New adventures in Word Press - A Review Please...

[Elcarmoli]

Hi,

www.rhumhor.com

After being inspired by another LMH member I thought I would have a go at Wordpress for our new property. I 'think' I have more or less cracked it, but would appreciate any feedback.

I've tested it on various different display settings and browsers and it seems to work OK as far as I can see.

I know I have some work to do on content - specifically on activities and places to visit, and a floorplan, but can you spot anything else I've missed? My head seems to be full of strange CSS codes and I'm sure I've gone a bit website & content blind.

Thanks for looking & thanks so much for all the advice I've picked up from here!

[CSE]

All I have to say is nice place-- nice website…I don't do that often. Well done
Ok one little thing. The link bar; You have headers and then dropdowns. The headers link to pages. Would it be better to add a header, then two dropdowns?
Say:
House details:
Accommodation
Facilities
Location


And
Activities:
Things to do


I wonder if what I am trying to say is clear???

[kitkat]

Wow, what a stunning place and I think your website shows it off perfectly. Well set-out, easy to navigate and gorgeous photos. Can't think of anything I'd add, critisize or change. Well done and good luck with the bookings!

[Mountain Goat]

Elcarmoli, that's a nice site. Is it really WordPress, and was it a freebie?

MG

[Elcarmoli]

Thanks so much for your replies and kind comments!

@casasantoestevo - yes I understand what you mean perfectly and is something I will look at, thanks. The template is set up that way, so not sure if I can work out how to do that but now I've got the main structure done I think I can fiddle around without messing it up.

@Mountain Goat - yes it is wordpress and a template I found from admiring a website of another LMH member - I was going to say who but I can't find the original link now! It wasn't free however, I paid about 50 dollars - but for that you get a number of templates free for ever and three month's technical support. As someone who had no idea about word press that support has been worth every cent. There have been a few times when I nearly gave up - especially when my husband looked at it on his different sized display and the menu buttons were all over the place. I had to go back scratch to sort that but I think now all that stressing was worth it.

[DaveN]

Elcarmoli,
As another Wordpress users (or as a prospective customer), I think you have done a fantastic job.
Another great advantage of Wordpress is the ease of adding and maintaining your content.
I found the same issue with the titles and drop-downs, and so ended up with a subject overview page on the title link, with more detailed info on the menus. Out of interest IE5 only showed the titles and not the drop-downs.

Great site, and a lovely house...

[Windy]

Lovely site - just be careful about WP updates. I have learned to my cost that updating immediately can be a BAD thing and can break your site.

So can not updating as you may be vulnerable to those bad hacker people.

What is the best time to update? Hmmm - good question!

[Jimbo]

Terrific site. I particularly enjoyed your house, like a rental Gypsy Rose Lee, gradually revealing itself and its surroundings in a series of progressive shots on the front page. My only (slight) criticism is that these photos give the impression of having been taken on the same shoot; it would have been interesting to ring the changes by working at different times of day or seasons. One late evening shot, maybe, with colour in the sky and light spilling out from the house windows, might have been a stunning addition.

I'm delighted to note somebody having the courage to shoot some interiors using a wide lens that produces curved distortion. No problem for me (never is) because I think the pictures do elegant justice to a lovely house but there has been much discussion about wide lens induced distortion on LMH and some find it objectionable.

Just shows what can be achieved with readily available tools, hard work and imagination.

Jim

[revdev]

Lovely site and a wonderful house!

My only comment would be on the "Booking & Rates" page.

You state that rental rates are between £850 - £1,350. I am wondering whether you should provide better information upfront on this. As a punter, I wouldn't necessarily want to email you for say, the one week price in July...when it could just as easily be displayed in full.

[Elcarmoli]

Some more great comments and really useful tips.

@DaveN - Thanks for letting me know about IE5 I will email the support about the drop downs not showing - hopefully they can help with that.

@Jimbo We have used a fish-eye for the photos - I haven't seen the debate on this but I too am happy with how they look at the moment although I sure we can improve upon them. I like the idea of taking photos at different times of day and perhaps seasons, thanks.

@Windy Phew - Wordpress is just telling me I need to update so really glad you mentioned on here to hold back, it does sound like one of the weak spots in using wordpress?

@revdev I will be adding the weekly rates following your suggestion - I wasn't quite sure how to play it as we are still testing the water with our rates but will give it a go.

Thanks again!

[lasourcetranquille]

Lovely looking site - for someone who claims they don't know what they're doing it's pretty impressive! I especially love the photos - the "Rhumhor Holiday Lodge" labelled one is fantastic - where you up a tree? I can't wait till our own place is finished so I can actually take some photos.

Some (really minor) points: on the contact us form do you really require both email and telephone or is it one or the other? I only wonder as if I am sending off a request via email I don't want to have to supply my phone number too. You might also want to add a captcha to this form to prevent spammers using it.

Also, why is news under special offers? I would have thought that special offers could come under rates, with news having it's own heading (if you're going to regularly update it). Incidentally you should be able to tie up the news with facebook updates - giving you only one place to need to add the news.

You have an FAQ page but it only seems to be linked to the facilities page. Could it be added also to the menu, perhaps under the contact us heading?

Hope that helps...

[GoDot]

Lovely site - just be careful about WP updates. I have learned to my cost that updating immediately can be a BAD thing and can break your site.

So can not updating as you may be vulnerable to those bad hacker people.

What is the best time to update? Hmmm - good question!

This pretty much sums up my opinion - http://yoast.com/upgrade-wordpress/

Full Disclosure: I work for a premium WordPress Themes company http://headwaythemes.com

A lot of people are always reluctant to update WordPress for the reasons above.

IMO, if you're running a business, you should pay for a WordPress theme and support.

If you're paying for a product like a theme - a company will always make sure that their theme is compatible with the latest (and upcoming /beta) WordPress releases. This is not always the case with free themes.

Either way, you should always have a back up of your site, just in case something happens.The Backup Buddy plugin for wordPress is the easiest way of doing this. http://pluginbuddy.com/purchase/backupbuddy/

As for IE5, Microsoft are actively campaign to get people off IE6, never mind IE5

Google doesn't even support IE6 any more. Both browsers are over a decade old.

http://www.theie6countdown.com/default.aspx

[Elcarmoli]

Edited see posts below

[GoDot]

There is no virus in the first link.

It's one of the best known sites on WordPress around, the guy who runs it (Joost De Valk) has 21,000 twitter followers. His plugins have been downloaded hundreds of thousands of times.

Type WordPress SEO into Google, and see where you end up.

If you got a virus, you got it from somewhere else.

Google says it's safe - http://safebrowsing.clients.google.com/ ... 75.141.147

So does Norton - http://safeweb.norton.com/report/show?url=65.75.141.147

Or run it through - http://sitecheck.sucuri.net/scanner/

[Elcarmoli]

Thanks - no idea then as I clicked on that link and the virus guard went mad and then warning springing up! It was the first and only thing I had looked at this morning, weird. Too tired to google anything now, just happy I didn't actually lose any data!

ps, thanks for the advice, didn't mean my last post to sound so frantic, just didn't want it happening to anyone else.