Fresh New design for Getting Down Under

Hi Everyone! It’s been well over two years since Getting Down Under went live and I thought it was about time that I started to make some radical changes to the look of our site.

Some time ago I added an Articles page in an attempt to try and make some of our more useful and popular articles a little easier to find.

Having done this I still found the historical designs a little cumbersome and lacking in it’s ease of navigation due to the chronological order in which our posts were displayed.

As our site has grown it’s become more of an online magazine covering all aspects of migration to Australia. 

I wanted the design of our site to reflect this kind of format. Displaying posts from various categories and making these posts, our recent blog entries and Forum contributions available on the main pages of our site.

We’ve spent quite a bit of time looking for and tweaking the right theme for the site but I think the new look goes a little way towards achieving what I’m looking for.

Like anything, our new look will take a little further work before it’s just as we want it, however I think it’s good enough to go live on our site.

I really hope you like the new look getting down under but we still need your help.

If you spot a bug or something looking strange then please feel free to post any comments.

In addition, your own opinions are really valuable to us. As a visitor to our site we appreciate any input and suggestions on things we can do to help us make a visit to our pages a better visit for you. With this in mind please feel free to provide any feedback by posting a comment using the form below.

All the best

Regards

Mark

Popularity: 6% [?]

BBC’s wanted down under drawing in the crowds

BBC’s wanted down under seems to be drawing in the crowds to getting down under as of late.

I actually remembered that last year when the first series was on the TV our visitor volumes spiked as people jumped onto the web to find a little more information about the show.

This last week its been a little crazy, within two days of the first show airing on TV we’ve been seeing over 2000 unique visitors to the site every day with ‘wanted down under’ and ‘wanted down under BBC’ being the main search terms used to find our site

With this kind of interest I’m still slightly bemused by the fact that the BBC chooses to air the show at such a daft time.  9am in the morning when most people are at work isn’t the best time to show a program like this and I really hope the folks at the BEEB are receiving similar kinda feedback.

If your found us looking for info on the show then make sure you say hi

Popularity: 69% [?]

New Popular Articles page added

I’ve been writing blog entries and articles on this site since January 2006 and its getting to the stage where some of the more useful articles are getting buried deep in the archives.

To try and address this I’ve written a new popular articles page.

Within this page I’ve provided links to a number of articles which may prove particularly useful to folks at various stages of their journey down under.

The popular articles can also be accessed via the popular articles link on our main menu.

Popularity: 10% [?]

Playing around with the look of the site

Its been a while since I last updated the look of the site and to be honest I was getting a little vexed by the busyness of the old template and after the stresses of baby stuff yesterday I wanted to get creative.

I’ve updated the theme to something a little cleaner and hopefully a little more pleasing on the eye.

Its always a little difficult to decide whats best when deciding on the look of a site. I guess I’m just basing the layout on my own personal preferences (which can often be described as a little obscure to say the least).

Over time, I’d like to integrate our forums and Photo Gallary a little more with the general feel of the site but I guess I’ll need to look at doing this when I have a little more time!

As always, you, our dear readers are the people that matter so if you have any comments or suggestions then post a reply Read more

Popularity: 2% [?]

So testing this posting via email out

Hi folks, I’ve made a little tweak recently which I’ll be testing out over the next couple of days.

I have set up an email account which automatically (hopefully) posts any emails I send to this account as a blog entry at gettingdownunder.

This way, I should be able to blog via my Blackberry which has to be a good thing right? Especially when I’m sat twiddling my thumbs on the train!

Anyway. no idea if this will work so here goes

Cheers

Mark

Edit: Yay! it works

Popularity: 3% [?]

Lara Bingle Topless GQ photos equal lots of visitors

Nearly a year ago I blogged about the wonders of Laura Bingle (a name I have since found our is spelt Lara Bingle) and how the topless comment I made attracted a lot of extra visitors to our site.

I’ve written about Lara a number of times. Since she first appeared on the ‘Where the bloody hell are you?‘ ads she’s drawn quite a bit of attention.

Whether or not the attention has been down to her good looks or the advertisers tag-lines is debatable but for the visitors to our site it seems the Bingles assets are a big attraction.

The reason for me posting this entry is because the wonders of the Bingle effect have struck again!

I’ve noticed a bit of a spike in traffic to our site recently and having done a little digging around it seems that good old Lara has been in the news again.

Top searches hitting our site in the last few days have been:

laura bingle (looks like I’m not the only one who can’t spell her name correctly). lara bingle naked (hey lets cut to the chase and get to the point). Wanted down under - Finally good to see that we have some folks interested in a move down under still viting our site (hello to you ). laura bingle topless - Back to the boobs again. bingle lara (lets try the backward spelling approach) laura bingle naked (different and incorrect spelling of one of the earlier terms) lara bingle (short and sweet), laura bingle nude (not naked but nude this time) lara bingle topless (more users looking for boobs)!

So, whats with all of the interest in Laura Bingle this time? Well it seems that most of our Lara fans visiting our site originate from within Australian shores.

Some time ago, when the ‘where the bloody hell are you?‘ ads were being shown regularly, and Bingles public profile was at it’s peek, the Australian ‘lads mag’ Zoo magazine showed some piccies of Lara Bingle topless (but appropriately covered).

The magazine advertised the pictures as: “World Exclusive! Bloody Hell! TV ad girl, Lara Bingle’s first ever men’s mag shoot” while an accompanying press release declared: “Lara Bingle Poses Topless for New Men’s Magazine.”

Bingle says she did not pose, topless or exclusively, for the magazine and tried to sue publisher Emap in the Federal Court for defamation, misleading conduct and breach of copyright.

Anyway, to cut a long story short it turns our that she DID pose topless and the pictures appeared for a short time on the German version of GQ Magazine.

The Sydney Morning Herald picked up on the story and reported on the story which in turn caused the GQ webservers to crash as a direct result of all the extra traffic being routed to the site.

The crash resulted in even more news which resulted in more traffic to GQ which resulted in GQ removing the pic.

The lack of the offending pics is what appears to be leading Bingle fans on their search for pictures of the top totties assets (damn, I’m starting to sound like a daily star reporter).

Anyway, a GDU toned down version of the offending picture can be found here (Lara Bingle Topless GQ photos). Was the search worth it?

I have a feeling it’s probably not and if you want the uncesored version…well you’ll need to wait for the guys back at GQ to sort their servers out

Popularity: 42% [?]

We have feeds

Hi Guys, I’ve noticed that we have a few people subscribing to updates from our site using the wonders of RSS feeds.

RSS What? I hear you say RSS feeds for those of you not familiar with the term enables folks to read updates from a number of websites or new services all at the same time from a common interface such as a feed reader (a software package that you down load onto your PC).

There are a few services offered by the likes of Google and Yahoo that also enable you to view these feeds online.

Why am I telling you this? Well, for those of you looking for this kind of functionality, I’ve signed up an account with feedburner.com to enable those of you interested in getting RSS updates a little easier.

Clicky Here for details of the RSS Feed and subscription options (opens a new page).

Receive an daily update by email every time we update the blog.

If you have even a slight interest in what we are up to down under, another of the funky features offered by Feedburner is the ability to subscribe to blog updates via email. Basically if you subscribe, you’ll get a daily update on the days that we get around to updating the blog. If no new content or updates are written then no email will be sent to you.

This doesn’t mean that we don’t want to see you here daily checking out our forums and stuff it might just save you five seconds of your busy lives checking the blog to see if the blog has updated to find the same old post

Clicky Here for the sign up form for email updates.

For those of you worried about privacy or being bombarded by updates relating to entries about my bum then be assured that your info isn’t shared and you can unsubscribe at any time via a link sent with any updates.

Easy Eh? Comments, questions then please feel free to post em!

Mark

Popularity: 2% [?]

Have you visited our forum yet?

Now then folks. Just over a year ago I asked the question if you would find a discussion forum a useful addition to our site.

No bugger replied but in my defense, at the time I wrote this entry I was only getting about 30 peeps a day reading the Blog.

I’m delighted, chuffed and very slight shocked (OK VERY shocked) to announce that this figure (according to my web stats) is now just over 600 people a day…a very scary prospect indeed, especially for someone who is pretty illiterate

Anyway, I’d really love it if just 10% of you took the time to join our forum which you can find by clicking here . I know some of you might be thinking what do I have to offer?

Well, for folks in a similar boat with similar interests, the fact that your just thinking about moving to Australia makes you a very interesting and useful person to know indeed

I know when we were migrating we were the only people in our sphere of friends, colleagues and acquaintances that were looking at moving to Australia.

Participating in our forum will quickly make you realise that you are truly not alone and having someone to rant to or share an opinion with can really help make the whole immigration process a much more enjoyable and relaxing experience.

Anyway, what the hell, you know it makes sense So don’t be shy, register and post away.

I’ve even started a new thread which you can view by Clicking here…. All you need to do is say hi

See you on the other side, please don’t leave me looking like a mad man…talking to myself…..again

Mark

Popularity: 2% [?]

Playing with our sites design

Hey all

I’m testing a couple of new designs on our Blog to see if they work any better or not.

Feel free to provide any feedback or comments on the design currently in use on the site.

When implementing any new site design I’m trying to make the information within our site as easy to find as possible so If the currently site design doesn’t work for you then please let me know

Cheers

Mark

Popularity: 2% [?]

Wordpress 2.1 Ella is live

The latest release of the Wordpress blog software we use on our site has been released.

Wordpress 2.1 Ella, named after Jazz vocalist Ella Fitzgerald brings with it a number of features which I hope to see employed to great benefit here at getting down under.

I’ll be upgrading to 2.1 very soon so expect to see me playing with some new toys in the very near future

Popularity: 3% [?]

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