If you’re a Frequent Flyer on the blog (see what I did there – frequent flyer – because it’s a travel blog), you may notice that things look a little bit different around here. In case you’re not following, I’m talking about the website – I just did a major overhaul on it.

Although our old website didn’t necessarily look like it, it had become quite outdated. Or maybe it did look it but you were all too polite to tell me and I had just stopped noticing.

It wasn’t just cosmetics, it just didn’t work the way it was supposed to and I had developed all kinds of weird workarounds to keep it running without any major incidents. It made it really hard for me to update posts and tour pages which in turn was making the content outdated as well. Not to mention less than stellar user experience.

It was just a mess and I knew a long time ago that I would need to do something about it. I just needed time.

Here’s the thing that many people don’t know about me. When it comes to this website, I do everything myself. E.V.E.R.Y.T.H.I.N.G. Always have done and wouldn’t know how to work with someone else on it.

Whether it’s updating the PHP, writing content, designing graphics or keeping updated on the latest trends in SEO and social media – it’s all me.

So along with being the CEO, a guide, the blogger and half of our customer service department, I’m also my own marketing and web department. There’s a reason why most companies have dedicated teams for this part of their business or they outsource it – it’s time-consuming and requires special skills. I’m not saying I have all those skills, I’m just really good at googling.

The good thing about doing everything yourself, though, is that you often go a lot deeper into a project than you would if you’d just write a brief for what you think you need. So, what started as a quick cosmetic and foundation update ended up being so much more. I learned so much and started thinking about things from angles I never even knew existed.

I have literally spent 16-18 hours a day for the last six weeks working on this website. I did everything I possibly could to simplify and make the website easier to use for you guys. Every day a new issue or opportunity arose and although the website was ready enough to launch now, I have a long list of things I want to work on even more in the coming weeks and months Having done the bulk of the work with everything under the hood, I actually now can.

I just need to sleep a bit first.

I’m not writing this post to complain or toot my own horn – even though I’m actually quite proud of myself for the tenacity to actually finish this. Because it seemed never-ending when I started.
I just wanted to give you a heads up in case you see something that looks a bit weird or doesn’t work the right way – I’m working on it and with time the kinks will hopefully all be ironed out.

Actually, I know they will.

Now, if only someone would give me a Makeover because the state of me after this work-a-thon is not pretty.