Arks
Well-known member
- Joined
- May 22, 2010
- Messages
- 6,460
- Reaction score
- 579
I'm so happy to have a new website! My old site from 2014 was like an old car. It still ran, but things kept breaking with every WordPress update, and some of the breaks became almost irreparable because the old theme I was using was no longer supported or updated by the author. I put off rebuilding with a more modern theme, not because of the cost, but because I didn't know how to build a new website without breaking the old site that people still needed to access daily.
Dumitru, a freelance web developer & photographer based in Europe, has been here on Innspiring for years, offering helpful suggestions, and he recently freely offered our Innspiring group use of any one of his many WordPress themes, which were all developed with hotels and B&Bs in mind.
As he told us, it's much better to use a purpose-built theme than a "one size fits all" beast that's full of things most of us would never need, in an effort to be all things to all people. By keeping his themes focused, they don't require the constant fixes and updates as WordPress changes things. And I was able to eliminate a lot of plugins I'd installed over the years to do things my old theme didn't offer. Dumitru's theme does what a hotel site needs, natively.
I tried to get him to accept payment for a theme and his help, but he didn't seem interested in that. He exported my old website to a temporary sub-domain on his own site, where I was able to learn the features of the theme. He set up a few basics, like a homepage and menu system, then I was able to take over and spend as much time as I needed to learn how to do things.
He has several wonderful, brief, You Tube educational videos that guide you through many of the theme features you might never discover on your own, and they give a nice sample of his great Romanian accent! I'd say it took me about 8 hours to rebuild the old website with the new theme.
I just created new pages and copied info from the old website to paste into the new one. The ground-up rebuild let me build a much leaner site, for, as this post shows, I can be a bit wordy, and I found lots I could cut out from the old site, while still giving site visitors all they needed.
Once I had it built, it took me about 4 hours to export the new site from Dumitru's sub-domain, install it on my own website, and tweak things. I'm still tweaking, but I'm very happy with the final product. I just wish I could use the beautiful European buildings and landscapes from Dumitru's sample sites!
In the end, I went with a theme that displays a huge, fill-the-screen slideshow on the homepage. <- select the link to see Dumitru's demo page of the theme I picked.
I know we worry that a fill-the-screen photo means people won't realize they need to scroll down to see more info, but I think that's a problem with very few people and it's outweighed by the awesome beauty of the huge photos. They really are worth a thousand words, and I think they will sell people on wanting to book one of those rooms!
Private message me if you want a link to my new site.
Dumitru, a freelance web developer & photographer based in Europe, has been here on Innspiring for years, offering helpful suggestions, and he recently freely offered our Innspiring group use of any one of his many WordPress themes, which were all developed with hotels and B&Bs in mind.
As he told us, it's much better to use a purpose-built theme than a "one size fits all" beast that's full of things most of us would never need, in an effort to be all things to all people. By keeping his themes focused, they don't require the constant fixes and updates as WordPress changes things. And I was able to eliminate a lot of plugins I'd installed over the years to do things my old theme didn't offer. Dumitru's theme does what a hotel site needs, natively.
I tried to get him to accept payment for a theme and his help, but he didn't seem interested in that. He exported my old website to a temporary sub-domain on his own site, where I was able to learn the features of the theme. He set up a few basics, like a homepage and menu system, then I was able to take over and spend as much time as I needed to learn how to do things.
He has several wonderful, brief, You Tube educational videos that guide you through many of the theme features you might never discover on your own, and they give a nice sample of his great Romanian accent! I'd say it took me about 8 hours to rebuild the old website with the new theme.
I just created new pages and copied info from the old website to paste into the new one. The ground-up rebuild let me build a much leaner site, for, as this post shows, I can be a bit wordy, and I found lots I could cut out from the old site, while still giving site visitors all they needed.
Once I had it built, it took me about 4 hours to export the new site from Dumitru's sub-domain, install it on my own website, and tweak things. I'm still tweaking, but I'm very happy with the final product. I just wish I could use the beautiful European buildings and landscapes from Dumitru's sample sites!
In the end, I went with a theme that displays a huge, fill-the-screen slideshow on the homepage. <- select the link to see Dumitru's demo page of the theme I picked.
I know we worry that a fill-the-screen photo means people won't realize they need to scroll down to see more info, but I think that's a problem with very few people and it's outweighed by the awesome beauty of the huge photos. They really are worth a thousand words, and I think they will sell people on wanting to book one of those rooms!
Private message me if you want a link to my new site.
![Bed & Breakfast Tracker Plus for Mac [Download]](https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/51iSnnH5vmL._SL500_.jpg)
![Bed & Breakfast Tracker Plus [Download]](https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/51m1WPxMV7L._SL500_.jpg)
Unfortunately I will be able to get to it next week, once I return from my trip. 
