(Reading time: 8 – 12 minutes)
It’s my distinct pleasure to introduce Roberto Koci. I first met Roberto through elance a couple of years ago. I was looking for someone who could build a suite of parametric models for building elements (windows, doors, etc.) and who could provide the necessary texturing for realistic simulation. Roberto had the chops, and we hit it off fast. These days, Roberto has moved from Europe to his adopted home, Gran Canaria. Detecting a distinct lack of high-quality web sites about Gran Canaria, well, the conclusion seems foregone. Here’s Roberto with some notes about building out a travel guide site for Gran Canaria.
Gran Canaria Travel Guide – a case study
-by Roberto Koci
I have been living on Gran Canaria for almost a year now.
First time I came here, I was astonished about how the island looks and feels like. I really could not get the smile of my face for two solid weeks, and every new place I visited made me love this island even more. Gran Canaria is refered to as a small continent. It is really incredible how a variety of things can fit in a land-piece that is 50Km(31 miles) in diameter. Mountains, beaches, canyons, endemic life forms (lives only on Gran Canaria), modern highways, places for holidays, museums, and a very rich history. If I would have continued the previous sentence, it would probably occupy a lot of space.
The weather is perfect, the landscapes are astonishing, the locals are really friendly, and the beaches… well, that one you have to see for yourself – it’s a paradise.
Even Christopher Columbus stayed for a month in Las Palmas (capital of Gran Canaria) before he went to discover Americas – heh, I wonder why. The sailors probably did not want to leave, or the captain?
I stayed for some months first time. Next, I went back to Europe, and nothing was the same after that. It’s cold, rainy, no palamas? Forget this, let’s go back to Gran Canaria! So I did.
I created Gran Canaria Travel Guide to present the island to people who never heard of it and also for the ones that want to drop by for a vacation to use it as a planning guide: what to do/visit while being here, best beaches, transportation info, how to section, etc. There are literally hundreds of locations and things to do here, and the web-site’s purpose is (besides presenting Gran Canaria) helping you to find anything you want to know about Gran Canaria.
The project goal
The goal of this project is to inform wide range of people about the benefits of taking a vacation on Gran Canaria, presenting data and info about it, weather forecast, live web-cams, etc.
The site is now in beginning phase, but I got some parts of it fully functionable, so one can check out general information, webcameras, weather reports and such.
I checked some sites about Gran Canaria, and they are all nice, but I really do not see some specific information, some “special secret places” that are generally not propagated to tourists and visitors.
For instance, when you meet a girl/boy in another city, and she/he decides to visit your hometown, you need to have some special place to take this person, where the sunset looks really beautiful, some restaurant that is more secluded from the general masses, some special place that people usually do not know about. The goal of this web-site (besides presenting the “public” information) is to take you to all the special places in Gran Canaria, and later, if you like the information presented, for real.
Gran Canaria is really incredible, and I want to show that to the world.
Why choose WordPress?
First when I started poking around web design, html, css and related, I realized that all the “static” platforms for creating web-pages and sites are really inflexible. For instance, if you want to make a 200 page web-site, you need to design first the looks, plan the internal links and so on. When you get the thing running, you need to upload new pages all the time, add new internal links, worry about the SEO and similar.
Next, Dave and Website In A Weekend introduced me to the WordPress blogging platform, and I realized that this is not only a blog platform. WordPress is an automated platform for managing complete web-sites with single clicks. You don’t even have to use it as a blog platform – you can have static pages and use it as a regular site. The really handy thing there is that when you change a page layout, all the pages change, and you do not need to upload every single page all over again, thus effectively avoiding all the hell connected to that.
WordPress had tons of plugins for everything you can imagine, and that makes it even more powerful and flexible.
Theme customization was major issue
One of the major issues I had is customization of WordPress themes. WordPress themes are cool, and covers 99% of your needs, but if you really want to step forward with your creation, some customization is inevitable.
So, as I’m not much of a web programmer, I had some problems with CSS and PHP. Since there are plenty of tutorials on the web about those, so that really was not such a big issue. A bigger issue was finding where the theme you are modifying is keeping the data you want customized. On the other hand, when I got what I wanted, I was really happy, because my current theme is what I wanted.
The biggest issue I had was actually inserting custom fonts for headlines. Inserting an image inside h1, h2 tags? I did spend quite some time checking how Google interprets that data, and scaning the results I got from that. WordPress has plugins for replacing text with images, so you can choose a font which you upload and it works like a charm. Doing this manually would “hurt” a lot. Not for 2 or 3 pages, but for the amount of data planned for this site… huh.
WordPress made some things really easy
Bluehost.com (that’s the web host I use) has a nice script that installs WordPress with a single click. Of course, you fill in the data of where you want it, the name of the site and so on.
Inserting of custom html widgets also went painlessly. I copied some html code to the sidebar text widget, and it just started working as it was a regular html table/bod. WordPress rocks!
After some previous experiences with sites, I decided to create the site, but not to launch it BEFORE I have the whole thing planned. I simply added a robots.txt file to the root of the site to block everything, so I can nicely work and not worry about changes of the page addresses. You can create yourself a hell of a mess if you are not sure about the URL’s you are going to use. Ok, it’s not a problem when you have a site with 10 pages. That’s manageable. But, if you are planning to create 200+ pages of content, problems may rise. So, the best bet is to plan, analyze, rethink, debug, make final changes and then launch. By simply adding the robots.txt to block the content I can work online and see how it looks like, plan etc. – so that went painless.
Lessons learned for the next project
Since the Gran Canaria Travel Guide is just now being launched, it’s not clear yet how well everything is going to work and which parts are badly planned. Time will tell.
But, I can tell you one thing for sure: next time, I would not wait so long to see if WordPress is the right choice!
Filling out the site
I’m not sure that any site that means something on the web is ever finished. You need to constantly add new data. So I guess it will not be finished even when I will have 100 pages of content.
People like news. The nature of the world is that it is changing constantly, and if your web-page is not changed and updated at least from time to time, well, the web-site might become dull. One needs to work on a web-page. And it never stops.
A blog section is also planned, but I will call this “news” or something similar to that. WordPress is flexible so you can have all the content in static pages and add a posts declared as a news category. That makes it simple to access. Just click on the news, and you get the newest news posts from the site.
Into the future!
Well, other than filling it with data, and taking a step forward to have a unique content, I plan to take more photos and videos. Also, checking and rechecking the SEO would not hurt.
Social marketing is very important, so I plan to do more of that when the site has enough pages and thus be declared “finished”.
Roberto Koci is the
CEO of Black Fire Games,
specializing in first-person space shooters. Roberto also works
in web design, 3d computer graphics, C/C++
programming... an all-around entrepreneur. He is currently
building a comprehensive travel guide for Gran Canaria
using WordPress. Visit Roberto at
Gran Canaria Travel Guide.
Roberto, thanks again for sending in this case study. The site is really starting to look great, and I’m looking forward to reading some of the pages I know you have planned. I spent an hour the other day just zooming around in the embedded maps that you have. Very cool. Need to stick a pin on the map where you live! Or at least your favorite coffee shop.
Dave Doolin´s last post ..Exchange
Sure thing Dave! You are welcome.
I’ll see to add ad as much content as possible, some more thingies that are useful for ones checking out the info on the site.
And there will be a lot of clickable pins on the map once I get the pending content added. Including the place I live at, and the favorite café.
Nice post, and Gran Canaria is amazing, I went there (took my then girlfriend) a few years ago and loved it. :)
We stayed on the south of the island, near the sand dunes. but we did venture over the whole island… I loved the “potatoes” that you can buy there, very sweet.. and also the honey rum… wow, a bottle of that didn’t last long! :)
Next time, I’ll have to check your site out, come meet you, have a beer. :)
rob sellen´s last post ..What planet are you on?
Thanks!
Rum, carnivals and wondering around the island are the best things next to the beaches and night life here.
And that’s what I want to have on the site – the little sweet things that are not available on any touristic site/guide out there, plus the major attractions, of course.
Cheers! :)
Robert, thanks for sharing the details of your journey in creating the site. Best of luck with making it a roaring success.
I also dig the photos. I was on the Canary Islands for thirty minutes on a flight from Madrid to JFK in early September 1983. I thought they were stunning from my airplane window and I vowed I’d come for a real visit someday…
John Soares´s last post ..4 Reasons Why You Should Write the Sales Page First
You are welcome, and thanks for the support.
Got some 7000 photos here, and I’m trying to categorize them properly. So, once I get it done, I’ll add the planned “photos” page too.
One third of the island is protected by UNESCO, and another 42% by the “Canary Islands Network for Naturally Protected Areas”, so yeah, it is an incredible place. And the beaches… heh! :)
I also write a hiking blog for northern California which gets quite a bit of traffic. A significant minority of that is from photos on my site that make it to page 1 of Google images. You need to pay close attention to the tags and captions for photos for this to work well.
John Soares´s last post ..4 Reasons Why You Should Write the Sales Page First
What a gorgeous place, and I had not even heard of it until today. Keep adding in those ‘insider’ personal touches, and your site will be a great success. Thanks for sharing!
Jean Sarauer´s last post ..7 Signs That Granny Hijacked Your Blog
You bet! The personal touch makes the site unique.
Thanks, glad you like it. :)
Good luck with the new site Roberto! I’m your neighbour in Lanzarote, and we run the site Lanzarote Information.
Thanks Mike! I’ll see to check out your site too – to see what’s new in the neighborhood. I was looking at some pictures on Google Earth from Lanzarote and I can say that it’s a beautiful island too.