Finally, We’re Back!

After a mountainful of problems with our previous webhost crashing our data then holding it hostage, we are free of them and have managed to get our site both back up and with the ability to add new posts. Such is the life when you are not so good about backing your site up and you have to rebuild databases yourself. All I will say is no one should ever use Mochahost for any reason. There are so many other places that will at least honor the terms of what they sold you and not crash your server. Is that so much to ask?

But as we close 2010, we’re back thanks to a New Year’s miracle, and we’ll hopefully be bringing you some more content soon. Happy New Year everybody!

There’s a few issues yet to figure out, like why the comments below have nothing to do with this post. We’ll get there … sigh. (And they’re gone, yay!)

I think the site is fixed

I make my long awaited return to the blog to announce … that after countless days of annoying correspondence with our web hosts, I think we took care of all the crap that was going wrong on our blog. Please do let us know if you notice anything weird because we had to move servers and reset links and insanity like that. So hopefully no more spam and hopefully links keep working. Just what I love doing while on vacation!

We Maybe Fixed It

We’ve been getting a lot of comments lately about the site loading slow. So with a relax day today we took a look and discovered some non-original code sitting in our header – just another way of saying our site got hacked.

It’s still not clear to us what this code was doing there, since it didn’t seem to do anything (except call our site “smelly”), but nevertheless, we removed it and as far as we can tell things load a lot smoother now. So drop a comment in here if our site is loading better or worse for you now. And then continue down below to read about our other big news.

At Long Last

Now that we’re in Cape Town, its the first time we’ve been able to access the website since arriving in South Africa. Though we’ve managed internet at a few places (and hence been able to send off posts to the “invisible hand”), our website, for whatever reason, is the only thing that never is able to load. We have no explanation except that Mochahost (our webhost) hates South Africa. But apparently they are fond of Cape Town, because here we sit, looking at our website for the first time in weeks. So apologies to anyone who asked something that may be buried in the comments by now, but we’re doing the best we can.

We also noticed that many links on the website were dead. We don’t exactly know how long that’s been, but we’ve fixed that up and all the individual pages should load fine now. If you’ve never had problems with this, maybe its just another Mochahost South Africa bias that only we are dealing with. But regardless, we’ve now not only accessed the website and fixed a few glitches, but we’ve also uploaded more posts, so be sure to check back regularly for stories about all our latest adventures.

As a first order of business, we have finally been able to upload the Country Summaries and Budget Summaries for both Peru and Ecuador, so go check them out. We also updated the Where Are We Now Page, so you can see much more clearly where our roadtrip has taken us and will be taking us in the next few weeks.

Tidbits

We have added Argentina pages to the Country Summaries and Country Budgets section. Go check them out! However, be aware that they are not 100% complete, as we are returning to Argentina in the beginning of March for about two weeks.

Also, if you want to read about what we did while my brother Gregory was visiting us—besides the Inca Trail—go check out his website. He has great coverage of sandboarding in Huacachina, flying over the Nazca lines, Cuzco, and more. You can wish him a happy birthday while you are there, as he turns 24 today.

Comments on Pages!

Just a quick notice that we managed to add comments onto the pages (let me know if anything else looks funny, I had to play around with some code and I don’t know code). So please, feel free to fire away any questions you may have about budgets or countries or any other page you like! Now we need to just figure out our problem with pictures. See, this downtime is good for something!

Administrative Goodness

As we make our way down to the bottom of the world—well, okay, not quite the bottom, unless we are able to stow-away on an Antarctic cruise ship—we wanted to make sure you had something to read. (Hopefully, we’ll be back online before you can miss us, but we’re not exactly sure about all our connections over the next few days.) So we’ve added a new section called Country Budgets and updated it with spending information for Nicaragua. Go ahead and check it out. And if you want to know where we are, be sure to visit the Where Are We Now page, as it has been updated with more detailed information for our next couple of weeks.

Technical Difficulties

We’re having a bit of a problem with being able to post here in St. Petersburg due to the fact that our computer’s power supply failed (taking out with it the rest of the plugs in the room), so you’ll have to do without pictures for another day. We’ll be back in Stockholm tomorrow night, so expect a flurry of posts then about our experiences and thoughts about St. Petersburg. Till then, please stand by.

Sound Off!

We’re in the entertainment and education business. That’s what this blog is. It’s information in a (hopefully) entertaining form. Maybe that’s a bit high minded. Maybe we’re just entertainment. And on that note, calling it a business is pure folly. It’s just something we enjoy. But that’s why I’m putting up this post. We’re taking a look at the site and trying to make it a better experience for you readers out there (like, for starters, the addition of a favorite posts on the sidebar). So with that in mind, we have a few questions we’d love some feedback on.

What else should be highlighted for new readers in the favorite posts?

What do you want us to write more about? Options include nostalgia over our past trips, logistic planning for this trip, romantic musings about inanimate objects, more pictures (or “picture of the day” type posts), the insanity in our daily lives, commentary on travel news, or anything else you think would make this site more enjoyable.

What do you hate? What could we make disappear from this site? What types of subjects should we never post about again?

What features could we add to the site as a whole to make it a better browsing experience? All ideas, whether a specific plugin or a general thought, are highly encouraged.

This website being a dictatorship and all, this may be your only chance ever to provide us with feedback, so let loose, fire away, seize the opportunity. Much obliged.

Away for the Weekend

We’re off to Denver tonight to celebrate Jeff’s grandmother’s 90th birthday! She’s a pretty amazing lady. She has a college degree…a rarity among women her age…and she’s rather well traveled. In fact, she spent a number of years living in Turkey. We should all hope to have lives as enriched, fulfilling, and full of adventure as Farmor (the Swedish word for your paternal grandmother) has had. Anyhow, I’m not sure whether we’ll have any Internet access while we’re away, so you’ll just have to miss us for a couple of days. Hopefully, we’ll have a new post up on Sunday, but if not, one will come shortly after that, so keep checking back. Happy weekend.