Our Hutch Web Services - Project: Point Clear Cottages WordPress Custom Template

Project: Point Clear Cottages WordPress Custom Template
The original hand-coded custom site consisted of six main pages including a static splash or landing page. Three of those original content pages are shown to the right as full-page screen caps. The project specifications required that the new WordPress theme look and feel faithfully reproduce the existing website design while dealing with a number of minor issues that had been noted over several years of use of the original site. These are outlined below, followed by the new theme pages. The various fixes and changes are documented in the subsequent paragraphs. First, the splash page was considered to be redundant and dropped from the new design. A new header graphic (banner) was created to meet the WordPress criteria and a basic theme framework was established. Next, the horrizontal navigation menu was addressed. The link labled About Point Clear Cottages was considered too long and was to be changed to just About Us, however the full original text was to be shown as the page title. It can readily be seen that the About page embedded picture gallery pushes that page to a length of several screens thus requiring excessive vertical scrolling in order to view it all. Although not wrong or even an uncommon practice it is, in our opinion, less than desireable. A solution needed to be found. (see next two sections) With the removal of the splash page the newly named About Us page became the home page for the site. The gallery was removed from this pages resulting in a more suitable length with only about one single screen of content below the fold. In order to accommodate image galleries for the About Us, Bayshore Cottage, and Pelican's Rest pages, a new drop-down Picture Gallery menu was added to each of these pages (see red arrow in second screen cap to the right). The picture galleries, created using an available WordPress plugin, provides a range of options for picture display. Multiple independent galleries are easily supported so each of the three pages displays their own unique set of images. The gallery pages were designed to be full width without the left hand sidebar which is on each of the other pages. With this design each of the content pages is a similar length keeping the look more consistant and the viewing experience more enjoyable. In keeping with the orginal design the sidebar on each of the content pages contains images of the Bayshore Cottage and Pelican's Rest linked to their respective pages as well as contact information. Additional functions can easily be added to the widget-ready sidebar. The new site has a blog listed as News & Events on the navigation menu. On the various blog-related pages (ie: blog, archives, single post, etc.) the sidebar (still on the left) changes to contain blog functions such as search, categories, archives, etc. Thanks to the flexibility of the underlying WordPress core support structure additional widgets can easily be added. The new site is easy to navigate for visitors, easy to manage and update for owners using the WordPress Dashboard functions. Zfish technicians can also readily expand or update the site. And the project goal of keeping the original site look and feel has been met while improving many small items. WordPress made it possible.	Original Site About Page	Original Site Reservations Page Original Site Directions Page
	New Site About Us Page	New Site Showing Drop-Down
	New Site Gallery Page	New Site Showing Pic Lens View
	New Site Reservations Page	New Site Directions Page