At TravelPod, we want to make your travel blogging experience the best it can be, anywhere on the planet. For 12 years, we’ve been working diligently to reach that goal and today we are launching a brand new look for your blogs.
Say “Adios” to the old:
And “Hola” to the new!
We’ve listened to all of your feedback and this update is more than just a facelift for your blogs, we’ve also packed in tons of great features you’ve requested.
As of right now, you can look forward to trying out these new features:
- A cleaner, professionally designed look for your blogs with bigger thumbnails to embed in your entries
- Improved navigation for your visitors
- An interactive timeline at the top of the screen and maps, maps and more interactive maps
- A simple one-click “I like this” voting system on entries and pictures
- Your guests no longer need to register on TravelPod to post comments on your photos and entries!!!!
- A hugely improved picture browsing experience with quick previews and the ability to easily jump between albums
- A single spot on your Dashboard to manage and reply to ALL comments left on your entries and pictures
- An additional world map clearly displaying your trip in the right-hand sidebar
- The ability to change your hometown and country with a handy auto-complete feature
- A new email privacy option for messages and notifications that you send (Thanks for the idea, Woz!)
- No more popup windows! None. Zip. Zero.
- A free-form html field for your profile page where you can can add badges, widgets, links to your facebook profile or what ever else you want
It’s this functionality that has kept you coming back year after year, to record and share your travel experiences with the world. To make sure TravelPod is as useful as possible to our bloggers, it is extremely important that each and every one of you tell us what you think of the new look, so please don’t be shy.
The TravelPod community would be nothing without you, and your input literally shapes our future.
Please leave comments at the bottom of this blog post, and let us know what you think.
Happy travels!
November 3, 2009 at 4:15 pm
It would be great if you could somehow see the caption copy on photos when in slideshow mode.
November 4, 2009 at 2:54 pm
Thanks for the feedback Josie!
November 4, 2009 at 3:12 pm
I like the new layout EXCEPT(!) the listing of entries in each blog. With the old style the locations were in their own column, and you could quickly scan down the list to see where somebody had been. With the new style the locations are directly under the titles, with the comment and picture count directly underneath that. It’s very difficult to visually scan down the list, and also takes ten times the vertical area of the old format to say the same thing.
I hope this doesn’t sound too critical because I like everything else, so well done!
November 5, 2009 at 1:11 pm
Thanks for the feedback AJ. I know exactly what you mean.
We’ll be making some tweaks in the coming days/weeks based on everyone’s feedback. We’ll make sure to keep this in mind.
November 4, 2009 at 6:22 pm
[...] The revamped design gives bloggers using the platform new features, like an interactive timeline at the top of each post, an improved photo gallery as well as an HTML box on users' profile page that can be used to embed widgets, among other features documented in the TravelPod blog. [...]
November 10, 2009 at 3:23 pm
New to the site and love it but shame you cannot personalise your own page more. In terms of colour or image background…or maybe i just haven’t found that button yet. Love the website though. This is the best of the bunch
November 11, 2009 at 8:53 am
Thanks Megan – Hang tight, we’re working to make TP more personalizable ( is that a word? ) while preserving the clean look we’re now rolling out.
Not an easy challenge but we’re getting there.
Thanks for the feedback!
November 10, 2009 at 7:20 pm
Hi, Have been a long-time user of travelpod. Love the way it is much easier to insert a photo directly into the story (having bit of trouble about where to insert at present so doesn’t make the story so disjointed, but will work it out).
Can’t see where you can put a silent update in, so that the line of your travel shows correctly e.g. we went to Brisbane, but didn’t report there, but want the trip line to show us going there
December 7, 2009 at 12:46 pm
Dianne, I think you are referring to an entry that only consists of a map pin, correct?
Go to your Dashboard: http://www.travelpod.com/dashboard
Click Manage Entries
Click Add Multiple Entries
You can quickly add entries here without writing anything to go with them.
December 5, 2009 at 5:27 pm
I love the new travelpod. Its a lot easier than it was before. I like the map that shows where you have been or going. But there still are some odd things that make the website a little confusing. Like the messages. I dont like how the messages are sent and replied to through email. I would rather have a seperate message box in travelpod. I think a lot more people would reply. Also there’s no way to see if the message went through. Also, the list of entries is wierd when making your blog. You should have the first entry at the top and the last at the bottom, not the other way around. On the whole though the webite is a lot better!
December 7, 2009 at 12:48 pm
Thanks Lawrence, I am forwarding your comments about the TravelPod message box.
Thanks for letting us know what you think, you’re not the only one who would like to see this feature!