A step by step guide to creating your own travel website
I have tried to keep this as concise as possible, I realise a complete beginner will struggle with some of this, just let me know (in comments) if you need help on any points and I will expand on them.
- Sign up to Paid On Results
- Sign up to the Sunshine.co.uk programme
- Buy your travel domain name
- Buy some wordpress hosting
- Point you domain to your server. In the domain registrars control panel change the DNS settings to point to your webspace. Can take a few hours.
- Install wordpress. This is easy with most hosts if they have fantastico on the control panel.
- Download and save the Sunpress theme you are wanting to use. (You don’t have to use the custom themes you can use any theme with the sunpress plugin).
- From your web hosts control panel, from file manager, upload the theme zip to wp content/themes directory. Then extract it and delete the zip.
- Login to wordpress. Select themes from the wordpress control panel, click on and activate the sunpress theme.
- Still in wordpress, go to settings / permalinks. First put /%postname%/%post_id% in the custom structure box. Next put /destinations in the category box and finally put /resorts in the tag box. Click on “save changes”.
- Next go to Plugins / Add New and search for “sunpress”. Install and activate the sunpress plugin.
- A sunpress tab should have appeared on the left hand side menu of your wordpress control panel. On settings input your affiliate id (from step 1), and fill in the form to request an XML login.
- Activate the search box in Appearance / Widgets just by clicking add and save. In the Sunpress settings there is a menu for the search box. Here you can specify a default search resort or departure airport and / or whether hotel / holiday should be pre-selected.
Basic Theme Specific
- In WordPress go to Appearance / Editor and click on home.php from the Theme files list on the right hand side. Here you need to add the RSS feed most appropriate for your site. Get that from here. When you change this don’t include your affiliate id, just the pure RSS URL e.g. http://rss.sunshine.co.uk/hotels/Antigua-Hotels-2166.xml for Antigua offers
Agent Theme Specific
- You will need a logo.
- You need to activate content from the Sunpress / Content menu to get destination based offers coming up on your homepage.
Guide Theme Specific
- You will need a logo.
Possibly Related posts ? :
Hi Rob,
excellent post! I would add you can also use the search part of sunPress only, on any current WP travel sites you already have, giving you the XML availability search with no need to add the content structure.
We built the themes to give users some ideas how to use the content part of the plug-in, they are really just a stepping stone and guideline to creating your own unique travel blog.
Lastly, the question we get asked most often – yes, you need to create/write your own content. The plug-in just provides the structure, you still need to do the hard work!
Cheers
Rob,
Readers of your helpful guide may also find my plugin – http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/sunpress-exchange/ – useful as it parses Sunshine RSS feeds and displays them in a deals box. Currencies can be automatically converted into GBP, EUR and USD too.
Thanks for the guide.
Just tring to set up my site now. Don’t understand how those themes work so will go with a different theme.
What am I missing out on by not using their themes?
Thanks
Hi and thanks for reading.
As Chris said (comment #1), you are not missing out on anything by not using the sunpress themes.
They do have some good features though so are worth a look / play round to see what is possible.
Then look at what David Fiske did with sunpress, pretty amazing I reckon.