Jul 25 2008
Old and New Friends of the Website Kind
I’ve finally made some decisions about my old, neglected friend Travoholic. The site has been rotting away for years exisiting only as a billboard for link sales. The site is loved by Google and I’ve decided to start giving it a little love of my own once again.
I’m a bit wary of changing the site around too much because I don’t want to lose any of my rankings in the SERPs. But I have decided to add a new section for articles, country guides and hostel reviews for Asia. I might set the new section up with a new design that I prefer and see how things go. If I see that Google likes it and start to see the pages ranking well, I might convert the entire site to the new design and restructure the navigation and hope for the best. I have a lot of content to add and really think I’m capable of doubling the site’s traffic with some new articles and an Asia section.
My other major project has been my travel blog, Wanderstruck. I had originally wanted to make this site a huge guide, review, video, photo and blog type site because I really love the domain name. I’ve instead decided that I can do all the extra stuff over at Travoholic and will instead keep Wanderstruck as a travel blog only. I’m looking for some feedback on it. I’m not sure about the colours (mainly the brown) and am in search of plugins that work well for travel blogs. I really don’t know much about the world of plugins so don’t even really know what I’m missing. If anyone can point me to travel blogs you like, maybe I can get some inspiration. There are still lots of little things I need to do to the site including uploading photos to Flickr. am I the only person who thinks Flickr completely sucks? I will never understand why it’s so popular.
I’m not planning on monetising the site. It’s just going to be a way to keep in touch with family and friends and hopefully attract a few readers who I don’t know. I guess it’s more for fun and maybe getting my name out there into the travel blogosphere. I can’t believe I just used the word ‘blogosphere’.
Any feedback is appreciated! I’m looking forward to getting the travel blog up to scratch and am looking even more forward to seeing what kind of an impact adding new content to Travoholic.com has on that site. Once I get back to Beijing I’ll be hard at work on Stuck in Beijing so I’ve got a couple of days worth of hard work ahead of me here in Hong Kong.
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I've been travelling since January 2008 living off earnings from the web. Follow me as I bum around Asia and beyond, getting up to mischief and working online as I go. 
Hi Kirsty,
I’m delighted you’re going to revive Travoholic - I have a soft spot for that site so hope it works out.
As for Wanderstruck, like you I love the title. You’re right about the masthead colour though - it is a bit gloomy given the free spirit behind it! Something a bit brighter and more textured would draw me in more… but it’s already great as is…
I don’t know how you time for so many websites. I barely have time for one! !! But I guess the longer you have one the less work that needs to be done on it.
As for plugins, good wordpress plugins are “related posts” “sociable” and “Recent comments.” On the backend side, all in one seo, statpress, and google xml are all good.
I also love the title Wanderstruck, but agree with Scribetrotter that the current color scheme on the header is bit dull/dark.
As for flickr, the trick there is using one of the uploading tools (I use picturesync) so that you can do all your work offline (titles, tags, descriptions) and then press “upload” when you got a connection. This saves us when we’ve got hundreds of photos to upload but a connection only once every few days.
I also admire how you’re able to keep so many websites afloat, stocked with new content and monetized while you’re on the road. Impressive!
I miss good ol’ Travoholic. Still unrevived as of yet, but I will keep you posted on the efforts.
I tend to be a bit boring when it comes to colour choices. I will try to come up with something a bit more exciting-ish.
Thanks for the plugin suggestions Matt.
Audrey I really love how your site is laid out. How did you set things up so you have sub categories in your category list? Something like that would be perfect but I have no idea how to pull it off.
As for managing lots of sites… I guess I just love doing it so things just seem to eventually get done. But the real trick is having sites that don’t take much love to keep them going like my old friend Travoholic and the city guide sites I run. Updates every now and then seem to be ok. Blogs are a time suck though, but I like them. I think most of my time these days is spent on my blogs and they don’t generate any money. Go figure.
I’m with the other commenters… the brown is a bit gloomy, athough the background works. Perhaps a brighter picture of the world that would still keep with your themes? Also, I’m excited about the return of travelholic… Let me know if you need any bits and peices written for you- I’d love to help out with the regions I know.
I love sociable as a plugin. It’s great.
Check out Dave’s travel blog at http://gobackpacking.com/blog for some great stuff. I especially enjoy the ‘how long on the road’ plugin he uses.
Good luck!