David Fiske Affiliate Marketing & Web Development

Since building "that" widget, I’ve become addicted to SunPress. Admittedly, I’ve not used it much until now, mainly as I’ve not had a Wordpress blog to install it on. Well that’s changed and over the past few weeks, I’ve been hacking away at SunPress to make it suit my needs.

Sunpress is ready to go from the box but for those who put some time and effort in, you can hack away at making it unique and personal to you. Needless to say, I’m not one to install it and leave it alone and so here is my effort.

The Site

The site is called Cheap Honeymoon Deals and focuses on honeymoon trips predominantly to the Caribbean. It’s a Wordpress powered using a self-developed custom theme (inspired by a free template) running SunPress, Sunpress Exchange and my new travel agent box widget, as well as a few other bits and bobs.

I only installed the core functionality of SunPress, so at the beginning of this project stood an empty Wordpress blog with SunPress bolted on. There’s an option to integrate it fully (automatically setting up permalinks, categories and draft posts) but I chose not to.
 
The Home Page



The home page includes a bit of static content mixed with an image from the latest three posts, as means of tying the travel agent features with the content side of things.

I’ve also used SunPress Exchange (compact mode) to parse a handful of feeds displaying the latest quotes for a variety of locations, randomly selected each time the page is loaded.

Beneath this my travel agent widget outputs a list of travel agents currently listed on the site.

The Sidebar

To the right of every page, a SunPress search box is displayed - styled to be bright, bold and therefore stand out from the page, drawing the attention of the visitor.

Underneath this is the blog categories, thus tying the agent side of things with the blog and content. The obligatory search box can be found under this and then a list of the top hotels can be found thereafter.

I added (and hacked away at) another mod that converts the boring comment form into a star rating and review form, which is where the afore mentioned star ratings come into play.

The Content Pages



The site is a little thin at the moment, given I’ve been working on getting the functionality correct to begin with. Anyhow, the content pages generally feature a review of a hotel (including pictures and a map.

Under the review, the travel agent widget outputs a list of links to travel agents I have specified deeplinks for. The first agent on the list is branded the “preferred travel agent” with the other agents being nicely formatted beneath.

Next: My SunPress changes