On the 16th February the new Hilly Field Barn Holiday Cottage website went live. The website was designed and developed by myself. Take a look at: http://www.hillyfield-holiday-cottage.co.uk/
A little while ago, the owner of Hilly Field Barn approached me, PanoConsulting Ltd, for a quote to build a new website. They already had a website but said it was hard to update it. So, we discussed the project at length and I proposed a solution.
The pivotal part of a Holiday Cottage website is keeping the availability calendar up-to-date so as well as re-designing and developing the website, I built a bespoke calendar management system into the owners password-protected CMS (Content Management System) that I also created. So, in the CMS, as well as being able to update the content of the website pages, add new images to the gallery, and maintain the SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) settings, there is also a separate module for Calendar management.
The calendar section of the CMS couldn’t be easier to use. Please see the image below as an example. The image below shows the month of April 2011 in the CMS as the owner would see it:
Click on the image to view a full-sized version
As you can see it looks just like a normal calendar for April but here are the key features of it:
1. Down the left-hand-side the owner simply enters the price for each week of the calendar month.
Then, for each day of the month,
2. The owner ticks the left-hand checkbox if the day is PROVISIONALLY booked.
Or,
3. The owner ticks the right-hand checkbox if the day has a CONFIRMED BOOKED.
Finally, the user would click the save button and then the changes they had made to the availability calendar would be instantly reflected on the website to their customers.
If you haven’t already done so, check out the website at: http://www.hillyfield-holiday-cottage.co.uk/
