September Release: Custom Forms, Claim Listings, Paid Leads & MCP Server

We're closing out the summer with one of our biggest feature drops yet. Four entirely new capabilities — Custom Forms, Claim Listings, Paid Leads, and the MCP Server — plus a handful of quality-of-life improvements that make your directory faster, more polished, and easier to monetize.

Custom Forms: Build Exactly the Form You Need

Until now, forms on MakeADir were functional but fixed — you got what the platform gave you. Custom Forms changes that entirely.

The new Custom Forms builder gives you a drag-and-drop canvas where you add, reorder, and configure fields visually. Choose from text, email, number, URL, date, dropdowns, checkboxes, and radio buttons — mark any field as required, set placeholder text, and see exactly how the form will look as you build it.

Display forms inline on the page or behind a button that opens a sliding modal panel. Style the trigger button and alignment to match your page layout. Want to gate form access? Choose what happens when someone unauthorized hits the form — show an upgrade prompt or hide it entirely.

Build a form once and place it on as many pages as you need. Edit it later and every instance updates automatically.

Claim Listings: Let Owners Take Control

Every directory owner knows the problem: listings go stale because you're the only one who can update them. Claim Listings solves this by letting business owners claim and manage their own listings — for free.

Toggle claiming on at the directory level and every unclaimed listing instantly gets a "Claim Listing" button. Owners click it, submit a reason (or any fields you've added via a custom claim form), and the claim enters your review queue. You approve legitimate claims and ownership transfers immediately — the owner can now edit hours, contact details, descriptions, photos, and everything else.

No Stripe, no payments, no transaction fees. It's a core MakeADir feature included with every directory.

Paid Leads: Monetize Every Enquiry

This is the big one for monetization. Paid Leads puts a paywall between the enquiry and the listing owner's access to the sender's contact details.

Here's how it works: a visitor submits an enquiry through a custom form on a listing page. The listing owner sees a preview of the message but the sender's name, email, phone, and any custom fields stay hidden. The owner pays — via Stripe, at a price you set per membership tier — and the details are revealed instantly. The money lands in your Stripe account. MakeADir takes no platform fee.

Pricing is flexible:

• Fixed price per lead — simple and predictable, say $5 or $10 per unlock
• Tier-based pricing — charge free-tier owners more, give premium members free unlocks
• Bundled into memberships — set the price to zero for a tier and lead access becomes a membership perk

Paid Leads works hand-in-hand with Custom Forms. Build the form with one, monetize it with the other. And you can run free forms and paid forms side by side on the same directory — the setting is per-form.

This builds on the monetization foundation we laid with paid membership tiers and analytics, giving you a complete funnel: attract visitors, capture enquiries, and earn on every unlock.

MCP Server: Manage Your Directory from ChatGPT or Claude

This one is for the power users. The MCP Server connects your MakeADir directory directly to ChatGPT, Claude, or any MCP-compatible AI assistant.

No coding, no custom integrations — just one URL: mcp.makeadir.com/mcp. Paste it into your AI tool's MCP connector settings, authenticate with OAuth, and you're done. Your AI assistant can now:

• Create and update listings — describe a business in plain English and it publishes with the right categories, attributes, and images
• Write and publish blog posts — brainstorm, draft, refine, and push live from your chat
• Manage categories — reorganize your directory structure through conversation
• Run batch operations — update pricing across a category or import dozens of listings with a single prompt

It's a true read-write agent, not a search-only connector. Works with Claude Desktop, Claude Web, ChatGPT (Plus and above), Claude Code, Cursor, Windsurf, and any other MCP-compatible client. Agencies managing multiple directories can switch contexts in a single chat session.

If you've been following our AI trajectory from the v2.0 AI page builder, this is the next logical step — your AI isn't just helping you build pages, it's operating your entire directory.

Smaller Improvements Worth Noting

Theme-aware emails. Emails sent from your directory now respect the theme you've selected. Combined with the Theme Studio we shipped last month, your brand now carries through from pages to inboxes. We also fixed a handful of edge cases where theme tokens weren't being applied consistently.

Analytics: no more self-counting. When you open your directory from CPanel via the "Visit Directory" button, your page views are no longer counted. Your analytics stay clean and reflect real visitor traffic.

Performance boost. Another 10–20ms shaved off page load speed across all sites. It's incremental, but these gains compound — your directory keeps getting faster.

All four features are live now. Custom Forms, Claim Listings, Paid Leads, and the MCP Server are ready to use — log in to CPanel and start exploring.