eTenerife.com was launched in the summer of the year 2000. It was my first website and one of the first English language portals for the island of Tenerife.
Before arriving in Tenerife I lived in Bangkok. I had landed my dream job in the marketing department of a hotel group and just couldn’t believe my luck. Until that is, they showed me their painfully expensive website and asked me why it couldn’t be found in the search engines. Terrified to admit I hadn’t the foggiest idea in case they chucked me straight back out the door again, I promised I would get to the bottom of the problem. I did. Tuns out that the jokers who had designed the site had not included any basic SEO (search engine optimisation) elements for the search engines to find.
In those days, such a lazy trick was easy to pull on unsuspecting business owners. Web designers threw up gorgeous designs and charged a fortune for them. Only problem was, they did not include any SEO whatsoever. Even today, when page optimisation information is so much easier to come by, and all web designers should take the time to insert at least the basic seo elements (title, description, anchor text) some still neglect to do so and clients are left wondering why their site never gets any visitors.
The long hours in the hotel corporate office gave me the greatest of respect for those hardworking souls that keep hotels running smoothly but were not for me. At the end of my contract I knew I was not cut out for the hotel industry but instead had been bitten by the internet bug. I also wanted to stay in Bangkok and so was thrilled to land a job as Content Director for a little start-up called Ethailand.com.
With a very small team, entrepreneur Kevin Moss, captured the attention of several large companies and before we knew it, eThailand was receiving injections of capital from a series of angel investors. It was a crazy ride and I loved every minute of it.
Sadly the days of meteoric investment in little internet start-ups are in the dim and dusty past now but even so, the ability of the internet to level the playing field and let little companies compete alongside major corporations has always thrilled me.
Arriving in Tenerife I decided to dabble with creating my own website, just for fun. Suffice to say that my first MS Frontpage forays into web design were gruesome to say the least. Thankfully those who originally found my website were a forgiving lot and I watched in astonishment as week by week, visitor numbers grew.
Increasing traffic or not Frontpage is a dreadful editor and eventually I plucked up the courage to try my hand at Dreamweaver. Although a definite step up from MS Frontpage, it is still a long way from a CMS. I tried unsuccessfully to gain some control over eTenerife’s sprawling development by using templates but in the end I had to admit that even I could not find my way round the site with a map and a compass.
Finally, after much wringing of hands and pulling of hair, I decided I had to bite the bullet and pull the old girl into the 21st century. (And once I had done that, I could get to work on the website). It has been a bit of a scary ride not least because Google loved the old version of the site. Will this change plummet eTenerife to the bottom of the search engines?
Quite possibly. But there is life in the old girl yet so regardless of what Google makes of it, I hope you find the site easier to navigate and like the new brighter look. By moving eTenerife.com onto a wordpress frame (beautifully designed by Elegant Themes by the way) it should be a lot easier to keep up to date and moving forward.
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I do like the new look ETENERIFE.COM. I find it a site I return to again and again.
Glad to see you moved away from FrontPage, or FrontRage. Dreamweaver isn’t much better but it’s a definate step in the right direction.
I hand code CSS, HTML, PHP & MySQL using xHTML Kit. It’s a good tool and free which provides code highlighting and well worth a look.
Really like the site…
Ha. I moved away from FP a long time ago. Got stuck in a DW rut for a long time though. Very happy with the move.