Laying the Foundation for a Scalable Venue Directory: Inside the Initial Commit of Venue Scout

Starting Small, Designing Big

Venue Scout just got its first commit—and no, it doesn’t do much yet. But that blank slate is where the real work begins. As someone who’s spent the last year untangling monolithic Laravel UIs and migrating them into modular React frontends (looking at you, AustinsElite), I’ve learned that the cost of bad early decisions compounds fast. So when kicking off a new amenity-focused venue directory spanning multiple cities, I didn’t just create-next-app and call it a day. I architected for scale from line one.

The goal? Build a system where adding a new city—say, Denver after Austin—doesn’t mean rewriting components or restructuring data. It should feel like plugging in a module, not performing surgery. That mindset shaped everything from the folder structure to the schema design in that initial commit.

Modular by Design: How Cities and Venue Types Stay Independent

From the start, I structured the app around isolation. The /cities directory isn’t just a folder—it’s a contract. Each city (e.g., /austin, /denver) contains its own venues.json, index.mdx for city-specific content, and amenities/ mapping. This keeps data and presentation decoupled.

But the real win is in the /components/venues module. Instead of hardcoding venue types like "wedding venues" or "co-working spaces," I built a VenueCard and VenueList system that accepts a type and amenities array as props. That means the same component renders data for a rooftop bar in Austin or a podcast studio in Denver—no duplication.

This pattern was battle-tested during the AustinsElite refactor, where we broke down a 2000-line Laravel blade into reusable React components. The lesson? Modularity isn’t overhead—it’s velocity. When your UI anticipates variety, adding new categories becomes a config change, not a code rewrite.

Data That Scales: Flexible Attributes and Future-Proof Tagging

The biggest challenge in any directory app? Handling heterogeneity. Not every venue has a capacity, but all commercial spaces need parking info. A music venue cares about stage size; a yoga studio doesn’t. So I avoided rigid schemas.

In venues.json, each entry looks like this:

{
  "id": "austin-moonrise-studios",
  "name": "Moonrise Studios",
  "type": "creative-space",
  "attributes": {
    "capacity": 80,
    "parking": "street",
    "natural_light": true,
    "sound_proofed": true
  },
  "amenities": ["high-speed-wifi", "catering-kitchen", "audio-equipment"]
}

By separating structured attributes from tag-like amenities, I enable two powerful things: flexible filtering (e.g., sound_proofed:true) and dynamic UI rendering (e.g., showing a parking icon only when relevant). The amenities array also ties into a shared taxonomy file, so frontend icons and labels stay consistent across cities.

This approach mirrors the attribute system we evolved in AustinsElite’s venue pages—only this time, it’s built in from day zero. No technical debt for future-me to pay.

And yes, I’m using JSON for now. No database, no CMS. Why? Because in early-stage apps, friction kills momentum. Static files let me iterate fast. When we need CMS integration, the schema is already structured to map cleanly into Sanity or Payload.

Integrating Without Coupling: Shared Systems and Analytics

Venue Scout isn’t an island. It needs to coexist with existing platforms like AustinsElite (which covers Austin deeply) and share analytics infrastructure. So from commit one, I baked in loose coupling.

A scripts/sync-amenities.mjs utility ensures the amenity taxonomy stays in sync across projects. No copy-pasting JSON. Run the script, get updated labels and icons everywhere. It’s small, but it prevents drift.

Analytics are handled via a lightweight wrapper around our self-hosted Umami instance. The usePageview hook fires on route changes in Next.js App Router, tagging events with app:venue-scout for segmentation. No external SDKs, no bloat—just clean, privacy-conscious tracking that aligns with our stack.

These integrations aren’t afterthoughts. They’re guardrails. They ensure that even as Venue Scout grows, it doesn’t become a silo.

What’s Next

The first commit is just scaffolding, but it’s intentional scaffolding. With a modular city structure, scalable data model, and clean integration points, we’re set to add search, filtering, and user submissions without re-architecting.

In the coming weeks, I’ll be adding dynamic filtering with URL sync, dark mode (because of course), and a submission flow. But none of that matters if the foundation cracks. This is me, building to last.