Glacial Valley Hunting

##The Brief

Glacial Valley Hunting came to Venon with a website that no longer reflected the quality of the hunting experience they offered. The existing site was outdated, difficult to navigate and had a poor review system, making it harder for potential clients to discover the available hunts, understand the packages and plan their trip.

The goal was to create a modern, professional website focused on converting visitors into enquiries, while giving the Glacial Valley Hunting team much more control over their own content.

The new platform needed to showcase their hunting experiences across 25,000 acres of private, unfenced ground in Glenmalure Valley, Co. Wicklow, alongside their hunting opportunities in Lincolnshire and Gloucestershire, England.

##What We Built

We designed and developed a complete hunting and enquiry platform built around the customer journey.

Visitors can explore the different hunting experiences, view packages and pricing, browse the photography gallery, learn about the hunting locations and find practical information to help them plan their trip.

The site includes:

Dedicated hunting and package pages Location-specific information and pricing High-quality image gallery Trip-planning information Reviews and aggregate ratings Dedicated contact/enquiry form About and estate information Responsive design across devices SEO-friendly page structure and sitemap

Rather than simply creating a collection of static pages, we built the website around dynamic content and client self-management.

##How It Works

The website is built with Astro and TypeScript, using PocketBase as the backend and data store.

Content such as text, images, gallery media and reviews is stored in PocketBase rather than being hard-coded into individual pages. This means the website can retrieve and display updated content without requiring the entire site to be manually rebuilt.

One of the main pieces of custom engineering was the interactive admin centre.

Authenticated administrators can edit content directly through the website, including individual pieces of text and images. This gives the client a much simpler way of managing their website without needing to open the source code or understand the development process.

The review system also includes server-side validation, input sanitisation, rate limiting and honeypot bot protection to help prevent abuse and automated submissions.

##Custom CMS & Admin Centre

A key part of the project was giving Glacial Valley Hunting control over their own website.

Instead of relying on a traditional heavyweight CMS, we built a lightweight custom content management system around PocketBase.

Administrators can:

Edit website text Replace images Manage gallery content Manage reviews Update content blocks Manage site content through the admin interface

Changes are stored in PocketBase and dynamically served to the website, meaning the client doesn't need to modify code or manually manage deployments whenever they want to make a content change.

##Security & Performance

The platform also includes several security and performance considerations, including:

HTTP-only authentication cookies Secure production cookies SameSite cookie protection Server-side review rate limiting Input sanitisation Honeypot bot protection Security headers Permissions Policy Long-term browser caching for static images SEO sitemap generation

The site is configured for production deployment using Netlify and Node.js, with optimised static asset delivery and environment-based configuration.

##The Result

The result is a modern, professional digital presence for Glacial Valley Hunting that does more than showcase their services.

Potential clients can quickly discover the available hunting experiences, explore locations, compare packages, view genuine reviews and submit an enquiry, all through a much clearer customer journey.

Behind the scenes, the custom admin centre gives the business control over its own content, allowing the team to update photographs, text, reviews and other information without needing to edit the underlying code.

Glacial Valley Hunting now has a website that not only represents the quality of the experience they provide, but gives the business the tools to manage and grow its online presence themselves.