Website Additions and Changes

As a website grows and expands, it is important to review and reassess our needs as well as take into consideration the pattern of visitors to our site. As a result, we have implemented a number of changes to Gourmantic.com.

Easier Navigation

A sub-navigation bar now groups countries by geography for easier navigation. It also presents the major categories that we consider to reflect key content for Gourmantic.

Getting to Know Us

To help visitors learn a little more about us, we detail our wish list of places and the dining establishments we would like to visit and cross them off as we achieve those dreams. This listing is featured under Lists, previously called the Gourmantic Living page. This is in addition to Places We’ve Been, which is a popular page with new visitors.

Table for Two

We have added a new page, Table for Two, where we’ve compiled a list of our favourite restaurants and eateries from our travels around the world as well as local haunts. The page will also serve as a directory linking to our restaurant reviews.

Link Love

We now have a Links page. This is a living document and a work in progress as we expand our circle and list sites where we visit on a regular basis and engage in comments. The page also outlines our link policy.

Comment Luv

We have implemented the Comment Luv plugin which automatically retrieves the link to a commenter’s latest blog post. This is in addition to the Top Commenters listing in the sidebar which provides a shout out to our top commenters’ websites. As our regular readers know, we reply to every comment and encourage discussion and sharing of information.

Back End

While invisible to the visitor, a few changes have been made to the back end of WordPress. These include minimising the number of plugins we use and implementing some SEO enhancements. We have also fixed a longstanding problem with pingbacks and trackbacks making them operational.

The last few days have been productive and at times challenging but most rewarding. Feel free to take a look around and let us know what you think in the comments.