casaflordesal dot com rejuvenated

Everything to do with using your own website to advertise your rental property. Design, usability, hosting, getting listed on the search engines, optimising your site, pay-per-click, etc, etc.
stork
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casaflordesal dot com rejuvenated

Post by stork »

Happy new year!

We have yesterday(!) launched a completely new version of our website www.casaflordesal.com and I hope we could get some feedback.

We went from Rapidweaver to Joomla, and we have tried to go for a design that works on tablets and is just usable on phones. It is perhaps a bit heavy on photos, but we would like to show the place and surroundings.

It is not finished! We still have to make the Gallery section, but we thought it was important to get out to past guests with a Happy New Year email, with most people still having a few days off.

Thanks!
Last edited by stork on Thu Jan 01, 2015 10:24 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Nemo
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Post by Nemo »

You need to remove the comma at the end of the link as it doesn't work.
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Nemo
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Post by Nemo »

Had a quick look on a tablet and I like it. Very fresh design and plenty of info to have me reading for hours. I want to see photos of each property; I don't know if your intention is to have them all in one gallery but I would definitely try and add photos or link a gallery per property.

Edit I've just seen the photos at the top of each page. I didn't immediately fathom they were there, in fact they didn't load the first time I looked hence my comment above.
stork
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Post by stork »

Thanks! The thought is to add a gallery with sections for the specific houses, incl. a plan of each.

In the first place the email has mainly been sent to previous guests, i.e. they have an idea of the place. Gallery should be up in a week or so.

I just realised this should have been in the Website Review section - is there a way of moving the thread?
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Nemo
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Post by Nemo »

You'll have to send a pm to Paolo to get it moved.
Vince
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Post by Vince »

Very nice, well done. Which template did you use?

[edit] You might want to consider changing the favicon though.
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CSE
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Post by CSE »

Are they standard photos used in some places or are they ones you have taken. To be honest something like this looks so cheesy....
Image
also found some quotes not quite right, like this....
we are always available for you!
The website takes time to load, have you tried to condense the coding and images to help this?
Sorry, Have not got much time at the moment to give a full hearty review.
Never try to out-stubborn your guests.
stork
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Post by stork »

Thanks for all comments so far!

The template is one we had made by IceTheme .com, they combined two of their existing ones after our ideas.

Photos are a combination of own and bought stock. We may slowly be replacing stock if/when we do something better. And yes, it is version 1.0

I will have a look at the compression of the photos, in particular for the slideshow. It is hard to know how it works before it is live. In the late 90es I tested speed by running from a floppy drive (remember those?)
Vince
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Post by Vince »

stork wrote: The template is one we had made by IceTheme .com, they combined two of their existing ones after our ideas.
Looks really nice.

On the Enquiries page ( https://casaflordesal.com/index.php/39- ... -enquiries ) there're a bunch of JavaScript errors (you've mixed http and https urls) and no enquiries form.


I see you've got Solidres installed, but it doesn't appear to be working for you https://casaflordesal.com/index.php?option=com_solidres

My advice : If it's not working for you, then you should uninstall it. I'm not aware of any security issues with Solidres, but if there ever should be, and you've forgotten you've got it installed, then it could be an attack vector in the future if you fail to upgrade it. Never leave a plugin/component installed if it's unused is the best advice I can offer.

If you need a booking engine for your Joomla site, PM me and I'll give you a good deal.
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CSE
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Post by CSE »

I was looking on how much you could save by using some sort of compression. Unfortunately found another problem.
Character set not found.
http://www.webstandards.org/learn/artic ... c/dec2002/
http://www.w3schools.com/tags/att_meta_charset.asp


PS I was not only writing about the images which need compressing it could be your code needs compressing and be optimised.
Where is the Danish version of your website?
Never try to out-stubborn your guests.
Vince
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Post by Vince »

The code's easy enough to optimise, Joomla has a variety of caching tools available to it that can be switching on ONCE the rest of the server/sites's up and running the way it's wanted. The key thing at the moment is to make sure the site's behaviour is correct.
stork
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Post by stork »

Vince wrote:
stork wrote: The template is one we had made by IceTheme .com, they combined two of their existing ones after our ideas.
Looks really nice.

On the Enquiries page ( https://casaflordesal.com/index.php/39- ... -enquiries ) there're a bunch of JavaScript errors (you've mixed http and https urls) and no enquiries form.

I see you've got Solidres installed, but it doesn't appear to be working for you https://casaflordesal.com/index.php?option=com_solidres

My advice : If it's not working for you, then you should uninstall it. I'm not aware of any security issues with Solidres, but if there ever should be, and you've forgotten you've got it installed, then it could be an attack vector in the future if you fail to upgrade it. Never leave a plugin/component installed if it's unused is the best advice I can offer.

If you need a booking engine for your Joomla site, PM me and I'll give you a good deal.
Thank for the advice. I was considering Solidres at a later stage, but have disabled it for now. First I have to get my Card Processing approval finished.

I will look at the rest later in the day - the http/https is probably because I switched the site to https, but the iFrame from PIMS is http.

Very valuable feedback I get here :-)

- and I am certainly going to compress some of the jpgs a bit more.
stork
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Post by stork »

casasantoestevo wrote:I was looking on how much you could save by using some sort of compression. Unfortunately found another problem.
Character set not found.
http://www.webstandards.org/learn/artic ... c/dec2002/
http://www.w3schools.com/tags/att_meta_charset.asp


PS I was not only writing about the images which need compressing it could be your code needs compressing and be optimised.
Where is the Danish version of your website?
I now fixed the charset, but discovered some other smallish errors. Thanks for the tip.

The Danish version is planned - to come after a German and a Portuguese, perhaps. Really Soon Now (™).

We have tried a lot to attract Scandinavian visitors (even a briefer DK version of our old site), but have very little to show for it. I guest the problem is similar as with the Dutch, a lot of them search in English (or German) anyway
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CSE
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Post by CSE »

Danish was just a thought, begin your native language sometimes writing things about the your property flows easier.
With Dutch you also get Belgians too.
I suppose it depends on the flight connections if there are little in the way of flights to and from The Nordic counties then the area will do little to attract the population to come and visit.
Never try to out-stubborn your guests.
e-richard
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Post by e-richard »

casasantoestevo wrote: With Dutch you also get Belgians too.
Is that a benefit or a penalty :?: :D
** Richard
PIMS: Holiday Rental Management system
They say we learn from our mistakes. That makes me a genius !
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