Can I achieve this with widgets? Or do I need custom coding - can pay for help.
 

I'm in the process of moving my site over to wordpress (using Atahualpha of course!). It currently resides half completed here.

My problem/query is best explained by looking at this page.

It describes one of the holidays. If you scroll down a little, on the right you will see a couple of widgets, one for main hotel and another for alternatives (upgrades/downgrades). Holidays will have different hotels available, though some holidays share the same ones. An added complication is that I also want to show (for some holidays) hotels for outward/return trips as it can take a couple of days to reach the holiday destination by train.

Currently, each holiday and hotel is a separate post and I've tried creating links, via tags, to show related posts in the widgets (and used widget logic to show only certain ones on certain holiday posts) but cannot get it to work correctly.

Also, as I have some 25 holidays and 60+ hotels, each one will need different hotels showing on different holidays, so even if I could do it with widgets I'll need a lot of them in the sidebar to cover all hotels. So could I do this with just 3 widgets (main, alternative and en-route hotels) that would show the correct hotels for the currently being viewed holiday post or is that beyond wordpress as it comes out of the box?

Should I make the hotels static pages instead or change the categories I use (all hotels are in one category now - should I have sub cats for hotels in the relevant city?)?

I'd be prepared to pay for some guidance on this as I'm tearing my hair out trying to figure it out.

Hope this is clear, but if it needs further explanation please get in touch or post here.

Thanks for ANY help on this.
Nick

Here is a thought after pondering your requirements for a bit.

• Install the Page Links To plugin. This will let you easily add links to pages or posts from other pages and posts.
• Create a post for every hotel and every holiday with a categories of holiday or hotel
• Within the holiday post or page add links to the desired hotels with descriptions.
• Since these are posts you can put a category widget in the sidebar to list the holidays

The kind of logic you are trying to create can get very cumbersome very quickly without a good return for the investment of time you put into it. I generally like to go simpler if possible.

Thanks very much for taking the time to think about my problem and reply!

It's certainly given me something to think about. Will try as you suggest and see if it fits my needs. I thought I might be pushing Wordpress and it's out of the box abilities this time, but love it so much just want to use it whenever possible, as it is normally so flexible.

Give me a day or two to experiment then I'll happily pay for your help - do I do that by donating here?

Thanks again.
Nick

Yes donations are always very much appreciated. About a year ago I started using WordPress as my only web design tool and am very happy I did.

Right I've had a chance to look at this plugin now but sadly I don't think it quite fits my needs.
Firstly, unless I'm misunderstanding it only allows me to select pages to show links for (hence its name I guess!), whereas my hotels will be posts (suppose I could make them pages?).
Also, I'd could need up to 3 of these widgets to show links to all the pages I need for each holiday (main hotel, alternatives and en-route hotels), so with 30 holidays that's 90 instances of this widget in the sidebar.
Could be done but as you've said yourself cumbersome!
Scratch head time again me thinks!
Very grateful for your efforts tho' - donation on the way shortly - I want to get to the 'gold rooms' as well.
Nick

I'm sorry I meant the Link to Post plugin which gives you a button in the editor that lets you link any text or image to another post or page. So you could create a page for a holiday and talk about the hotels and then highlight the name of the motel and link it to the motel page.

Ah! That makes a lot more sense now :)
Will give it a go.
Thanks.

Right - from first looks it seems to only link from an existing post.

I'd really like a widget that I can add the links to, to show next to the holiday details.

Oh well - I'll keep looking.
Nick

A very handy plugin is the spectacu.la page plugin. You can create a page any way you want then add a widget that shows that page. It is much handier than coding in a text widget and allows you to do anything in a widget you can do in a page.

That looks interesting!

Would mean I'd have to make all my hotels pages as opposed to posts, though don't see that being a huge problem.

Thanks for your idea.
Nick