This small personal project came about because I was regularly involved in Whatsapp discussions with people asking about where they could find hunter hirelings in my area.
I knew a few people who provided the service, or used to, but not many, so I set about searching the web for more providers.
Long story short, it wasn't easy. Some providers had a good web presence but were not showing up well in typical hireling searches and others were only found via word of mouth and or a poll of Facebook followers.
Even when I did find providers it was not necessarily clear which areas they providers horses for and how far afield they were prepared to travel.
It seemed to me that the whole process would be much easier if there was a directory of hireling providers on the web which brought all the different contact details together.
Hunter hireling are horses which can be hired for a day of trail hunting. The provider will bring the horse to the meet (or close by) for you and it will be ready to go. When you have finished the day they will be there to meet you and take the horse back home again.
Typically a hunter hireling will cost you between £150 and £250 for a two to three hour trail hunt.
Well this is the problem. There are providers all over the UK and Ireland but some of them are not easy to find and are only really shared by word of mouth. This site set out to make it easier for people to search for providers in a particular area.
For a simple and scalable site I deployed one of my WordPress blueprint instances which included Advanced Custom Fields and Bricks. ACF was going to make management of custom post types straightforward and Bricks makes it really easy to query loop CPTs and taxonomy terms without any coding.
I made a post type for Hireling providers and gave them a taxonomy of County, to indicate the areas they cover.
Having done that I created a template for county archives which listed all the providers covering that area but added a term loop at the top of each page to list all the other counties.
I was going to add a single provided template but realised that actually the archive page would list all the contact details necessary.
On the home page I added a map which includes all the providers as map pins using their Google map locations.
The site is now live at hunterhirelings.co.uk.
I am an equine photographer, website designer and hosting provider living in Lincolnshire.
I work with clients who are sole traders and others which are FTSE companies. They are equally important to me.
If you need commercial photography, editorial photography, event photography, lifestyle, equestrian or wedding photography, then I can help you, with over 30 years experience in these areas.
I also teach photography. I mentor photographers with a range of experience, from beginners to working professionals and run an equine photography course which gives members access to articles about the business of equestrian photography.
I have a varied set of skills, having worked for well known web design, SEO and analytics companies in parallel to my photography.
I design, host and maintain websites for clients as varied as farms, interior designers and equestrian centres, as well as for bloggers and sportspeople, including many riders.
I am the Public Relations Officer for the Midlands Area Point-to-Point Association, a role which utilises my PR and social media skills to promote horse racing both online and in the National press.
If you think that I could be the right person to help you, whatever your project, then please get in touch and we can discuss what you need and the ways in which I can help.
You can find out more about me here.
