So a number of weeks ago I embarked on a journey to rebuild my WordPress website to accommodate our growing business. I wanted one system of truth and since we are connected to a channel manager that uses the Bookerville data for property information I wanted the consistency on all channels that we are on.

I had full hope and every intention of having a full featured WordPress Plugin but alas that just wasn't/isn't the ultimate solution we were able to build. I will say however that we were able to get most functionality created. For those of you that are wanting to or are considering the build out of your own WordPress website without spending large sums of money I think there are some limitations you will need to accept.

Most importantly, the booking engine on Bookerville (that you do have a widget to incorporate into your website) contains many elements and functionality that are not available via the programming APIs. There are things you can do to utilize the widget from Bookerville to still be able to book from your website but creation of all of the functionality is a nut we couldn't crack with the smaller budget that our company had. I also didn't want to deal with the ongoing upkeep as the engine would change on Bookerville to accommodate new features and functionality. I will say that we were able to successfully get basic functionality of creating bookings for specific dates but we did not have functionality like coupons, and guest options, booking payment timers and the like.

Tied closely to the booking engine is payment. This is technically not part of Bookerville code and the booking engine actually reaches out to the credit card processors you are configured to accept with all of the appropriate payment information. Any direct website development not using the booking widgets would require that this code also be developed.

We do have our WordPress website with its Bookerville plugin up and running (https://pacificviewlodging.com) and are happy to report that it is gathering data for availability searches, property descriptions and details, and guest reviews and we have settled on incorporating the booking widget and the multi-property booking calendar widget into our pages.

Happy to offer any insights I can about our journey. John at Bookerville was extremely helpful in the process and we certainly wouldn't be at the point we are without his insight and input.

Our foundation is built on the WP-Prosperity theme, probably one of the most comprehensive themes I've ever used, and it's author Michael Pollock was instrumental in building the new site.

 
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