I’ve been doing a fair bit of tinkering with the website in the last month or so and I realised that while I intended to put up regular updates on my progress with the site well, that just has not happened.

So what have I been working on?

Well one thing I put a lot of time into was the map page.  Now it is still a work in progress but I am getting there.  I have the program Worldkit up and running and integrated with another program called Zoomify.  Now that took heaps of work and a little help, I think I have mentioned that I am a little technically challenged with all these things and while I am sooo much better after doing all of this, well I still have a long way to go.

So the map program basically works.  Now all I need is to find a good world political map, (I am working on it) that I am happy with and like the look of and more importantly is big enough for the application to work properly.

What else, um, I was really getting hit by a heap of different types of spam (referrer, trackback, comment and email) so I’ve done a fair bit of work mostly on the back end of the site to help try and combat this.  Nothing you can really see.  Still if you have your own site and you are noticing a dramatic increase in the level of spam do a little research and you should find products to help.  I would list what I have done to date but unless you are using Expression Engine it probably will not help.  If you are using EE then I would guess you have already found the forum and the folks there will be more help than I can be.

I have put up a ‘Contact Form’ on the contact page and changed the email link so that it isn’t a link any more.  I know that is probably hassle for some but again, I got sick of having to mass delete and blacklist literally 100’s of spam emails. 

So far these combined measures are having a dramatic effect so I have to say a big thanks in particular to the good folks on the EE forum who helped.

This weekend I have also been working on, well mostly back end stuff.  The only part of that you can ‘see’ is on the journal page.  You see I have one weblog with separate categories for the different country journals.  Now after doing a bit of reading I realised that I can create a second level of categories under the first order, so another words I can create a category for Thailand then under Thailand have things like Before Departure ->Planing, Budget, Itinerary and In Country -> Accommodation, Food, Transport, Daily Journal…. well you get the picture.

What I was wrestling with is the way I had the categories (or country journals) listed in the sidebox for navigation if I added say 9 to 15 extra headings under each country heading then the navigation list would show all of them and while that is not too bad now as I travel more and add more destinations that list would get unwieldy.  With yet more help and a handy little plug in the Country Journals navigation list only has the ‘parent’ or first level countries listed.  When you click on an individual country it then expands to show you the various categories under it.

As I said right now you probably will not notice much difference but if you think about it with say my Thailand example above.  That is one country, one trip of about four weeks and has 10 headings.  Imagine what the Country Journals navigation box would look like with all headings and subheadings listed by the time I get to my RTW, let alone with the list of the countries etc once I am on my RTW.

I shudder to think of how long that list in its original format would look and how much scrolling one would have to do!

Due to popular demand I have added an ‘About Me’ section.  I did not really think I needed one but it seemed to be a popular thing for people to comment on, ‘oh like your site, but did you realise you do not introduce yourself?  That you don’t have an About Me section’.  So there you go it’s now there is you really wish to read it.

That is about it really.  It probably does not sound like much but it did involve quite a few hours work.

Have fun with your own sites, no seriously, if you are a fellow masochist trying to set up your own site without the faintest clue what you are doing.  Welcome, have fun.