Six months in and a lot have happened

Can you imagine? it's been six months already since we launched the site

Written by Tomas Lyngen

Published: 03 Oct 2021

Back on April 3rd, we launched this site and since then a lot have happened. We have continued to post at least one article a day, sometimes more

We try to have a non-news article two or three times a week. Wednesday and Saturday can be all from reviews to recipes. While Sundays will feature mostly destinations, more on that in a bit

Site design

If you've followed us from the beginning, you have probably noticed big changes in how the site looks and feels. Some of the basic foundation have been there since the beginning, but we've tweaked and adjusted it to where we are today

Today we've a much more distinct dark green color theme all through the site

Now the design is much more mobile friend, than it was at launch. Mobile is where most users are today, so it's important that the site functions well both there and across all screen sizes

Destinations

In September we launched a new series on Sundays, called Lookback. First out we covered by backpacking trip in 2012 through Asia, we started in Thailand, before we head to Japan next Sunday

We still have more content to cover in this Lookback series, upcoming destinations will be New York and Malaysia

Why are we doing a look back series? A few reasons, but main reason is that many still can't travel and we thought it might be fun to see how the world used to be like. Another aspect, is that next time we visit one of these destinations, we can better compare how something have changed

We plan to keep Sunday to destinations, even when the Lookback series at one point comes to an ends. Destinations will cover amusement parks, countries, beaches, stores and other places one can visit. We probably won't post a destination every Sunday (such as today), but when we post, it will be mainly Sundays

Sneak peak: Back when... Blockbuster almost bought Netflix

It's crazy to think of, but Netflix wasn't always the giant it is today. Once upon a time, Blockbuster was the most dominant in USA and Netflix didn't even scratch the surface

Netflix was founded in 1997, by Marc Randolph and Reed Hastings. They wanted to do something similar as Amazon, by utilizing the internet. They first considered VHS, but decided it was to bulky and delicate to ship back and forth

Starting November, we'll be releasing our first article in our new Back when... series and first out will be Back when... Blockbuster almost bought Netflix. Then our plan is to release one new article once a quarter in the Back when... series

Our readers

The daily reader count is steadily increasing and we can see our readers are from many corners of the world

We even starting to see readers signing up to an account. It will allow you to comment, but right now you won't have to much more benefits. In the future, we are considering giving early access to articles for members.

Behind the scenes

The site have also had quite a few improvements made to it, other than just design wise. As most are behind the scenes, you might not have noticed them

.webp

We've been working on making the site faster, one step is going over to .webp image format. All new articles written will be using the .webp format, but as we already have written articles into December, not all will be with the new format yet. Images using .webp is a lot smaller than jpg and png images, meaning the images will load quicker and also use less data (good when on a data plan with quote)

Bugs

Another aspects is removing bugs. We had one bug where one could register twice with the same e-mail, making it impossible to logon. This is now fixed, so there can't exist two (or more) users with the same e-mail

Dynamic

We've also worked a lot of making the website more dynamic, so you have a good experience no matter what screen size you're on. Most of this falls under design, but we also have had to adjust some of the backend magic to make it optimized

Tags: #bonty