Sunday, April 20th, 2008 Affiliate Stuff, C'est Moi, Design 2 Comments »

Et voila! My sunshine competition website is now live and kicking… pretty much. Time for a guided tour!

Go To Barcelona is the domain and subject. I think it’s a great domain because I can use it again for other destinations if I wish to do more travel domains, e.g. gotomars.co.uk or whathaveyou. I chose Barcelona because I briefly stayed there last year on a road trip, albeit on a campsite and not any of the lovely hotels featured!

Naturally, I used WordPress to create the site because it’s a fantastic CMS tool, I practically know it inside out and there are loads of plugins to extend the functionality. It’s also my first time with the brand new 2.5, which is quite nice and seems more fluid and easier to use.

Each ‘post’ is a hotel and the ‘category’ is the resort. The great thing about WordPress is that when I add a hotel, it will automatically be added to the category page, but I can customise it to include more information like this hotels in Eixample page which has a brief biography of the area surrounding the list of hotels.

Each hotel has a picture and description (reworded from the sunshine site), followed by a search box to find availability and book that particular hotel. This is followed by a list of similar hotels, thanks to the related posts plugin.

I quite like the design that I quickly whipped up; a clean text-based logo sits above the content, which is backed by a beautiful picture of a beach (which isn’t actually in Barcelona, apparently it’s in Japan). Above the fold has a beautiful summer blue sky and it’s only when you scroll that the whole picture is revealed. Yes, there’s a bit of a crease where I tried to attach a reverse image of the same photo to extend the length, but that will be fixed.

As usual, Internet Explorer doesn’t like it; ignoring the transparent background of the main content box amongst other things. Again, I’m sure there’s a fix somewhere and I will get on to it at a later date, but I think it degrades well with a white background.

The sidebar links are automatically generated thanks to WordPress, firstly with a list of resorts and then a list of articles which I will write throughout the site’s life with information, guides and suchlike.

All of this has been put together with the aid of sunshine’s fantastic affiliate area which allows you to choose your own banners of which there are generic and some customised to the resort of your choosing. I’ve used a generic in the sidebar and resort based on the category pages. Then there’s the search wizard which allows you to create a search box customisable to the hotel, and thanks to the chat tool and a friendly fellow called Alan, I was able to find the boxes I wanted. The spreadsheet helped list all the hotels with URLs of images. It really is a fantastic example of how an affiliate program should be managed.

So there you have it, how to create a site in just over a day thanks to WordPress, a few good plugins, the amazing sunshine affiliate area and a bit of motivation. Your comments are appreciated! Click here to see the site in action.

Tags: Go To Barcelona, Sunshine
Posted in Affiliate Stuff, C'est Moi, Design | 2 Comments »

Wednesday, April 16th, 2008 Affiliate Stuff, Merchants No Comments »

Go on, guess by the poor pun what this post is about.

That’s right, the sunshine.co.uk affiliate promotion. I’ve been watching with keen interest the fantastic incentives put forward by the sunshine team such as the Macbook Air and now the Barbados trip. I really like their website and the affiliate area is a fantastic example of communication and tools for affiliates. It made me wish I was a good travel affiliate.

Now sunshine have started their missions, it makes me really want to get involved and I’ve decided to take the plunge with mission one, getting a domain and throwing some sunshine content on there (aswell as mission four with this blog post!).

I know that the travel industry is one of the most competitive and that one small landing page type site isn’t going to make me a millionaire. I have little knowledge of travel nor have I dabbled with travel sites.

The thing is, I love seeing little projects like this but I simply do not have the time. With my full time job, a nicely maturing discount site to maintain, an easily bored girlfriend and sleeping to do, I simply don’t have much time to create new sites and get them out there (which explains why this blog hasn’t been touched much either). I have loads of domains which aren’t even parked, let alone include content.

I don’t even want the trip to Barbados (well, that’s a little dramatic) - I’d feel out of place and undeserving of such a phenomenal prize. It’s the mere excitement of this well planned incentive and the idea of setting up a small site to add to my portfolio with motivation behind it that makes me want to do it.

I’ve bought the domain based on a destination I visited last year - Barcelona. Well, we camped on a beachside campsite there - and I’ll be developing it with a few pages of content, photos and banners at the weekend.

Massive kudos to the sunshine team - this is a brilliant incentive and you’ve got another (albeit noob) affiliate on board.

Tags: Sunshine
Posted in Affiliate Stuff, Merchants | Post a comment »