All our contact details (telephone number and address for booking enquiries) are available in our downloadable Brochure.
Our email address is info [at] rhyddbarn [dot] co [dot] uk.
The official postal address of Rhydd Barn is: Rhydd Farm Barn, The Rhydd, Hanley Castle, Worcester, WR8 0AG. Please do not use this address for booking enquiries! Our correspondence address is in Somerset. It is shown on our Booking Form and Brochure.
Information about this website
Apart from the main ‘home’ page there are six other pages within this website.
The pictures web page is a gallery of recent photos taken in and around the barn and the location web page has a summary of highlights of the local area.
The availability web page features an up to date monthly calendar of weeks already booked.
The booking & prices web page lists the cost of a week’s stay in Rhydd Barn and instructions on how to make a booking enquiry and how to book a visit to the barn.
The reviews page which lists recent comments from our guest book and/or email communications from our visitors.
The downloads web page contains links to pdf documents about Rhydd Barn including an accessibility guide and a summary of our most recent assessment by VisitEngland.
The news web page is a blog where we post occasional news items about the barn. For example, recent improvements we have made.
At the bottom of each page is a list of local interest and other web-links for your information.
Technical
This website is powered by WordPress (free software: open source/GPL), which is a relatively easy to use Content Management System (CMS) enabling the creation of websites.
The site is hosted by the excellent Krystal Hosting.
We are always looking to improve this website. Here are the some recent changes we have made:
- We modified the website so that it appears in an appropriate format on smaller screens such as tablets and smartphones.
- We recently (August 2020) introduced a quicker to use availability calendar with six-months-at-a-time view.
- We changed the picture gallery viewing function (September 2020) by switching to a a better plugin.
- We increased the size of the text and the spacing between text lines across the whole site to improve legibility.
- We recently (August 2020) switched the hosting of this website to Krystal Hosting, and so far it is a much better web hosting company than our previous one. You should see increased page-loading speeds and a reduction in frustration (mostly for me).
- Also in August 2020, we installed a SSL (Secure Sockets Layer) certificate on the website so that it now loads as https:// (rather than http://) and displays a padlock in the address bar showing it is a secure site. This should also improve our Google search ranking.
- Overhauled the whole site and made some minor layout changes and content additions using the ‘block theme editor’ now available in WordPress (March-April 2024).
For those interested in the technical side—and I have had to become very interested in it—we use the following WordPress plugins to add extra functionality (all free of charge!):
- Twenty Twenty-Four WordPress theme (customised).
- VR Calendar Sync [free version] for displaying our bookings calendar.
- Meow Gallery and Meow Lightbox used on our ‘pictures’ web page and where ever multiple images are displayed [free versions again].
- Out of the Block: OpenStreetMap plugin to create and display the location map
- This website is now very happily hosted by Krystal Hosting.
We use the following software locally (again all free):
- FileZilla Client (free software: open source/GPL) sometimes necessary for uploading files to our web host, Krystal Hosting.
- VS Code (free from Microsoft) to edit style and theme files where necessary.
- Notepad++ text editor (free software: open source/GPL) to edit files (where necessary) in WordPress and its plugins.
- Local a free application to host a local version of this site on our own computer so we can try out any changes or upgrades before committing them to our public hosted site.