Dottourism.com

Project Insight - WithWarwickshire - Website

08 March 2011 | Dominic Sawyer

Last week we launched WithinWarwickshire, an excellent resource promoting the best of rural Warwickshire. If you're interested to find out how we approached the identity process check out this blog post or view the case study.

In this post I'd like to take a closer look at two features and then an insight into how the content is managed.

Accommodation and Attractions

We needed to find a way to display tourism product information covering accommodation and attractions. Rather than create a separate content management system to house this information we proposed to integrate a white label solution on offer from National Tourism Open Platform (formerly known as England Net).

The benefit is to be able to tap into the national database with comprehensive, high quality product data. With this information already in place it made little sense to recreate and manage it.

The white label characteristic meant that we could maintain a consistent brand experience for the visitor.

The result is that the visitor can browse hundreds of places to stay, attractions or events and in the case of accommodation book directly through a number of partners.

We designed a three tab search widget that is displayed across the site.

We worked closely with Visit Britain and partners and found the integration to be smooth and would certainly recommend this option to organisations as an alternative to managing their own DMS. In addition to the white label solution an API solution is available - likely to add more development time but allowing additional control.

Interactive Map

With the focus on promoting rural tourism the majority of the content (expertly crafted by project partners Blue Sail) was split across the following areas:

• Food & Drink
• Historic Houses & Gardens
• Market Towns & Villages
• Walking Trails
• Cycling Trails
• Spotlight Events

As an alternative to browsing these on listing (i.e. for Spotlight Events) or detail pages (i.e. for Market Towns) we also wanted to include an easy-to-use interactive map.

Although we've used the impressive OpenSpace (from Ordnance Survey) in the past (Kent Guided Walks or Countryside 2010) we opted for Google Maps on this occasion.

View the interactive map.

We've kept this as simple as possible. Market Towns & Villages are a focus on the site (as they are a focus point for those visiting) and by default the map pinpoints these towns and villages. The visitor can then select a number of other checkboxes to view their proximity. The pop ups on the map provide additional information before the user can opt to view further details.

Content Management

We've made the site updatable via a content management system and in this case we opted for Expression Engine, a system we thoroughly recommend.

Let's have a closer look at how one particular content channel (Market Towns) is managed by the site administrators. We'll use the picturesque riverside village of Bidford-on-Avon as the example. All the content for this record is stored on the same edit screen - let's take a look at three of the data fields.

Images

This easy to use interface allows admins to upload as many images as required. Each image is stored at three different sizes :

Small - cropped and shown as a thumbnail on the detail page.

Medium - resized and displayed on the listing page.

Large - resized and displayed on the lightbox / pop up window.

We also keep a copy of the original source image. This means if we should ever need to change the sizes of these images we easily can. You'll also notice fields related to the description and credits. We've also included guidance instructions to assist the content administrators. The image row marked yellow signifies the cover image i.e. the one used on the listing page.

Related Entries

Each Market Town & Village page also pulls in relevant information from other parts of the site. We make it simple for the administrators to denote which activities are associated with each market town.

Google Mapping

Adding a place to our interactive map is very straightforward. Simply entering the postcode adds a marker within the admin area - this allows the content administrator to check its position without leaving the page.