How to build a travel service with WordPress
March 3, 2007
I spent a happy few minutes truffling around in the source code of the new 71 miles site, mumbling to myself things like: “look, it uses WordPress and Brightcove videos and Kayak affiliate links.” What an idiot I am. It’s all laid out in the About section.
The nuts and bolts of our site start with WordPress, which is our foundation and content management system. We extended WordPress to manage our incoming feeds: we use Google Calendar for the events calendar, map, and mobile product (coming soon); Kayak for our hotel deals; Feedburner to optimize our site feed and to manage our email newsletter; Brightcove for our videos; and of course, the ubiquitous Google Maps API.
I find this smart assembly of such familiar products and services - particularly the use of WordPress - really interesting, to be honest a lot more interesting than the content so far. The video I watched was just little more than a slide show of brochure images with a voice over. However, 71 miles is based on a good idea and the site will no doubt blossom in weeks to come. It will probably also inspire a few imitators. Take one designer with WordPress skills and one experienced online travel guy, add a bushel of content and a quart of smart marketing…