General Help and Questions

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@Linda you can do optional surcharges based on number of guests on the booking, but not with a separate number of guests. For that you'd need to edit the charges.

@Ross I'd recommend doing a trundle as two singles -- that's what it ends up being, right? Just a specific storage method for a single bed. Then put that it's a trundle in the notes. The reason for this specific list of types is based on what the channels support.

"Hunting Nearby" in the blank area to the right of "Fishing Nearby". We have many seasons - antlerless deer, black powder/flintlock, turkey, bear, deer season, etc. State Gamelands are nearby. Mostly late autumn. It is a good way to fill spaces during a shoulder season.

On the Amenities Page, please add "Trundle Bed" to Bedrooms > Beds. That is the type of bed that pulls out from underneath another one. To save room, you can change the heading to Bunk Bed/Trundle Bed. They are essentially doing the same thing - 2 beds in one small area.

You can use any QuickBooks edition (Starter/Simple Start, Essentials, Plus, Premium, Advanced) with OwnerRez. Not sure if "freelancer" will work though, that one is a bit of an oddball.

The only limitation of the lower versions in relationship to OwnerRez is you can't use classes to dimensionalize your QB data and reports -- usually if you have multiple properties you'll set the property as a Class or Location on the invoice which will let you pull P&L's etc by property.

The higher versions allow that (I believe they call it "Run advanced reports" vs "basic"), the lower ones do not.

If you don't need that feature, then any edition will work.

Hi, we offer guests the choice of things like catered dinners or archery etc. How do I create the option to add in extras? And flexible numbers of people taking them up?

@BlueMtnCabins - curious what the StaySaver link is that appears at the bottom right corner of your website. I overlooked it on my desktop, but it was more noticeable from my cell phone. Is it something you're doing intentionally, or is something overlaying your site without your knowledge (could even be something on my own computer, but seems unlikely since it's on mobile and desktop sites).

Nice site Jim! We're neighbors in Austin as well...

There's a typo in your link, mountain is misspelled

A couple things jumped out at me ... All offered by the guy who has no website at the moment ;-)

- lots of typos (Ruidos; THIGNS; Granit... try selecting all the content on your page, then copy/paste into microsoft word and inspect anything it thinks is awkward (blue) or misspelled (red). Ruidoso is spelled 3 ways that I caught
- the pictures are nice, but they lack any sizzle for the most part. The picture of you and your wife with helmets on is a great one. Maybe find a few stunning photos and move the rest to a photos page.
- I like the single page style, it's easy to see all the content by scrolling, but having a menu at top could help direct visitors as well, even if it just jumps down to the correct section.
- if possible with your site, would be better to have an always visible GET A QUOTE button on the page.

I personally think there is a lot of theory that goes into well performing websites. A thought - it might be a useful technique to create some content that folks have to request. Meaning you could have a 2-3 page document of wonderful things to do in the area, and just set it up so people provide their email and get the document. Ultimately a goal can be to capture emails so you can drip emails back to potential guests. Whether that works in practice for these kinds of sites I'm not sure about, but in general it's common across other websites... give me your email and I'll give you something in return ;-)

Overall I think it's a very effective website, has all the important info. I don't think your website is too long, the only thing I'd consider is that few people will spell Ruidoso correctly. Having easier to spell words could help, but maybe having Ruidoso in the website name is important.

To use Quickbooks, will the cheapest version $10 per month work? (now on sale for $5 all plans are 50% off) If not what version is required to integrate?

For reference purposes we use GoDaddy and their site builder tool. SUPER EASY to operate and allows the use of OR widgets. Any feedback is welcome. www.ruidosopinesmountiancabin.com . Other than the website name is TOO long. lol working on that.

Ya, that's a major draw back but that leads me to another question - SEO. Hopefully I am not steering this thread off course but SEO is part of owning a website and I have some thoughts.

Do we "small" players really have a chance to rank a website in a market like Myrtle Beach (at least for me)? I've given up trying to rank my jimandkelly personal site. I spend more time on Instagram, Facebook and Craigslist and drive that traffic to my personal site and building email lists.

I'm curious what others think about SEO.

Is it possible in WordPress to block "rogue" countries that are the source of a lot of hacking - such as North Korea, Russia - without harming SEO? I use the Avada theme for an upcoming tour company (MountainManJourneys.com) and I am not familiar either with the "WordPress premium" nor the concept of blocking countries from a WordPress site.

Love your personal VR site @jfulciniti! Lot's of exciting photos!!

@jfulciniti - Careful blocking countries and certain blocks of users. That could stop search engines from indexing your site too depending on where their servers are located and/or the technique you're using to detect the device. If you're not sure, use Webmaster Tools by Google to watch what they have indexed and what their spiders "see" when they look at your pages.

Great thread with some really good info. Personally, I use Word Press only because I am familiar with it. I use my sites to store a lot of personal photos and other info that guests do not have access to (hidden pages / password protected areas)

In the past, I had issues with hacking / robo attacks. I now use Wordfence Premium and few other plugins to keep the sites as secure as possible. Since 100% of my guests are US / Canadian based, I block other countries from accessing my site.

I use the same WP template for both sites and customize with some other plugins. I like the fact that I have total control over the content and layout.

Here's the site I built for our home owners group https://go2snowshoe.com and my personal VR website https://jimandkelly.us

As we all know, there's no perfect solution and I think it's great that there are many options for each of us.

Hi Y'all,

Just a quick update: When I asked this question I hadn't looked very closely (in 5+ years) at website building. I've since watched a lot of videos and read up on many reviews, here is a (very) short summary that maybe helps someone else

- Owner Reservation's Hosted site
- 3 of the major graphically oriented website builders (Wix, Weebly, Squarespace)
- Wordpress.org, Wordpress.com along with the largest eco-system for websites including frameworks like Studiopress
- Webflow: My current favorite, has an amazing graphical editor, a ton of training videos/university, and numerous advantages in security/hosting/design that appeal to me

For many people the OR hosted website will be perfect. If you want a website that stands alone from OR, then the 3 listed at top are candidates with a much smaller learning curve. Definitely look for reviews between those three because each has strengths and weaknesses. My favorite of the three is Squarespace. I'm avoiding wordpress because while it has a rich/awesome history it can be dangerous on its own (my opinion) due to security risks from plugins and requires lots of oversight. I very much want to set and forget and let a hosting company deal with protecting the content from attack, do backups, etc.

Webflow appeals to me personally because it ties into HTML5/CSS learning that helps me elsewhere in my life. I've always been a bit of a hack with them, and I'm pretty sure that Webflow will be a huge asset in learning, which appeals to me. I also like that there is a community (similar to this one) for Webflow where questions can be asked/answered. That was very important to me.... And lastly, Webflow allows amazing interactions where text and photos can move/fade based on scrolling position. That kind of thing should help ensure my website is inviting.

That's all for now - if any of my exploration works out (not guaranteed!) I'll post again sometime in the future when I have something to show.

Hi everyone,

The rate push for VRBO is now fixed. Make sure you're using the latest version of Channel Bridge and then run it!

To see if you're using the latest version and force it to update, follow this article:

https://www.ownerrez.com/support/articles/updating-channel-bridge-to-latest-version

I know it isn't much to go on, but the few reviews I saw on Openedge seem to be bad to average. I couldn't find anything on Lynnbrook group in the way of reviews. Does anyone have pros or cons for either, such as good chargeback procedure or really low-cost or rock solid handling?

SOLVED

Paul (or Chris, can't remember which ;-)) emailed me about this, and those tips along with some experimenting gave me the answer ...

Recap - I noticed that some of my automated emails, when viewed on a cellphone, didn't wrap. Each row appeared in a tiny font, and while I could pinch/zoom to make it larger, reading a paragraph was very hard. But this only happened with some emails, not all.

Problem 1: I had copy/pasted from microsoft Word a table. It looked great, helped readability, but it was somewhat wide. Removing that helped a little

Problem 2: Long links. I had about 5 links in the email that I had to replace with shortened links. Was easy to do in the OR email template editor, I just replaced the 'Text to Display' with a short description. In general I don't like doing that since I believe folks are scared to click on links, but I'm a trusted person to guests who have already paid me so not a big deal.

The way I tested all this was simple... I just kept emailing the original template to myself while deleting parts of the text. The first test I deleted 80% of the email and it looked fine. Then I tried 50% and noticed a difference (due to the first long link). Was easy after that.

I'm sharing this to help others... it's worth looking at your automated template emails in various cellphones (iphone and android) so you can see what your guests receive. Readable emails are sure to cut down on last minute panic emails/calls!

PROBLEM SOLVED.

We have an AIrbnb account that has a "co-host", me. My wife has the main account under her name and email address. Co-Hosts dont have access to payment information, therefore it was not downloading during the Channell download. Once I logged into her account on Airbnb, then downloaded the Channel import information on her account, and uploaded to OR, ALL the payment data was there! Thanks Chris!

Thanks so much! That's a great feature to have while I'm still relying on VRBO pretty heavily. Will be testing this out soon. (And clicking a button to pull over rates is no biggie compared to all of my individual spot rates! ha ha

Appreciate it!

Yep, working on it. We saw that recently based on something VRBO changed. We're tracking it and will have an update out shortly.

I spoke too soon:

PushRates request received
To VRBO/HomeAway listing # 4117934
360 rate groups and 0 fees received
Finding csrf token
Checking to see if calendar rates are configured
Found calendar rate end point
Sending rates to VRBO/HomeAway
Error processing data. Try again or contact support.

Paul,

you're right!

Is there anyway for y'all to create a token that would take the address as it comes from VRBO and morph it into the full zillow url? So that I could make an automated email that is sent to me at booking?

Seems like it would only need to replace spaces with the hyphen and append _rb/ at the end

I looked at that, my problem is I have two adjacent townhomes and a large building with five apartments. I highly doubt it's something that Khalid devices in a densely populated area would be of much help. That seems appropriate for out in the sticks. I did get a noise aware, it is currently sitting in a box.

I was under the impression that there was one or more black lists of bad guests on Facebook. Dunno where.

The concept of looking at a guest's place is actually brilliant. Or perhaps Street View of Google maps. imagine if their house was an empty lot or nonexistent. It might help uncover the occasional scam.

apparently so. Now it is importing charges correctly ( Thanks Chris!)

Thank you!