Stillwater
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MotoPress Hotel Booking

Use MotoPress when you want WordPress to manage accommodation availability, rates and reservations on your own site.

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Choose your booking setup

If you already manage reservations in Cloudbeds, SiteMinder, Little Hotelier, Mews or another external engine, start with the toolkit's link preset. MotoPress is useful when the reservation workflow should run inside WordPress.

Haldane Toolkit's room catalogue and MotoPress accommodation records are separate. The toolkit does not synchronise their descriptions, rates or inventory. For MotoPress reservations, set up accommodation types and rates in MotoPress and use its reservation buttons and forms.

Install Hotel Booking Lite

  1. Open the Stillwater recommended plugin notice and select Begin installing plugins, or open Appearance → Install Plugins.
  2. Install and activate Hotel Booking Lite by MotoPress.
  3. If the notice is unavailable, open Plugins → Add New Plugin, search for Hotel Booking Lite by MotoPress and install it from the WordPress directory.
  4. Open the new Accommodation menu and follow its setup instructions.

Lite is the optional free recommendation. No MotoPress Pro licence or premium plugin is bundled. Choose any paid edition separately if your hotel's requirements call for it. Refer to the plugin's own help for its reservation, payment and email settings.

Prepare accommodations and required pages

  1. Create accommodation types, then the individual accommodations that make up your available inventory.
  2. Add seasons and rates for the periods you sell.
  3. Create pages containing MotoPress's availability search, search results, checkout and any other blocks or shortcodes required by its setup.
  4. Open Accommodation → Settings and assign the corresponding pages, especially Search Results and Checkout.
  5. Keep Template Mode set to Theme Mode.
  6. For the most consistent calendar appearance, select the Minimal calendar theme.

These settings belong to MotoPress. A missing search-results or checkout page can interrupt the booking journey even if the theme looks correct.

Pages styled by Stillwater

Stillwater provides block templates for MotoPress accommodation details (single-mphb_room_type) and listings (archive-mphb_room_type). Its matching stylesheet covers the search form, date pickers, room listings, accommodation details, booking and reservation forms, checkout and guest account elements.

The stylesheet loads while MotoPress is active and follows your Stillwater colours and typography. Keep Theme Mode so these block templates remain in use. Use MotoPress's own blocks or shortcodes inside your content to complete reservations.

For a wider results layout, place the search-results block or shortcode directly in the page content. A results list inside Columns or another narrow container retains that container's width. Choose Stillwater's Wide page template if appropriate.

Connect the Stillwater booking bar

  1. Confirm MotoPress is active and its Search Results page is assigned and published.
  2. Open Haldane → Booking.
  3. Choose MotoPress Hotel Booking and save.
  4. Open a public booking bar, select dates and guests and submit.
  5. Confirm the assigned results page receives the dates and counts and shows appropriate results.

The preset uses mphb_check_in_date, mphb_check_out_date, mphb_adults and mphb_children. It sends guests to MotoPress search; MotoPress handles the remaining booking steps.

The Stillwater calendar remains a separate manual calendar. Keep any restrictions there consistent with MotoPress. If MotoPress or its search-results page is unavailable, the toolkit falls back to an enquiry.

Use MotoPress without Haldane Toolkit

Point the header, footer and mobile booking buttons directly to your MotoPress availability-search page. A #book link needs Haldane Toolkit to open a dialog. You can use MotoPress forms and theme styling without activating the toolkit.

Test the whole journey

Test the search, an accommodation page, guest counts, checkout, confirmation and emails using the booking plugin's test settings where available. Check on mobile as well. Any payment integration, connected service or personal data handling is configured in MotoPress and needs its own review.