, non-interactive block: a strip showing the top few routes near a chosen place, for dropping between paragraphs of ordinary editorial content. It uses the same simplified Route Card appearance settings (Style preset + grouped Show toggles) described above.

A good use for this is an "editorial" page built around your different clubhouses or start points — for example a page titled "Great days out from our clubhouses" with three Location Preview blocks stacked down the page, one per area, each showing its own top 3 nearby routes.

Shortcode equivalent: [rfcc_location_preview]. See the Location Preview tab on the Shortcode Management page for a point-and-click builder.

Week Builder (Admin-Only)

Week Builder is a tool for logged-in editors and administrators only — regular visitors never see any trace of it. It turns browsing your own live route finder into a way of building a "This Week's Rides" page, instead of filling in a separate admin form.

How it works

1. While logged in with editing permissions, visit the main route finder page as normal (v1 or v2). A Week Builder toggle appears that isn't there for ordinary visitors.
2. Browse and filter routes exactly as you normally would — by club group, distance, near a place, or anything else.
3. On any route you like, click "+ Add to a day" and assign it to a day of the week (Monday through Sunday).
4. A tray keeps track of everything you've added so far, across as many days and routes as you like. You can remove a route from the tray, or clear the whole draft, at any time before publishing.
5. When you're happy with the week's schedule, click Publish. This creates a new draft WordPress page with a heading for each day and a Route Card block for each route you assigned to it, and takes you straight into the block editor for that new page.
6. From there, it's an ordinary draft page — add your own introduction, photos, or notes around the pre-built structure, then publish it whenever you're ready.

Who can see it

Week Builder only appears for logged-in users who can edit posts, and only on pages that actually show a route finder (the main finder pages, or any page using the filter results shortcode/blocks). It's completely invisible — no toggle, no tray, no extra markup — for anyone else.