Visit Mercer County: A WordPress Multisite Tourism Portal

Mercer County, New Jersey, sits between New York City and Philadelphia and is home to 12 municipalities, the state capital of Trenton, Princeton University and some of the most important ground of the American Revolution. It also has a lot of places to eat, stay, shop and explore. The county wanted one official home for all of it: a tourism portal that could tell the story of every town, keep a living calendar of events and help a visitor go from "what is there to do?" to a real plan in a few clicks. We designed, built and now host that portal, Visit Mercer County.

This case study walks through the project section by section: the homepage, the 12 town pages, the Places directory, faceted search, the community events calendar, Plan Your Visit, and the publishing and community tools behind it all. Along the way we explain what each part does for a visitor and how we built it in WordPress.

The client and the goal

Visit Mercer County is run by the County of Mercer, with funding support through a grant from the New Jersey Department of State, Division of Travel and Tourism. The site works alongside the county's towns and cities, cultural institutions, local businesses and community organizations, bringing events, attractions, dining, lodging and recreation together in one place.

That partnership shaped the brief. The site had to serve two audiences at once. Visitors needed a fast, attractive guide that works on a phone in the middle of a day trip. County staff and partners needed a site they could keep current themselves: adding places, posting events, updating town details and publishing seasonal stories without calling a developer for every change.

Our goals for the build were simple to state:

• Give every one of the 12 municipalities a real presence, not just a line in a list.
• Make hundreds of places and events easy to narrow down by what a visitor wants and where they want it.
• Keep publishing in the WordPress block editor, with custom blocks for the structured parts.
• Run it all on a secure, managed multisite network that the county can grow over time.

The homepage: a front door for the whole county

The homepage opens with a full width photo hero and the line that sums up the county: 12 vibrant and unique municipalities that draw visitors from around the world for history, the arts, outdoor recreation, shopping and dining. Directly below, a welcome letter from the County Executive sets a warm, official tone, explaining that the site was created as a guide to everything the county offers.

From there the page turns into a set of themed invitations: Accessibility and Convenience, Rich Historical Significance, Cultural Experiences, Outdoor Adventures, Accommodations for Every Visitor and Culinary Delights. Each one is a short, scannable panel that points visitors toward the part of the site that matches their interest.

Further down, Featured Events and Latest Events pull straight from the events calendar, so the homepage always shows what is coming up next, like a fall festival or a home opener, without anyone editing the page. We built these sections as blocks, so editors can reorder panels, swap photos and choose which events to feature from the editor.

Our Towns: twelve municipalities, twelve stories

Mercer County is not one place. It is three boroughs, seven townships, the capital city of Trenton and the unified town of Princeton, spread over more than 226 square miles. The county wanted every one of them to feel represented, so Our Towns became one of the most important parts of the site.

The Our Towns page introduces the county and then presents all 12 municipalities as large photo cards: East Windsor, Ewing, Hamilton, Hightstown, Hopewell Borough, Hopewell Township, Lawrence, Pennington, Princeton, Robbinsville, Trenton and West Windsor. One click takes a visitor into a full town page. Our Towns also sits in the main navigation and in the Places menu, so it is never more than a click away.

Inside a town page: Princeton

Each town page is a complete local guide. The Princeton page is a good example. It opens with an introduction to the town as the home of Princeton University, Princeton Theological Seminary and the Institute for Advanced Study, its role in the Battle of Princeton, and shopping districts like Nassau Street, Palmer Square and the Princeton Shopping Center.

An About panel lists the official town website, population and land area. Below that come structured lists of schools with phone numbers, historic sites such as Morven Museum and Garden, Nassau Hall, the Princeton Battle Monument and Drumthwacket, and recreation facilities from Community Park to the Delaware and Raritan Canal State Park. A photo gallery adds a sense of place.

The part visitors use most is Places to Visit: a grid of the hotels, restaurants, museums, parks and shops located in that town. These are not typed in by hand. Every place in the directory is tagged with its town, and the town page pulls in the matching places automatically. When a new cafe is added in Princeton, it shows up on the Princeton page and in the Princeton filter at the same time.

We built the town pages on a shared template with custom fields for the facts, schools, historic sites and recreation lists, so all 12 towns follow the same clear layout while each one keeps its own voice, photos and details.

Places: hundreds of listings in one directory

The Places directory is the heart of trip planning. It brings together dining, lodging, shopping, history, trails, agritourism, arts, music, golf, family fun, sports and recreation, and breweries and wineries. Dining alone has 193 listings, and Princeton by itself has more than 100 places across all categories.

The main menu also offers direct routes into the most popular groups, including Dining, Shopping, Stay In Mercer, Sports and Recreation, Arts and Entertainment, Family Fun, Agritourism, Historic Sites and Outdoors and Trails, so someone who already knows what they want can jump straight there.

Every listing is a structured record with its category, town, photo and details, which is what makes the rest of the site work. The same data feeds the directory, the town pages and search, so editors maintain each place once and it appears everywhere it belongs.

Faceted search that answers real questions

A directory this size is only useful if people can narrow it down quickly. Visitors tend to ask very specific questions, like "where can I eat in Robbinsville?" So we built faceted search into the Places directory and the site search: checkbox filters for Category and Town, a sort menu, pagination and a Reset button, all assembled from custom blocks that editors can place and configure in the editor.

When a visitor ticks a box, the page sends a single request to a custom WordPress REST endpoint with the selected filters. The response carries the new results and fresh versions of every facet, and the page swaps them in without reloading. Every option shows an updated count, so a choice that would return nothing shows a zero before anyone clicks it. The address bar updates too, so any filtered view can be bookmarked or shared.

In our testing on the live site, choosing Dining narrowed the directory to its 193 dining listings, and adding Robbinsville narrowed it to 19, with every other count updating in the same step. Results appeared in roughly a second per click, with no page reloads at all.

Community events: a calendar the whole county feeds

Mercer County is busy all year, from festivals and concerts to ball games and seasonal park events. The Community Events section gathers all of it in one calendar. Visitors can search by keyword and filter by date, category and town, then switch between a grid of event cards, a traditional month calendar and a map view.

The town filter ties events back to Our Towns, so a visitor exploring Hamilton or Pennington can see exactly what is happening there. The same events feed the Featured Events and Latest Events sections on the homepage and an events carousel, so one entry in the calendar shows up everywhere it should.

Event detail pages

Each event has its own page with the date, time and location at the top, followed by the full description and details. The pages are designed to answer the practical questions first, so someone checking on a phone can see when and where in a glance and get on their way.

Plan Your Visit

Plan Your Visit is the practical side of the site. It explains how to get to Mercer County by air, train, bus and light rail, with clear lists of options: Trenton-Mercer Airport, Philadelphia International and Newark Liberty International, plus NJ Transit, NJ Transit Light Rail, Amtrak, SEPTA and bus service.

It also points visitors to hotels, bed and breakfasts and extended stay properties in every corner of the county, along with the local food that people travel for, from pork roll to Trenton tomato pie to farm to table dining. Additional resources round out the page, so a visitor can go from first look to booked trip without leaving the site.

Community submissions, stories and more

The county wanted partners to help keep the site full, so we built public submission forms for events, places and promotions. A local business or organization can submit a listing, and staff review it before it goes live. A dedicated Promotions section highlights special offers from local partners.

A blog carries seasonal event roundups and stories, a News section shares county updates, and a Mercer 250th section supports the county's celebration of the nation's 250th anniversary. A newsletter signup in the footer invites visitors to get weekly travel inspiration and the latest events by email.

Accessible and privacy aware by design

As an official government site, Visit Mercer County had to work for everyone. We included a skip to content link, labeled menus and controls, an on page accessibility tool and a published accessibility statement. On the privacy side, a cookie consent banner offers Reject All, Accept All and per category preferences, with essential cookies separated from analytics.

Under the hood it is a custom theme built for the block editor, with custom REST endpoints and custom field blocks. Editors work in a familiar WordPress interface, while the structured data behind places, towns and events keeps everything consistent.

A look at the live site

One WordPress multisite network

Visit Mercer County runs as part of a WordPress multisite network. Every site in the network shares one secure codebase, one set of vetted plugins and one theme foundation, while each site keeps its own content, editors and settings. Updates and security fixes roll out once across the whole network, new sites can launch quickly from proven building blocks, and the brand stays consistent from one site to the next.

How we host and manage it

We host and manage the whole Mercer County multisite network, so the team that built the portal keeps it fast and safe every day. That covers managed WordPress hosting, security hardening, scheduled offsite backups with restore tests, uptime monitoring, and malware and change monitoring. Updates are tested on staging first before they reach the live sites, and a team is ready to respond if anything needs attention.

See WordPress security and hosting

The results

Visit Mercer County gives the county a single, official home for tourism that showcases all 12 municipalities, hundreds of places and a busy calendar of community events. Visitors can find a restaurant in a specific town, see what is happening this weekend or plan the trip itself in a few clicks, on any device.

Just as important, the county and its partners can keep it current. Places, events and town details are entered once and appear everywhere they belong, and public submissions let local businesses and organizations help fill the site. And because we host and manage the network, the platform stays fast, secure and up to date as it grows.

Ready to build yours?

Planning a destination site, a directory, a community calendar or a multisite network of your own? Tell us a little about the project and we will get back to you with clear next steps.

Prefer the full contact form? Go to Contact.

Project leadership by Brian Messenlehner.