By Well hey, how are you? Haven’t seen you in a while? Have you lost weight? You look good!
New Look!
Aussie on the Road is back, baby!
Back and better than ever!
Thanks to the wonderfully talented (and infinitely patient) Bobbi from Ready to Blog Designs, Aussie on the Road has taken a few days off and returned with this sexy new look. There’s a new logo and colour scheme, you’ll also notice that the site looks a lot cleaner and offers up a much more responsive web and mobile experience.
That big, manly picture of me on the front page certainly won’t hurt my traffic either, which would be great for a poster design!
You’ll also notice over the coming weeks that everything is being recategorised into one of four categories: travel tips, travel writing, destinations, and love & life on the road. The latest post from each of these categories will appear on the front page, and you can click the links at the top of the page to get to more content.
New Features!
It’s not just aiming to be eye-catching and pretty. Bobbi has also been working overtime to get three new features up and running that I’m super excited about. One is already up and running, one is a work in progress, and the last of them is a couple of weeks away pending my ability to remove my thumb my butt and do some writing.
- New Destinations page (Done!)
- The Great Big List of Links (In progress)
- 1000 Things to do Before You Die (Coming soon!)
If you take a quick wander over to Destinations, you’ll notice a nifty interactive map has taken the place of clunky drop down menus. Looking for something on Australia or Fiji? Click on the Oceania map and prepare for a full fledged facial of Oceanian content. You’re welcome!
Someday South America and Antarctica will eventually get their own pages, should they ever be so gracious as to invite me to their shores.
The old links page is gone and has been replaced with the new look Great Big List of Links. My favourite links are already up for all to see, but over the next few weeks I’ll be adding a whole bunch of other great blogs – travel and otherwise. If you’d like your blog to be included in these hallowed halls, contact me and we’ll hook it up!
The last new feature is the one I’m most excited about: 1000 Items to do Before You Die.
My occasionally inappropriate bucket list currently numbers at a relatively meager 323 items, but I’m going to be expanding that to a massive 1000 items in the next few weeks. There’ll also be a great new design to help you navigate through my shopping list of life experience or submit your own.
New Posts
I’ve been a pretty shitty friend to ya’ll of late.
I’ve been so busy with studying (I’m actually studying!), partying, and my recent Dubai trip that I’ve let this site fall by the wayside a bit.
Oh sure, I’ve been whoring up Facebook & Instagram like you wouldn’t believe, but I haven’t done a lot of writing. Part of that was being busy, and part of it was (if I’m being completely honest) absolutely hating how the old site looked and felt.
It wasn’t quite as bad as the dog’s abortion that was my very first website, but there were probably GeoCities sites that I liked the look of more. That’s not a slur against the very talented guy who did the work for me – he was only following my requests. Mea culpa, guys. #ifuckedup
That changes now. Bobbi has worked her wonders and now it’s my time to shine. There’s a barrage of posts coming your way that includes the ever popular, often controversial travel blogging crushes count-down.
To work up your appetite, you can check out the 2011 Travel Blogging Crushes and the 2014 Travel Blogging Crushes lists.
There’s also a bunch of other stuff to get excited for:
- 10 Aussie Bucket List Items;
- The complete scoop from my week on location with Yahoo and Emirates in Dubai;
- Shark diving in the Dubai Mall;
- Learning to fly-board in Dubai;
- Hot air ballooning (in Dubai);
- 10 Things I’ve Learned Being Back at Uni;
- Learning to surf with the Burj Al Arab;
- Sunset yoga
Oh, and about 1000 new posts to go along with the 1000 item bucket list. You didn’t think I’d just make a list and leave it at that, did you? There’ll be a blow by blow (literally, in one item’s case…) of everything I’ve achieved so far, as well as posts about how you can check off the items that appear on the list.
I’m going to have some major league carpal tunnel.
Your Say
As I said, the new site is still a work in progress and there’s bound to be a couple of kinks to iron out. Bobbi is working hard behind the scenes to get things ready for me to inevitably fuck them up, but I’d love your feedback in the interim.
Perhaps more importantly, I want you to have a greater say in what direction we go in from here. What do you want to read more about? What kind of posts resonate with you?
I’m all ears, guys.