Back on Track!

I know it’s been a while since my last post, so here’s a quick update on the latest happenings within the ubertramp.com world of webgeekery.

In short, ubertramp is finally going great guns again and is all systems go – and, right now, I must thank all the readers who’ve been popping back from time to time to check for updates and see how things are panning out. All the kind comments and emails have encouraged me and spurred me on to keep me at it until the wee hours on many an occasion. Thank you.

So, what’s been going on, then? What have I been up to geek-wise? Well, the biggest change on ubertramp has to be the addition of the ubertramper community. It’s taken much tweaking and head scratching but we’re getting there slowly but surely.

I must thank everyone who’s become part of this so far and, of course, our ubertramp advertisers and sponsors who’ve made it possible for me to hire coders and purchase various utilities that’ve transform the site from what it was into what it has become. And the best news of all is that there’s even greater functionality and travel friendly gadgets on the way!

Of course, all this change has regrettably made for a few short term casualties. Although search engine results, visitor numbers and page views took a big hit initially, thankfully they are now back on track!

Of greater concern, however, was the loss of comments from several posts as part of the migration to the new CMS. To make up for this I invite everyone who has been kind enough to take the time to comment on articles in the past to place a link to their site (and a quick overview of it, if they want) on the new dedicated links page. I’ve kept the registration and subsequent link submission process painfully simple and quick. Hopefully, these links will get those Google-juices flowing again. So far there are only a handful of links up there.

Also, travel webmasters who register (all free, still) can take advantage of another link offer from the site by way of their new dedicated profile page. The more active a member is, the more they will benefit from a link placed here since almost all onsite activity (comments, messages, emails, article submissions etc) point back to your member profile – and more profile visits mean more visits to your own site!

The next few posts I’ll be explaining some of the new features within the community to give you all a better understanding of what it’s all about, and to share with you a few of the nifty little travel gadgets I’ve got going on there.

If you can’t wait until the next post to find out what I mean, follow this link and become an ubertramper today!

Host Changeover

Due to our current host awardspace.com offering such a poor value package and being populated by the most obnoxious, unhelpful ’support’ team on the face of the planet, we are delighted to be parting company and moving to another host. Unfortunately, due to my rather miniscule knowledge of how all this works, I’m sure it’ll take longer that I would like.

Over the next few days I’m sure the site will vanish then reappear at will, but please bear with me as all will be back to nomal as soon as humanly possible.

Thanks

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!