Google, I Know my Place

Although this graph may resemble a backpacker’s bank balance as they travel from South East Asia to Australia on the latest leg of their round the world trip, it is, in fact, the graph of ubertramp.com’s Google search traffic over the past few days. Still, on the plus side, at least I ‘m guaranteed and increase in search traffic from here on in.

I guess this serves as conclusive proof that I am Google’s latest bitch. And why? Well, anyone who has been checking on the site over the past couple of weeks has probably already gathered this – but I’ve been doing a bit of early spring cleaning.

It’s been a good 5 minutes since I last updated the site, and as such felt a bit more tinkering (read: getting completely out of my depth with what I see as highly technical web issues) was well overdue. And despite being subjected to the inevitable search engine ‘virtual crucifixion’, I have to say it could have gone a lot worse…even if I do still flinch at that graph.

Essentially, Ubertramp needed a re-jig. Content was being buried, it was becoming a bit of a maze, and something had to be done. Unfortunately, as good as Wordpress is (personally, I think it’s the best blogging platform out there) it’s very nature – that of a blog – it’s always going to mean that earlier stuff that you’ve posted will start to get lost under the pile of more recently posted stuff (unless you are a wizard when it comes to deep linking in your posts – and I ain’t the world’s best deep linker).

The ol’ Google analytics confirmed this for me and it was amazing the difference in page views etc from old to new articles. Stuff was being neglected, overlooked, posts were beginning to get systematically banished to the darker depths of the uber-empire, and I simply couldn’t have that.

I needed a way to introduce a more user friendly and easily navigable structure whilst still retaining the blog. I ended up putting another CMS on the site for static content and buggering about with it until I worked out a way to run both parts side by side…hence the torrent of error 404’s and 500’s and a few more numbers that I hadn’t even heard of until 2 weeks ago.

Anyhow, the errors are now on the decrease and I’m beginning to win the server battle it would seem – and hopefully, sometime soon, we’ll see a few more exciting (at least for me) changes around here. I’ll keep you posted – in the meantime, why not have a nosey around. And, please, let me know if you discover any dead ends/broken pages…i’m sure there are still plenty in there Ta!.

What is RSS?

You may seen the icons below and the terms RSS, syndication, subscribers, and feeds paraded on many websites. If you’ve ever wondered what the hell it was all about then this post should make it a bit clearer.

 

In short, it’s a whole new and infinitely easier way of keeping up to date with the latest posts from your favourite sites.

So without further a do, here’s a (very) quick run down of the theory behind RSS feeds (boo!) and how it can make your browsing even easier (yay!):-

 

So here’s the scenario: You have a handful of blogs that you regularly check when you log onto the internet. In order to read these latest posts from your favourite sites you manually visit each place and look around for new posts.

BUT if on your next visit to that site you click the swanky little orange button that looks something like this (it doesn’t matter if its orange, or green, or even brown like our one, they all do the same job) then from that day on all the posts will come to you! Basically, you have just subscribed to their posts. Its free, it’s safe, and there’s no obligation to continue receiving their posts into your internet reader for any longer than you wish. If at some point you now decide that their posts are crappy then you cancel that particular subscription with one click – just as easily as you subscribed, in fact.

Anyway, rather than me harp on about the ins and outs of it, this awesome video by Commoncraft explains what these readers are, how you ‘get one’ and how you can access and read the latest posts from your favourite blogs.

Click To Play

Well, all that’s left for you RSS virgins to do is try it out for yourselves and see how good it is. And what better place is there to start than with our very own feed?!

Hey! Ubertramp! I’m tired of coming to you; from now on you come to ME!

Picks from the Travesphere

Just recently, Richard, from A Month in Venice, wrote a post detailing a few of his favourite Travel Blogs. He also invited other bloggers to add to this list with their own favourites from the travesphere.

Being indecisive, I couldn’t narrow it down to just one addition so I just had to say what the hell and add a couple from my rather long list of regular reads. Go on, say it – I just don’t care, do I?

My first addition is leaveamerica.info – Worldwide Travel on a Budget, run by the very amiable Nia. Now, I find this particular travel blog appealing as, although it has the dependable theme of travel on the cheap, you never really know what you are going to get next. It’s random. And I like random.

And my second addition? Well, it has to be Stacey’s Rambling Traveler. If you haven’t seen or read it yet, I thoroughly recommend paying a visit to the rambler and enjoy all that is on offer.

As always, I enjoy discovering new travel blogs. One great method of uncovering new reads is by following recommends and learning of other readers favourites. So, if you run a blog and would like to join the party by sharing your favourite travel blogs then why not knock up a similar post, add your favourites to the list, and post it encouraging others to do the same? Not only can we all benefit from a modicum of link love from sharing the one list and the blogs therein, but, more importantly, with so many travel blogs and travel bloggers out there the chances of highlighting some previously unheard of blogs are high.

If you want to share your favourites, all you need do is write a quick blurb on your recommended reads, add them to this list, and then put the new list below like this.

___________________Start Copying Here___________________The Originals

• Leave America
• Rambling Traveler
• Go Budget Travel
• A Month In Venice
• TravelMinx
• Budget Globetrotting
• Ubertramp
• GoBackpacking

___________________End Copying Here_______________________

Groovy. Now let’s see what else we can come up with!

Social Travel Networks: Do We Need Another?

With the internet running head on into its Web 2.0 phase, we’re seeing social networks popping up all over the shop. A little while ago I even flirted with the idea of jumping on the bandwagon and creating a community aspect on ubertramp.com. But, after seeing just what else was already on offer among the other social networking sites (especially those focussing more on backpacking and travel), I decided that my time would be better spent reading Strunk & White’s ‘Elements of Style’, improving me grammer n spelling, and attempting to polish my writing skills. Although some of you may find this hard to accept, I feel there is still room for further improvement… Read more

Pigs in the Toilet: A Serialised Travelogue

A couple of weeks a go I received an email telling me about a site called Pigs in the Toilet. With the excessive surfing that I do, how this one stayed under the radar I will never know.

Pigs in the Toilet is a travel “blog-book” that Jeff is publishing online in short, bite-sized instalments. The story follows him (and others) on a six-month trip from Tokyo to Paris.

Yes, it sounds like just about any other travel blog. But it isn’t. For one, Jeff took this trip in 2001. More importantly, though, it reads like a book. There is a storyline. There are chapters. There are characters.

Unfortunately for Jeff, there is no publisher. Hence, we get to enjoy publication in a blog-like format. Or, as Jeff puts it, “a highly experimental experiment in experimental publishing.”

And what’s with that title, Pigs in the Toilet? Jeff says that the nominal purpose of the trip – aside from having a good time – was to verify a legendary anecdote he’d had heard from a friend. He claimed there were pigs in some Chinese toilets.

The story is not limited to this quest, of course, integral as it was. In fact, Jeff promises that the “other discoveries” are much more substantial…

There is, for example, his discovery of a French girl who decides to tag along with him.His discovery that young male travelers can make money modeling nude in Hong Kong, and his discovery that he is *not* the first Westerner to discover China.

Jeff uploads new instalments twice a week. He’s already on installment 32, but he promises there should be at least 30 more.

It certainly is an entertaining read so why not check it out. You can even subscribe to get each new instalment delivered right to you inbox.

Good work, Jeff – and I look forward to part 33!

If you wish to discover more of these goodies as I do, just click the orange button for your eternally free subscription to Ubertramp.com.

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