Getting to Know the New PlanetD
The past few months have seen a lot of changes here at ThePlanetD.
We crossed the finish line of the Mongol Rally along side our team mate Sherry Ott and returned home to focus and centre ourselves after a whirlwind two years of travel around the world.
The first order of business was a major overhaul of our website. Cosmetically, we have only made subtle changes but navigationally, user experience and organization, we have changed dramatically.
Hire a Professional
With a giant contribution from Warren Talbot of Married with Luggage who did wonders with coding issues for our website, transferring and helping with design, we have come up with a user friendly experience that will make your reading more enjoyable.
Header
We are in the process of redesigning our logo and image so that has remained the same so far. However, the big change is you can subscribe to all our social media sites in one easy location at the top of the page. It is here that you can subscribe to our RSS feed as well and have our daily updates come into either your email or your favourite reader. This is a much better location than our previous social media buttons that were lost in the side bar.
Speed
Finally people can get back on ThePlanetD without an agonizing wait or error message. Warren has cleaned up all the hacks, problems with poor coding and deleted all of the plugins and problem areas that were giving us a hard time.
We have now left Blue Host and have moved to Media Temple where our site is on a Dedicated Virtual Server. We won’t see that nasty throttling anymore and we have added security. You’ll be able to click on pages without having to wait for it to load.
Top Navigation Tool Bar
Adventures: We had been wanting to redesign our site for some time now. Not the look of it, but the navigation. We have gone through all of our categories and pages and have finally organized them into easy to use sections. Our Adventures Page puts the best of ThePlanetD in one place!
We are most proud of our Adventures Page. - We will be building on it as we break down trips into more adventures, but for now we have 13 Adventures that you can read about and follow along from start to finish.
Destinations: When you’ve been to 55 countries, it is difficult to break the blog down into post about each place that you’ve visited. We have made a destinations page where people can click on the icon to read about the destination of their choice. We have broken down our destinations into categories that are easy to navigate.
Travel Videos: We take a lot of videos on our travels and want to share them with you. We have developed a travel video page where you can browse our latest videos and then follow your way to our youtube channel to see more. Also at the bottom of the blog in the footer, we have a featured video section where we will change it up weekly to share some of our favourite travel memories.
Featured Video in Footer of Website
Travel Photos: We will eventually be inserting a gallery into our Travel Photos section. We are looking into how to integrate Picture the Planet’s portfolio into our photo page. For now we have our favourite photo stories and snap shots for you to browse.
Home Page
About Us: We want people to know who we are. They can relate to us better if they can see our faces so we added an about us page in the top right hand corner of the site. It has a quick introduction and then you can click through to read more about Dave and Deb. That is if you want to!
Subscribe Now: We are rebooting our newsletter again. We let it slide during the Mongol Rally but we are redesigning it as we speak and you can sign up for our monthly updates right underneath our about us page.
Subscribe RSS: We will be inserting a “RSS” button just below the newsletter sign up. This way you get a second chance to subscribe to our daily updates via RSS. This is where you can have our feed go either to your home page, favourite reader or even directly into your email.
Categories:
There are many more ways for you to find posts on our home page now. We have categories broken down into:
Featured Content - We’ve replaces our oversized, cumbersome slider with a sleeker more streamlined image that you can browse our most interesting content.
Photo Stories - There is no doubt that Dave’s photography is the highlight of this blog and we feature his photo stories in the first section of the home page for everyone to take a look.
Advice - Before we started traveling so much, we wrote a lot about the advice of travel blogging. We have kept it up a little bit while on the road, but we are planning on writing a weekly feature involving tips to make your blogging career a more successful career.
Latest Posts - You have two ways to find our most recent posts, in the right sidebar where latest posts, popular posts and recent comments can be found or on the home page in the section directly below photostories and Advice.
Sub-Categories - We have a lot of categories and information to share so we now have 4 more sub-categories that we will be rotating regularly to feature different content. Right now you can find articles relating to General Travel Advice, Popular posts, Top 10 Lists, Responsible Travel
Footer
We used to have nothing in our footer. We are working on filling it up with more information as once people get to the bottom of a post, they may want to have a closer look at everything ThePlanetD has to offer.
We offer several different ways to partner with companies and we give potential partners two ways to find out how. At the top they can click on our media/advertise page and at the bottom they are reminded once again with our media package.
Besides linking to our Media Page and Appearances and to give information on how to partner with us, we have given the reader one more chance to connect with us via our Social Media Sites and RSS. We have never fully given this aspect of our blog the proper focus that it deserves, now our readers have several ways of following and subscribing to us!
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22 Responses to Getting to Know the New PlanetD
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Loving the redesign so far!
Thanks Deej, well said with “So far” we are still working on making changes. It will be a slow work in progress as we change a few things around here and there in the coming months.
I love the changes guys! It’s the ‘simple’ things that really make the difference – no dramatic changes but all that work in the background will make it easier for folks like me! Can’t wait to see the new logo/header! Good job!
Thanks Gillian. Yes, we didn’t want to make an enormous change. We weren’t going to announce anything until the new logo was done, but we wanted to let people know ASAP that they can start to browse and enjoy the experience better. Many people grew frustrated in the previous months due to our issues and we wanted to let everyone know that all is fine now!
I agree with Gillian. Nothing too drastic but I can definitely see the changes. It looks great! I am sure the new logo/header is going to look fantastic!
Thanks Mica. Yes, the old header seems unfinished in the new theme so we are looking forward to replacing it soon.
Wow – thanks for the thorough information. Okay… how do you two do it all? After all, you are only 2 people.
So inspired and impressed by your focus and determination.
We had a lot of help from Warren. He was so easy to work with and was always right there for us when we need some help or had any questions. At the moment though, we are feeling the squeeze of not having enough hours in the day. We’ll have to get back on the road ASAP, this being home thing causes too much work!
Wow congrats the new site is awesome!!!
Thanks so much Andi and thank you for your always wonderful support and comments.
Good job! I like that I can now go into your specific adventures and read the story chronologically as opposed to trying to find the stories. And tonight, I’ll sit down so I can read your side of the Mongol Rally in order. Yay! I also like that you have a picture that you can click on for each adventure. Excited to see the new logo and header. Congrats. I know it’s a lot of work.
The “About Us” page is looong overdue! The rest is just icing. Your material is so good that it would be A+++ in any format!
How exciting~! New things are good and cleaning things up a bit always adds a little extra excitement and energy.
You’re right Debbie, it’s amazing how a little change here and there can renew your energy about a project. We feel so much better visiting our site ourselves!
I likey and I’m excited to see the polished product. I need to hire someone to do the same for ours.
Thanks Erica. Yes, there is still work to be done, but we wanted to get the ball rolling to let people know that yay, they can now browse without it timing out and that it is easier to look around. The transition to the new host and all the coding problems was a huge job on the back end and Warren did amazing. Now with the new layout we can start to make the cosmetic changes as we go.
Great new design, I do see it very different from what you used to have. I am also thinking about changing mine, I just keep coming with so many ideas yet little time or technical knowledge to go with them. Oh well…
Hi Federico, I know what you mean. We’ve been wanting to upgrade for over a year but never had the time to sit down and get down to business. Finding Warren through our teammate Sherry Ott of Ottsworld on the Mongol Rally helped a lot. It is good to have someone that you can trust take care of all the technical stuff on the site. Before we found Warren (and Chris of the Aussie Nomad) we would wing it through trial and error and we made a lot of errors.
Love the new looks guys! I know how hard re-organizing everything is… I’m in the midst of it myself at the moment. It definitely has made your site way more easy to navigate. Now people can find all of your great info!
Thanks Alison. We are happy with the navigation process. We found our old theme clunky and difficult to navigate. We have already seen our bounce rate drop considerably simply because people can now find other posts to read about. Good luck with your new design can’t wait to see the changes.
Hello D & D!
Congratulations on some very sophisticated changes! Your blog has always been great on content and now it is even better on the technical and navigation side. I know what you went through with your technical difficulties during the Mongol Rally — but this is the silver lining. It inspired you to make your site even better.
I love the evolution of blogging; how we are always learning, changing, growing and improving. I’m doing the same thing: Working with my designer to improve my site; and finding ways to improve my writing skills and my content.
And the best part is that travel blogging is starting to be taken more seriously, and given more respect — and more financial support. It’s coming
Mariellen
Thanks Mariellen. We are feeling so much better about everything and things are starting to come back to normal, so in a sense the frustration of our problems of the Mongol Rally were a blessing because it made us sit down and take the time to make the changes. You are so right, there is a circle of us that started out together that are evolving and growing together and it is amazing to see the success that everyone is having in this fledgling business. It’s great to have such a supportive community helping each other out.