OWG shows you his

[OldWelshGuy]

Well I don't often uncover any of my sites online on forums etc, I keep them to myself. here is a site we are almost ready to go with. It is a subdomain of the domain Wales.info which we own and is Tourism in Wales UK - Wales.info it is in its infancy, and you can see some of our clients named top right. These include CADW , national trust & the RSPB to name a few. Eventually the site will be far more comprehensive, but we have been pushed to get it ready for may1, our launch date.

I have found a couple of errors on it, like Aberdovey link is throwing a 404 etc, but by and large it is almost there. It is the parent site to Holiday Accommodation in Wales : Wales UK Holidays which is our original site, but much of the data from there has been brought in.

Currently the site is using only maps, soon it will be producing kml files for goggle earth. (we already do this but it is not live yet).

ave a look and let me know your thoughts, likes, dislikes and any errors you find.

Cheers

[temi]

I had a quick look, its awesome. Can you tell me why you created a sub domain for each hotel for example from Tourism in Wales UK - Wales.info , I clicked on pet friendly accommodation, each of the listing has their own sub domain, was it to allow each accommodation owner manage the sub site or other reasons?

[smeagain]

Very powerful site indeed. This will be a must for checking out before visiting Wales.

One area that could be improved (IMO) is the navigation features once you move down as far as an individual hotel etc. For example if we follow:
Pet Friendly Accommodation => Orchard House.
There is no easy way back to "Pet Friendly Accommodation" or anywhere else. This leaves the visitor using the back button which I have found that some visitors are alien to this and it can make them more likely to leave.

Second, a potential gain with the Gallery picture enlargements is put it in a basic holding page with a navigation route back to the parent page. Without this, Image searches are far less likely to index and return your pix. Maybe that's deliberate, some web masters don't encourage Image Search visitors.

I also would like to know why it revolves around sub domains. Maybe OWG is aware of something SEO-wise that hasn't dawned on the rest of us yet.

[tb987]

It is a great looking site I'll use it next time I go to Abersoch. Thanks for sharing it with us.

[OldWelshGuy]

Thanks for the feedback guys. the site is early days yet. Eventually it will be a full blown web2.0 site. We have done a deal with the Welsh Assembly Government that will allow unfettered access to all the national library of Wales electronic data sets. this is millions of items. We also have done deals with Geneoalogy.com/ancestry.co.uk to integrate genealogy (family tree tracing) into it.

Eventually you will be able to carry out a search, and the site will actually pull together and display all the information known about that search be it video, photographic, blog, personal page data etc.

The site will allow people to set up their own site (on a sub domain) and blog, add images, video. Also comment on other peoples content thereby adding to the history.

EG I might carry out a search, find a club called Mountain Ash (where I played), I might read an entry and have something to add to the history of that post. I add it, it gets tagged, and will show up on searches.

ALL the content will be tagged, and dated. So not only will you be able to search for something, you will be able to search for something and a date.
EG. Royal Welsh Show 2002 . This search will return all the content, data, images, blogs videos etc that are about the RWS, & dated 2002 . The hope is that people will be able to post really old photos or stories, date them approximately, and others will add to it.

OK on to the questions

Temi
Can you tell me why you created a sub domain for each hotel.
many businesses do not have websites, we own wales.info , so this allows them to secure their domain name, and build a site themselves. There is a full blown user control panel where they can login and make changes themselves.
The main site will be the portal, the sub domains will be individual sites within their own right. They are also able to have full FTP to their webspace and can build and host their own site if they wish.



Smeagain
There is no easy way back to "Pet Friendly Accommodation" or anywhere else-->snip
Indeed, unfortunately this is a problem with Gmaps, and also the site being rushed in general. We are working on the navigation to get it user friendly. breadcrumbs will be the chosen method I think.


Maybe OWG is aware of something SEO-wise that hasn't dawned on the rest of us yet---->snip
Ooooh I should have known better than to show this site to webmasters LOL. Ok, the extensive use of subdomains was a choice. Sub-domains are better for SEo as they are seen as independent sites, but also carry some trust from the parent site.

The main drawback with subdomains is that you have to promote them independently. The beauty about this (and it touches on the question Temi asked also about individual businesses having sub-domains), is that the individual businesses have ownership of that sub domain, they will build links to it naturally for us. Each of these businesses will post on forums, submit to directories, buy subscriptions etc form other sites, and link back to their site.

We are building strategic partnerships for each sub domain forestry = forestry commission, bird watching/ornithology = RSPB castles = CADW and tourism = Welsh assembly government .

Tourism.wales.info will have links from the Welsh assembly government, and from all 22 local authority government departments tourism sections of their websites. This will be the same across the board for the various sub domains.

All these sub-domains will be linking up the pyramid to their on topic parent page, which will build a structured hierarchy that will become an authority site on hundreds of different topics across the subdomains.

Does that answer your questions

[Cryxellis]

I like your site specially the colors, nice contrast of the colors
I went to the section of the castle, I'd like to visit those castles

[OldWelshGuy]

If you have google earth installed and like castles, then take a look at this Castles of Wales : Wales Castles Tour : Wales.info it is a beta test for when we make larger use of google earth for tyourism. We have plotted flikr images and lots of other stuff on there.

[KingPin]

Very nice site indeed OWG. Everything from a usabulity standpoint is perfect.

From an SEO standpoint it's very well done.

The design is simple, yet effective.

Excellent job.

I wish you all the success with it.

KP