Big Bang and Balls

Assisting Dumfries Rugby Club with their transition to a new website so that the secretary and club members charged with keeping the information up to date have a more streamlined system (wordpress, typically) to make things easier. The nature of sport clubs means there are considerations on how scheduled future information is managed ('fixtures') but it also has to be easy for ordinary users to enter and update the information as required.

One of the longer term time-savers is the built in wordpress media library which removes multi-stage media upload processes from earlier content management systems.

Incidentally, what's the latest on the webmaker movement as it is happening in Scotland (North West) as per https://webmaker.org/events/202

Rivendell B&B - Dumfries

This required some admin work - sorting out Facebook accounts and pages, TripAdvisor accounts and widgets, customising Wordpress themes, and inevitably the transfer of hosting to Callisti services from the legacy provider (see earlier posts.)

The B&B website features an online booking widget and calendar for visitors to book without having to speak to a human directly and in their own time. Not all the rooms are available online so if you're looking for a Bed and Breakfast break you can resort to telephone calls and emails. Or like they did in olden days, turn up at the door and ask.

The design was influenced mainly by the Rivendell team to match their existing offline marketing materials.

Eventful Galloway

Right, that's the DG Arts Festival events now live for booking using the patronbase system on dgArts events system. The festival starts on the 20th May, the day before the 'Streets of Dumfries' event which is a big bag of fun...

A lot of the visual arts exhibitions and children's events are free which is a bonus.

The dgArts website provides a central hub for events in the region so that the geographically widespread arts related groups can have a central marketing point (Bureaucratic Centralism anyone?)

Also listed there is the Thornhill Blues festival (see below), taking place further up the A76 from Dumfries at the end of April. No, it's not sold out yet but the accommodation in the town is pretty booked up so unless you get in quick you may have to use the campsite or stay nearer Dumfries on the Friday night.

Wedding Lounge

The Wedding Lounge (Dumfries) is a new wordpress-based website built using child themes, custom menus and CSS3 - more in line with the way a wordpress framework ought to be customised. There is still a concession to the functions.php file as the parent theme version takes precedence over the child theme in this respect but this may change in future.

The Weddding Lounge website is to promote the services of an upcoming wedding photographer and wedding planner. The site is ready for the start of the wedding shows and fairs being held in Dumfries and Galloway in 2011 so provides an online source of information, as well as linking with the existing facebook profile and image galleries.

Arts festival in Dumfries - May 2011

It's that time of year again, the arts and events brochure for May 2011 has been finalised and made available to patrons of the Arts Festival and the general public via the website. The events are being added to the website and the event calendar is being updated - as with all performance related ventures, there are always details and amendments up until the last minute so everyone involved is kept busy.

The itinerary this year features the Community day in Dumfries (Dock Park) where there will be a range of events over the weekend. As usual there are events throughout the region in the more rural areas, and some more traditional art events for the connoisseurs of drama, music, literature and theatre.

The children's events are also strong this year with poetry, puppetry and dance workshops. It's incredible how many agencies are involved in bringing the festival to life - let's hope it exceeds expectations this year.

Hammock the week

After convoluted development process using Actinic v9, Handmade Hammocks website is now refreshed and taking advantage of some Kit Allen design work and integration with google services.

The ecommerce website sells handmade hammocks that meet Fairtrade standards to meet the prinicples of ethical trading. The company is based near Kirkcudbright in Dumfries and ships internationally

Callisti has gained a lot of experience working with the nuances of Actinic development from different locations, development by remote access, and all the joys of site exports, missing files, huge folders of backup files, cgi-bin dramas, incompatible server platforms, and payment gateway issues. The reward is a sweet-looking ecommerce site that now has more SEO potential for the new season, and a clean working environment after some thorough administration work.

Queen visits Dumfries

Yes she did.

Just playing around, playing around

Wordpress 3.0 is still a bit of a playground so some things are being tried out on the Dumfries bed and breakfast site...

Trying out a few plugins, and some of the features of the framework. There is a new php file in the template called loop.php which is an advance from 2.9 - this could probably be streamlined a bit though.

Event decor hire

This is a recent customised Wordpress CMS website for a Dumfries-based event decor hire company.

The wordpress installation is based on a customised theme in line with the existing printed marketing materials of Tantrum Events.

The image galleries are controlled using the NextGen Gallery plug-in which also allow for the jwplayer slideshow effect based on random gallery images.

The functions.php file for the theme has been updated to use the post thumbnail feature present in Wordpress 2.9 onwards. More details...

Italian Deli

Just back from a training session with the Ivanos Italian team in Dumfries. Lovely training environment with plenty of home-made cappuccino going around!

The new refurbished premises will be opening in February 2010 and will have a subway-style lunchtime deli option in addition to the evening menu and Ivano's specials. Yum yum.

Raehills Estate

For those who enjoy a bit of sporting activity, check out Raehills mansion just off the M74 at Junction 15 to Dumfries.

There is shooting, deer stalking and fishing for salmon and sea trout available within the estate grounds and you can stay in the self catering holiday cottages with big gardens to enjoy.

Raehills is the historic seat of the Johnstone Clan and every August the estate hosts the Galloway Country Fair. A must for those of agricultural bent.

Those pesky ghost hunters visited earlier this year but the results were ambiguous...

Blood from a stone

Sometimes in life you have to deal with people or organisations unable to carry out any task with any thoroughness or efficiency, either deliberately or because they are simply incapable.

Latest sites in a long line of rescuees are:

Motors Local - a resource for buying and selling cars in South West Scotland. This also carries pages for Troqueer Garage and Top Ten Models (phew!)

Dumfries Bed and Breakfast - currently a simple contact marketing poster for the Abarglen Bed and Breakfast in Dumfries but with designs to become a more useful resource for tourism in the region.

Fancy an Italian?

When Ivano first arrived in Scotland over 20 years ago from The Tuscan town of Lucca, he brought with him a knowledge of Tuscan Italian cuisine and a skill for home made cooking.

Little did he realise that he was to meet a man from Callisti through forces unknown and end up with a website to help with the marketing of the already successful Italian food take away business in Dumfries.

Callisti can fervently recommend the Penne Speciale, the Pollo Salsa Rosa (or Surfer Rosa as we sometimes call it in our throwback ways), and the pizza bases. Pizza eaters may know what this means.

They also have a holiday home in Tuscany that is available to rent should you ever need to visit North West Italy and the home of the renaissance in Florence or whatever...

A Scottish Perspective

We've been playing around with a newspaper style blog for the Dumfries SNP (Scottish National Party) website. The site is aimed at providing a platform for highlighting local issues in the town and region to engage the residents of the area.

It can also act as an advocate for the wishes of the community by allowing contributions from interested readers.

Still some work to be done on the blog design to incorporate video footage, clips and more information...

All things Burns

The arts festival in Dumfries and Galloway kicks off on the 22nd May with a group of events celebrating the life and work of Robert Burns who died (and is buried) in Dumfries.

A lot of the press releases from the Arts Festival are picking up on the (debatable) VisitScotland 'Homecoming Scotland' tourism strategy which celebrates the 250th birthday of the Bard.

Tickets for the events can now be bought online at the festival website who recently advertised on the local ITV television channel...

Independent Financial Advisers in Troon

In these testing times it is good to take stock (of your stock) and review your financial planning. Duncan Brown and Co are a hardworking team based in Dumfries and Troon who offer a range of advice on financial products including protection, pensions, mortgages and inheritance tax planning.

Each member of the team is registered with the Financial Services Authority (FSA) and details are on the Our Advisers page.

Arts Festival publicity

Homecoming year for Scotland based on Robert Burns and the number 250 means that publicity for events in Dumfries and Galloway region will be tied into this initiative to some extent.

I guess the pound is weak so Scotland is as attractive a place as any for non-UK visitors, especially ex-pat Scots looking for a reason to return to the homeland.

That aside, the site has had some updates and now validates properly. The big Christmas pagerank bonus also saw the dgartsfestival blog site get a cheeky 2.

Running concurrently

Ah, the long winter nights.

Recently Callisti has been updating the experimental Dumfries and Galloway Arts Festival wordpress blog site with the provisional festival diary.

Some of the events are tentatively booked so dates and venues may still need to be firmed up.

Updating wordpress blogs can take an age - I hope it's not as slow as that when you have a local server installation.

Anyhow, good to see the search results for "dumfries and galloway arts festival".

Now what was that about PageRank?

Log Cabin Holidays

Callisti is now managing lochanview.com, a self catering log cabin provider in Dumfries and Galloway. Log cabins, Lodges and Chalets - these are all fairly synonymous to some but when you get in the outdoor hottub at lochanview such definitions become unimportant.

Check out the booking calendars for the lodge and log cabin.

Bat Surveys

This is a whole new world of activity for a desk jockey like me.

Stuart Spray Wildlife consultancy have recently launched their new website informing of their bat surveys, tree surveys and habitat surveys - all part of the range of wildlife consultancy services they offer.

They cover the UK but most of their work is in Southern Scotland (Dumfries and Galloway) and the North of England (Greater Manchester, Lancashire, Cumbria)