Yew Tree Cottage B&B
When Gill started a B&B in Hotham, E. Yorkshire, she knew that she would need a website to help market the business. She came to Moorlands Hosting because although she knew that she needed a website, she didn’t know where to start getting one up and running.
After an informal chat on the phone, it soon became clear that she needed a basic brochure-ware site, that would tell her customers about her place, its facilities, how much it cost to stay and where it is located.
Moorlands Hosting recommended a WordPress based website with a flexible template that could be customised to Gill’s needs. We were also able to help with using some of Google’s marketing tools such as Adwords and Local Business Center. We also configured and embedded a Google Calendar to show prospective visitors when she had reservations and vacancies. Finally we added a Google Map to help people find her.
Moorlands Hosting researched some possible domain names for Gill, and she chose the one that most suited her needs. We then registered it and configured the website to use it.
All in all the process took no more than week. Which is a typical time frame for this kind of work via phone and email.
Gill now has her website up and running and is very happy with it, and Google is feeding her with leads via Adwords.
*** Please note that this business is no longer active, but we have a copy of the website for your interest. Please click on the image to visit it.
The Sticks
This is a family’s personal website. It has information about themselves and their interests. There are three major sections:
- Liz’s genealogy section.
- Louise’s running career.
- The family’s travels over the years.
There’s much more of course. The website was put together using a template engine to control the look and feel of each page, so that family members didn’t have to worry about keeping menus and the background consistent. This is all controlled by the template and done for them.
This technique can be used for all sorts of websites – not just personal ones. It involves a lot more work than using a Content Management System to initially create, but it gives the customer a lot more flexibility.
Staffordshire Moorlands Athletics Club
This is a customised Joomla implementation. Joomla is a sophisticated content Management System (CMS), that enables relatively inexperienced website owners to create great looking content, whilst allowing more sophisticated users to develop more advanced features. Just like WordPress there are a host of free add-ons that can be used to enhance the functionality of the site.
There is a built-in calendar that is linked to Google, a Twitter feed and Google Maps to show where the various race venues are.
We have also integrated a fairly sophisticated race results system into the site, that display race results directly from the race results database.
We also integrated a Forum facility that allows members and friends to communicate with each other.
Click on the link above to visit the website as a guest. There is additional content available on this site to members only. It is an easy matter to offer members-only content with Joomla.
Alala
Alala is a full featured blogging site, loaded with plugins to manage Twitter feeds etc. This WordPress site also has a customised theme.
The site uses plugins to help with SEO, in order to help search engines find relevant content.