Wednesday, May 03, 2006

Croatia Online - Spring Clean 1


The Kiwi Tree in front of our terrace has grown from a bare stump to a leafy micro forest in the last four weeks and is nearly ready to provide a complete umbrella from the mid-day sun. That means that spring cleaning is a little overdue but it’s never too late!

Croatia Online is just a few months old but, with 60 postings already, the cobwebs are beginning to appear. The google blog spots are great for many things but pose some challenges in organising content. Content is what Croatia Online is all about and, from what we have seen on our site meter, we’ve been found from all over the world on some quite specific searches. We were also delighted to see last week that a Yahoo search on “Croatian marinas” put us second, probably due to our special feature on sailing and marinas. First was http://www.marinafacility.solutions.com/ who specialise in supplying equipment and services to Croatian marinas, ports and shipyards.

Our spring clean is really just a tidy up process focusing on feedback and what we have learnt in our formative months. You may have already noticed that, in our links section at the top right hand side of the page, we have a link called “Croatia Online – Index to Postings”. This links to a page where we summarise, in a few key words, the main content of each posting with an easy direct link direct to the specific posting, so you can find what you want quickly. The rest of our tidy up is as follows:

Links

Our home page links will include a maximum of three external sites, picked for topical and relevant content, and updated on a weekly basis, as was initially conceived. The rest of the home page links will be internal aids to navigation around the site – index to postings, about the author, and an “ Other Links” link that will allow us to expand on and increase the number of relevant external links . Click on “Other Links” on the main page and get comprehensive details on sites that will help you in your quest for knowledge, information and entertainment on all things Anglo Croatian. Tomorrow’s posting will be devoted to the launch of the separate links page.

Postings Format

The mix of information on Croatian destinations, the tourism industry, lifestyle, business culture and news seems to have worked well and appears popular with readers. However, the recent regular bank holiday Mondays, and the occasional Croatia Online sabbatical or busman’s holiday, have meant that attaching a specific day to each main subject doesn’t always work. So we’ll be continuing with the rotation of subjects but not identifying them with a specific day of the week. This has the added advantage that if something topical springs up, which deserves a full airing, we can deal with it straight away, rather than waiting for the right day!

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Hopefully the above changes will make the site easier to use and increase the information available. Your feedback is always welcome so let us know what you think about the site and how we could improve it for you.

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