Aug 18 2010
Bed and Breakfast Websites – Making It Unique
I’m a big advocate of using WordPress for your bed and breakfast website. It’s an approach that gives you a powerful platform yet it’s easy for you to control.
You decide what you want, not some template-driven site builder, not a website designer either.
I have nothing against web designers – it’s how I’ve made a comfortable living for quite a few years – I just think that small business owners like those in the accommodation or hospitality business can do just as good a job – if not better – themselves.
Using WordPress to build what appears to be a traditional website with a built in blog might sound like a complicated operation if you have little or no online experience but in fact it’s surprisingly easy.
How To Win on the World Wide Web goes into it in much more detail and brings in the idea of plug-ins to automatically control some functions for you (like updating the search engines and backing up your site) and themes to give you a unique appearance.
I can understand how that sounds even more complex (which you could do without) but actually you do nothing more than click to install, click to change to something else. Email is more complicated than most of this stuff so if you can handle that it will be a walk in the park!
However, one criticism that is leveled at WordPress blog/CMS set-ups for your bed and breakfast website is that the theme you choose might also be chosen by someone else – and so it’s not going to look unique.
There are two approaches to solving this, and it will depend on your budget. If you’ve chosen a free theme like those from WordPress.org/extend/themes then simply changing the header image can change the appearance quite dramatically. Put a montage of pictures of your accommodation together, upload it and you’re done. If you can’t handle this aspect yourself, a graphics professional should be able to do it for you for very little money.
You can go further, by changing the themes colors, but this requires messing with the code – which, understandably, most people don’t like to do. It’s easy to get help with this though and, like changing the image, it’s a relatively quick process.
The theme for this site is a customized free theme, which I did specifically to illustrate what’s possible. The original theme can be found at that link above – but you might struggle to find it because of the changes I’ve made.
There are lots of people who can do the work and I wouldn’t expect it to cost you more than $100.00 to get something entirely unique and customized to suit you.
Which isn’t free – but then $100.00 for a custom designed template is a lot less than you would pay a website designer to set up a site for you!
The second option is for when you want the ultimate in customization.
The one thing you can’t really do with a free theme is change the layout. You can make it look quite different but the columns are going to have to stay as they are.
The graphic I’ve put in here shows what’s possible with a remarkable tool called Genesis Theme from StudioPress. This will let you choose any of their superb range of “child” themes or, if you feel like tinkering, you can create just about any layout you could possibly imagine.
It’s probably not a solution for complete beginners but then again, Genesis starts at just $59.95 so it’s not going to break the bank. Choose a child theme to go with it for about $30.00 or $40.00 and you’re good to go – still having spent way less than any website designer is going to charge you.
If you’ve got a few bucks more then you can look at getting the customization done for you. Not everyone will have that much in the budget but you’re still going to be below even the most basic package from your average webmaster. You really should have a look at the StudioPress site and think about what’s possible and how good you want your site to look. If you have any questions, send them here and I’ll see what I can do to help.
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