Although our volunteers check unclaimed listings every six months to ensure they are up to date, it is very beneficial if rescues add or claim their listings so they can make prompt updates where there is a change to their circumstance or contact information. The tabs below provide guidance on how to add, claim or edit a directory listing.
For all elements, the first step is to register an account on the site here. The presence of a listing for your rescue does not mean an account has been registered for you. When registering, it’s helpful if you can sign up using your rescue’s email address to help us verify that you are the owner.
In order to claim or manage a listing, you’ll need to be logged in. If you see your username below, you’re logged in. If not, you can log in at directory.helpwildlife.co.uk/login/.
If, after reading the guidance below, you still have questions, you can email us at [email protected]
Log in to your account
You have a choice of three directory tiers to add your listing to. There’s detail about the different tiers of the directory to help you choose the one which suits you here and that page also contains links to the ‘add’ page for each tier.
Next to or below each field of the form is some guidance about what information to enter. Hopefully most of it is pretty self-explanatory but here is a quick guide to the fields
Name
Add in your name (if you’re an individual rescuer) or the name of your rescue.
Logo
You can add your rescue’s logo here if you have one (Rescues and Small Rescues only – this field is not available on the Community Hero tier). This should be a picture in 4:3 ratio ideally but if your logo is a different shape, add it anyway and we’ll do some tweaks when we check your listing to make sure it displays nicely.
Address
Although the fields here are mandatory, you don’t need to enter your exact full address. A street name or postcode is fine and you can also then move the map marker a little if you want to obscure your exact location. The address will display as your town and county/city.
Phone/Secondary Phone
You can add one or two phone numbers for your rescue. At least one phone number is required for listings on the Rescues tier of the directory. If you don’t have a phone number, please add a listing to the Small Rescues or Community Heroes tier instead.
Website
This field is mandatory for listings in the ‘Rescues’ tier but optional for other tiers. Listings in the rescues tier must have at least one actively maintained web presence (this can be a social media page or a website).
Email
You can, optionally, add an email address through which visitors can contact you.
Facebook/Twitter/Instagram
These fields are only available on the ‘Rescues’ and ‘Small Rescues’ tiers. All are optional and you can add as many or as few as you wish.
Contacting the rescue in an emergency
This mandatory field is for you to tell visitors how to get in touch if they have a casualty. e.g. please only contact us by telephone, if we don’t answer please leave a message and we’ll call you back, please contact us via our Facebook page etc.
Publicly Contactable?
This field only displays for Community Heroes listings. Tick this box if our volunteers can give our your contact information to finders. Otherwise, we will contact you directly when help is needed.
Category
Select the category which best describes your listing. This will determine what your marker on the map looks like and what picture is added to your listing if you don’t add your own logo.
Sanctuary Offered
If you’re willing/able to accommodate some animals which cannot be returned to the wild, you can tick this box to let visitors know.
Species Helped
Please check the boxes against each animal type you’re able to help with.
Operating Hours
If you select yes you can enter details of your opening hours or availability. If you have opening hours in place, a message will show on your listing to say you’re closed outside of these hours.
Temporarily Closed
This will usually be left unticked when you’re adding a new listing. This is there for later edits. You can use this checkbox to add a message to your listing should you be full or temporarily closed.
Permanently Closed
Again, you won’t need this box now but it’s there in case a rescue closes down or a rescuer stops rescuing.
Avian Flu Information
If your current operations are affected by avian flu, you can add details here e.g. not currently admitting gulls or videos needed of all birds for assessment.
Other Information
The content of this box will appear at the top of your listing so you can use it, optionally, to say a little about who you are and what you do, and give any extra information about your rescue that isn’t covered by the other fields. Please keep this factual, relevant, and quite short – we suggest no more than 100 words. This field is rich text meaning you can add colour, bold, italics etc but please use this sparingly to emphasise important information. Our volunteers reserve the right to edit these entries to reflect this guidance if needed.
Make a Donation
You can add in a link to your Justgiving/Donorbox etc to hopefully encourage visitors to support your work. This field is not available on Community Hero listings as those are not publicly viewable.
Listing Expires
You don’t need to complete this field, it will automatically default to six months time. You’ll then get an email reminding you to check the details and renew the listing.
Owner Verified Listing
If you’re adding your own listing or managing it on behalf of a rescue, tick this box to show a message on the listing that it’s Owner Verified, giving site visitors extra confidence that the details are correct.
Terms and Conditions
Please do take the time to read our policies before ticking this box
Once you’ve filled out the required information, click ‘Preview Listing’ to see a preview in a new tab. If you notice any changes needed, make the edits in the original tab. Once you’re happy, click ‘Submit Listing’.
Your submission will need to be approved before it appears on the site. In general, we add new listings at weekends so this may take a few days. You’ll receive an email once the listing has been published.
Claiming a listing enables you to make sure the information remains correct and add enhancements like opening times and your logo. You can also set the listing as ‘temporarily closed’ if you’re full or taking a well-earned break. We will email you twice a year to prompt you to check the details and ‘renew’ the listing.
Once you’re logged in, navigate to the listing you want to claim and click on ‘Claim Listing’ by the rescue name at the top of the page. Complete the pop-up form and click send.
We’ll aim to review your claim within 48 hours at which point you’ll get an email letting you know the result.
First see the guidance above on claiming a listing.
Once your listing claim has been approved, navigate to your listing and you should now see an ‘edit’ button near the rescue name at the top of the listing. Clicking on that will open a form and next to or below each field of the form is some guidance about what information to enter. Hopefully most of it is pretty self-explanatory but here is a quick guide to the fields.
Name
Should contain your name (if you’re an individual rescuer) or the name of your rescue.
Logo
You can include your rescue’s logo if you have one (Rescues and Small Rescues only – this field is not available on the Community Hero tier). This should be a picture in 4:3 ratio ideally but if your logo is a different shape, add it anyway and we’ll do some tweaks when we check your listing to make sure it displays nicely.
Address
Although the fields here are mandatory, it’s best not to add your exact full address. A street name or postcode is fine and you can also then move the map marker a little if you want to obscure your exact location. The address will display as your town and county/city.
Phone/Secondary Phone
You can add one or two phone numbers for your rescue. At least one phone number is required for listings on the Rescues tier of the directory. If you don’t have a phone number, please add a listing to the Small Rescues or Community Heroes tier instead.
Website
This field is mandatory for listings in the ‘Rescues’ tier but optional for other tiers. Listings in the rescues tier must have at least one actively maintained web presence (this can be a social media page).
Email
You can, optionally, add an email address through which visitors can contact you.
Facebook/Twitter/Instagram
These fields are only available on the ‘Rescues’ and ‘Small Rescues’ tiers. All are optional and you can add as many or as few as you wish.
Contacting the rescue in an emergency
This mandatory field is for you to tell visitors how to get in touch if they have a casualty. e.g. please only contact us by telephone, if we don’t answer please leave a message and we’ll call you back, please contact us via our Facebook page etc.
Publicly Contactable?
This field only displays for Community Heroes listings. Tick this box if our volunteers can give our your contact information to finders. Otherwise, we will contact you directly when help is needed.
Category
Select the category which best describes your listing. This will determine what your marker on the map looks like and what picture is added to your listing if you don’t add your own logo.
Sanctuary Offered
If you’re willing/able to accommodate some animals which cannot be returned to the wild, you can tick this box to let visitors know.
Species Helped
Please check the boxes against each animal type you’re able to help with.
Operating Hours
If you select yes you can enter details of your opening hours or availability. If you have opening hours in place, a message will show on your listing to say you’re closed outside of these hours.
Temporarily Closed
You can use this checkbox to add a message to your listing should you be full or temporarily closed (see Suspend a Listing).
Permanently Closed
See the guidance under Remove a Listing
Avian Flu Information
If your current operations are affected by avian flu, you can add details here e.g. not currently admitting gulls or videos needed of all birds for assessment.
Other Information
The content of this box will appear at the top of your listing so you can use it, optionally, to say a little about who you are and what you do, and give any extra information about your rescue that isn’t covered by the other fields. Please keep this factual, relevant, and quite short so visitors don’t need to scroll to find your contact info – we suggest no more than 100 words. This field is rich text meaning you can add colour, bold, italics etc but please use this sparingly to emphasise important information. Our volunteers reserve the right to edit these entries to reflect this guidance if needed.
Make a Donation
You can add in a link to your Justgiving/Donorbox etc to hopefully encourage visitors to support your work. This field is not available on Community Hero listings as those are not publicly viewable.
Listing Expires
You don’t need to complete this field, it will automatically default to six months time. You’ll then get an email reminding you to check the details and renew the listing.
Owner Verified Listing
Tick this box to show a message on the listing that it’s Owner Verified, giving site visitors extra confidence that the details are correct.
Terms and Conditions
Please do take the time to read our policies before ticking this box.
Once you’ve made your changes, scroll to the bottom of the page and click ‘Preview Listing’ to see a preview in a new tab. If you notice any changes needed, make the edits in the original tab. Once you’re happy, click ‘Submit Listing’.
NB: If you’re editing a Community Hero listing you will not be able to view or preview it. This is because these listings are hidden from all but our admins to protect your privacy. You can edit your listing by going to your account page and clicking on the three dot menu on the right hand side of the listing box to see the ‘edit’ option. Here you can make sure all the information is correct but you won’t be able to use the preview option at the bottom.
We set live listings to require renewal every six months. This is to ensure that the details remain up to date and finders don’t waste valuable time ringing incorrect numbers or rescues which have closed. You’ll receive an email from us when the listing is due for renewal to prompt you to check the details are still correct.
In order to renew your listing, make sure you’re logged in, then you can either visit your listing and click the renew button, click the link in the email you were sent, or go to your account page and click on the three dot menu and select the ‘renew’ option.
On the form that loads, review the information contained about your rescue such as address, phone numbers, species helped, website and social media details, and email address. Edit anything which needs updating and then click the submit button at the bottom of the form.
NB: If you’re renewing a Community Hero listing you will not be able to view or preview it. This is because these listings are hidden from all but our admins to protect your privacy. You can still renew your listing using the link in the renewal reminder email or the 3 dot menu on your account page.
As with any aspect of managing your listing, we are here to provide support if anything is unclear. If you prefer, you can simply reply to the expiry reminder email confirming that all the listed details are correct (or letting us know what needs updating), and we’ll take care of the renewal for you.
This is a handy option to use if you’re temporarily unable to take in new animals for example if you’re full or taking a break. The listing will remain on the site but flagged to say that the rescue is temporarily closed. Please use this option only when temporarily closed or full. If you’re finding your listing generally generates more contacts than you can handle, contact us about downgrading it to less visible tier in the directory.
Either visit your listing and click the edit button, or go to your account page, click on the three dot menu and click the ‘edit’ option. In the form which appears, scroll down to the ‘Current Operations’ section and check the box next to the ‘temporarily closed’ field. Two boxes will appear below – in the first (‘Closure Details’) please enter a brief explanation e.g. currently full, closed for refurbishment. In the second, (‘Expected Re-Opening Date’) please enter a rough date of when you expect to be open again. We’ll use this to send you an email to remind you to review the listing and remove the temporarily closed notice if you’re available again.
We hope that the warning messages which appear against your listing in the search results and on your listing page will deter people from contacting you. If this proves not to be the case, you may also wish to temporarily delete your phone number. The phone number field is mandatory on the ‘Rescues’ tier but you can trick it by entering a space or zero for example. Once you’re happy, scroll to the bottom and click ‘Submit Listing’.
NB: If you’re editing a Community Hero listing you will not be able to view or preview it. This is because these listings are hidden from all but our admins to protect your privacy. You can still edit your listing via your account page.
This is intended for rescues which have closed down permanently. If you’re closing temporarily, please see ‘Set a Listing as Temporarily Closed’ above. If you’re finding your listing generally generates more contacts than you can handle, please contact us about downgrading it to a less visible tier in the directory rather than removing it entirely.
Removed listings remain on the site but do not show on the map search and have all contact information hidden. You’ll be able to return to the listing and edit or reinstate it for five years, after which time it will be archived.
To do this, visit your listing and click ‘edit’ or go to your account page, click on the three dot menu and select ‘edit’. NB: Please use the edit NOT the delete option. Deleting listings from the site causes errors in our systems.
In the form which appears, scroll down to the ‘Current Operations’ section and check the box for ‘Permanently Closed’. A new box will appear underneath it labelled ‘Closure Details’. Please add a brief note here for visitors to record the reason for closure e.g. the owner is retiring. You can then scroll to the bottom of the page click ‘Preview Listing’ to check all looks ok – you’ll see all your contact information has been hidden. If not make any edits needed. Once you’re happy, click ‘Submit Listing’.
NB: If you’re removing a Community Hero listing you will not be able to view or preview it. This is because these listings are hidden from all but our admins to protect your privacy. You can still edit your listing via your account page.