Blue Island Sun

Abstract - Another holiday accommodation site in Menorca. It’s only for one property so website is mainly static, although the prices and availability are dynamic. Also has an online booking form that submits itself to the site owners email address. Features a content management system.

Application Type - Web Application (Commercial)
Technology Used - J2EE, JavaServlets, JSP, MySQL
URL - http://www.blueislandsun.co.uk

Overview

Blue Island Sun Website

Blue Island Sun Website

This is a mainly a static website, although it does feature some dynamic server side content using JSP and Java Servlets.

The booking availability calendar is dynamically generated with information from a database.

There is also an online booking form which, once completed, can be either printed out and posted, or automatically e-mailed to the site owner.

Certain information such as contact details and prices are actually stored inside an XML file. This information is read from the XML file once when the website is first loaded, and stored inside the application context (or server memory) for faster access, rather than read and parse the XML file each time.
Setting prices in the Blue Island Sun CMS

Setting prices in the Blue Island Sun CMS

Other configuration details, such as SMTP servers and database connection strings are also stored inside XML files. This makes deployment easier versus hard coding these values inside classes.

The site is backed up by a content management system that allows changes to prices, bookings and contact details.

This site was developed at around the same time as the Menorcan Magic one, so shares much of the same code base.

Tools Used

  • Dreamweaver: For initial design and HTML/CSS mark-up of the site.
  • Fireworks: For site graphics, rounded corners, buttons etc.
  • Paint Shop Pro: For site graphics, rounded corners, buttons etc.
  • Netbeans 5.0: Open source Java development IDE, used for development of the dynamic server side portions of the web application.
  • MySQL & Tools: Development and maintenance of database

Contact

For more information, or for a reference, contact the owner Linda Nightingale using one of the methods below...