After revamping the Chequers Playgroup site several months back, another of the very first websites I built through LessFuss Design got a facelift at the weekend. Relish Restaurant & Bar, in Newton Flotman, Norwich, has had a redesign and rebuild so the owners Jeremy & Rachael Parke can manage all the content themselves – using WordPress, and a handfull of plugins to make their life even easier.
Why a new site?
When we first launched Relish in 2008 we made a classic ‘brochureware’ website. It was all about promoting the restaurant’s values of using locally sourced ingredients to create great food. We provided sample menus, supplier lists and a few photos, but beyond the Booking request form there was little opportunity for site visitors to interact. And since the site was only updated occasionally (usually to amend the menus), there was little reason for customers to revisit the site.
The idea with the rebuild was to create a site that would give a first-time visitor enough information about the restaurant to encourage them to book a table and pay a vist, but also to give existing customers (and Relish have many loyal customers) a reason to visit the site on a regular basis.
Primarily we’ve done this through the new Relish blog. Rachael & Jeremy can use this for news and announcements, but also for articles covering their adventures in growing food for use in the restaurant, as well as promoting the many suppliers they use.
The Relish Calendar is another good reason to revisit the site. The original site had a date-driven list of forthcoming events, with the new site we’ve expanded this to provide a calendar that covers not only events at Relish but also to highlight what’s on the menu from week to week, and what’s ‘in-season’ and being used in ther Relish kitchen.
Finally I set them up with a Flickr account to allow them to publish photos quicker and more easily than before. using Flickr allows them to reach a wider audience, and at the same time display all their photos on their website (using a WordPress Flickr Gallery plugin) without having to upload and publish everything twice.
The design
Since the revamp required substantial structural changes to the site and the way it worked, I also took the opportunity to revist the design at the same time. While the original design didn’t feel completely outdated, the dark green (which was prominent on the original) has gone from the offline Relish branding, so I came up with something much lighter and less oppressive.
As the new site has farm more content than the original (particularly on the homepage) it was important to come up with something that could accommodate more text and imagery without feeling too cluttered.
A note on using WordPress
For someone like me – not a programmer, but with enough PHP knowledge to get by – WordPress is an ideal platform for creating websites that the clients want to manage themselves. I created the Relish WordPress theme, and both the enquiry and booking request forms I wrote myself and incorporated into the theme’s templates.
But for certain functionality on the site I’ve made use of the myriad of WordPress plugins, either because I reached the limits of my PHP knowledge or simply ran out of the necessary time to build them for myself. For example the customer comments, Relish Calendar and the photo gallery all make use of plugins that are relatively easy to install and configure.
The thing to watch is that you rarely find a plugin that does exactly what you want, and unfortunately it’s even harder to find plugins that are fully accessible. Some layout and apprearance issues can be overcome by overwriting styles in the CSS, but if you need to change the behaviour of the plugin, then you’re in that dodgy world of amending the source of the plugin files.
I have done this on a couple of occasions with the Relish site – mostly to fix inaccessible source code – and while it’s far from ideal it was the only way to get exactly the functionality I wanted. The problem with hacking plugin source files is that when the plugin author releases an upgrade, and you install it in your WordPress installation, the new version is going to overwrite all your changes.
The best you can do is to keep a log of all the changes you’ve made (e.g. filename of the file you amended, line number, and as much detail of what you’ve changed and why), so that if an upgrade comes along, you can at least go back in and reinstate your own changes.
Anyway, the plugins are working for now, so if you’re interested please pop along to dinewithrelish.com and have a look around. I’d be interested to hear what you think 
Really worried about using word press and keeping our site updated, I thought I could delete everything, ruin what was already on the site. Andy reassured us and gave great training on word press, its so easy to use and as you can see I update the site at least monthly and it takes just a few minutes. Brilliant