I’ve been busy working behind the scenes and I am finally happy with draft 1 of my site! Improvements from the previous version include:
- Completely new design using WordPress technology, which gives easier navigation, separation of posts and the ability to add comments, like most blogs out there
- Option to subscribe to find out immediately if I have made a new post
- A page to directly contact me through the site.
- Side menus for language selection, viewing my microblog twitter feed, etc.
- Automatic language detection!! I quite like this one; entering the base address www.irishpolyglot.com will automatically give you my site in English, Spanish, French, Italian, Portuguese, Esperanto or Irish based on your browser’s default language setting. If you select a language other than the default, then it will be saved for your next visit!
- Each page is entirely in the selected language. Not just the posts, but the site’s date-format, clickable buttons/links, headers etc.
- From an administrative point of view, I’ve done most of the work coding the site so adding a new post is easy and I can do it more often.
My work is far from complete, but it’s a great improvement on the previous version!! As far as design on the site itself goes, I still have to tinker with the overall page layout and design until I find one that I like (not this one), write a good “About me” page and iron out a few minor problems.
Why all this work? What will I be using this site for? At the moment all posts are only about my travels since late last year; hardly interesting to anyone who doesn’t know me, although I will continue to write about where I am. The reason I’ve put so much work into improving the site is because eventually I’d like to get lots of visitors for other articles that I’ll be writing. In the last 6 years that I’ve been travelling I’ve learned a few things and can give some general travel tips and language learning tips. Also, I’ve been on the net since 1993 and am online nearly all day, and like to keep up to date with the latest developments out there when not travelling so I have a few very useful web 2.0 secrets I’d like to share! Otherwise I’ll be writing about things I believe people would like to know about, and hopefully the site will naturally evolve into something really worth a visit one day.
Any site-design advice, or general blog tips are appreciated! Any any thoughts in general or encouragement will be well received, just contact me or leave a comment below 
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Karl
