Getting Down under » Site Stuff

Submit an Article to Getting Down Under

Mark — Fri, 15 Jan 2010 05:18:11 +0000

Here at Getting Down Under HQ we’ve focused our efforts on publishing news and articles specific to what’s going on in the world of Australian Immigration right now.

The thing is, there isn’t ALWAYS something going on (of interest to our readers anyway). This means that the pages of our site don’t update as often as we’d like them to and if you are one of the many folks who visit our site every day, it’s not going to be particularly exciting for you either!

With this in mind, we have decided to introduce a number of articles written by guest authors. These Articles are focused on educating our Getting Down under readers on the process of migrating to Australia and we’ll look to publish a new article every day for at least the next couple of weeks. If the articles prove to be a popular introduction then we’ll look to source some more.

With this last point in mind. If you’re a budding author with something to contribute specific to the Australian Migration Process then why not get in contact with us and we’ll have a chat about publishing your articles on our site.

We look forward to hearing from you.

In the meantime, on to the first article which has been submitted by Jhon Foster. Jhons article covers the Student Visa for Australia and you can find the article posted here.

Getting Down Under Move Complete

Mark — Sun, 10 Jan 2010 02:17:24 +0000

Hi all, well for our more regular visitors, you may have noticed that the availability of Getting Down Under has been very off and on of late.

Since January 2006, Getting Down Under has been hosted on it’s own server located in (of all places) Texas!

As technology has evolved we’ve found ourselves becoming a little left behind and the recent crash was a sign that we needed to move our site to a more stable host.

With this in mind on Friday morning we started to backup out site in preperation for the move to a new web host and it was during this process that our old server completly died!

36 hours, MUCH stress and numerous emails later we’ve managed to conclude our move. Ironically Getting Down Under is now hosted out of the UK (where my own move down under started from) and although there is a little housekeeping to do (eg deleting some of the duplicate posts in our forums and tidying up some of the funny characters appearing in our articles) I’m happy that the process is over.

I am sorry for the down time though. In a perfect world I should have been able to set up an exact replica of the site on the new host before flicking the switch to swap. Unfortunatly I didn’t have this option available to me I’m afraid!

Anyway it’s done now and with the new host I can leave a large portion of the technical updates to someone else.

It’s good to be back!

Forums Down … Grrrrr!

Mark — Sat, 02 Jan 2010 07:29:07 +0000

Hey Everyone

We’ve recently updated some software on the server that hosts Getting Down Under and this has caused some significant issues with out forums.

Let me take this opportunity to apologise for the downtime. We are trouble shooting the issue with our host and VBulletin (the guys who make the software we use for the forums) and hope to have everything back on line as soon as possible.

Please feel free to keep in touch by either posting a comment at the bottom of this post or via the discussion option within the Getting Down Under Facebook Group which you can view by clicking here.

By virtue of the fact that your reading this shows that we are well on our way to getting everything back online (the main pages have been down for nearly 2 hours). Please bear with is whilst we try and get the forums back to.

Many thanks

Regards

Mark

Getting Down Under now on Facebook and Twitter

Mark — Sun, 07 Jun 2009 06:20:13 +0000

Since launching Getting Down Under in January 2006, our site has evolved from my own personal Blog, tracking the move of my own family down under to more of an online Australian Immigration Magazine providing the latest Australian immigration news, reviews and of course, the odd joke!

Since these early days the internet has continued to develop so today I thought I’d officially launch a couple more channels to keep in touch with our site and with other folk around the world looking to make the move Down under.

Facebook

If you haven’t heard of Facebook then where have you been! Facebook is a free-access social networking website. Users can join networks organized by city, workplace, school, and hobby to connect and interact with other people. We’ve created our own user group on facebook for folks looking to make the move down under. We have 51 members in our little Facebook club so far so lease consider joing us by Clicking Here.

Twitter

The second group we’ve launched is with Twitter. Like Facebook, Twitter is a free social networking and ‘micro-blogging’ service that enables its users to send and read other users’ updates known as tweets. Tweets are text-based posts of up to 140 characters, displayed on the user’s profile page and delivered to other users who have subscribed to them (known as followers).

As well as my own random dribbles, any news updates posted via Getting Down Under will also be tweeted to Twitter. If your already a user of the twitter service and would like to receive details of any related Aussie news then become one of our followers on Twitter. You can access our Twitter account by Clicking Here.

Email Newsletter

As well as our new services available on Facebook and Twitter, I’d also like to use this as an opportunity to remind folks that all of the latest posts and news appearing on Getting Down Under can also be sent to you on email via the Getting Down Under newsletter. To join the other (at time of typing) 1158 people who already subscribe to our newsletter then please Click Here.

Privavcy stuff : For info, we use the services of a company called Feedburner to provide our newsletters. Feedburner is a company owned by the search engine dudes at Google so be rest assured your details will be held in a secure environment. We also promise to keep your email safe and will use it for only this purpose.

Getting Down Under Forum

Last but not least, our Australian Immigration advice forums have already been providing help and support to a great community of like minded people for some time. We currently have over 5000 members in our community (who have asked over 28,000 questions) so if Facebook or Twitter accounts are not something that takes your fancy consider joing our community forum. The key word here is community and you’ll be joining a great bunch of people online within our forums.

Getting Down under Gets translated

Mark — Fri, 09 Jan 2009 09:43:55 +0000

Getting down under has been around for a number of years now and during this time we we’ve written quite a large number of articles.

I know that it’s a given that you need to speak a decent level of English to migrate to Australia, the IELTS tests see to that, however I’m also mindful that English may not necessarily be the first language of all the visitors who come to our site.

With this in mind we are in the process of translating Getting Down Under into Multiple languages.

Apart from the native English version of Getting Down Under we have choosen to translate Getting Down Under into four additional languages.

From today getting Down Under is now available in Italian, German, French and Spanish.

We’ve translated over 900 pages at time of typing and will extend into additional languages as time goes on.

I’m not saying the translations will be perfect but hope the translations will helps those folks who’s first language is not native English to find some useful information on our site.

Getting Down Under gets a face lift

Mark — Mon, 22 Dec 2008 06:56:38 +0000

It’s been a while since I played around with the look of our site and as I have a little time on my hands (with the lead up to Christmas) I thought it was about time for a change.

As time has gone by Getting Down Under has developed from just a personal Blog to an online magazine for people looking to emigrate Down Under.

I’m hoping the new design will help pull together a large part of our content whilst helping people visiting our site navigate through the pages a little more easier than before.

There’s still a little tweaking to do with the design before I’d be fully happy with it but I think it does the job for now

Please feel free to comment if you have any questions or notice anything which appears to have gone a little wrong!

Cheers

Mark

5000 Members and Counting

Mark — Sat, 04 Oct 2008 03:22:47 +0000

Way back in March 2006 I mulled over whether or not a forum would be a useful addition to our site.

Back in the day, Getting Down Under was a relitively new site. We only had a handful of visitors a day (less than 20) but I still wanted to create a place on the site where members could interact with each other a little more.

On the 20th of April of the same year, I launched our Community Forums and we had 6 folks register to join our forums in the first week

Fast forward a couple of years and I’m delighted to say that we’ve now got over 5000 members, with 20 – 30 new wannabe Aussies joining our community every single day

Getting down under now attracts over 1500 unique visitors daily and it’s great to see some of the interactions and friendships starting to be formed within our community.

Expat forums are a pretty common thing on the Internet however I wanted our forums to be different.

I wanted to create a friendly and safe community of like minded people who are willing to help each other out, not a forum governed by a few rude over spoken members or pushy moderators who make you feel stupid for asking the most basic of questions!

The best thing is… I think we’ve managed to do it to

Getting Down Under is not an easy task for the uninstantiated but with a support network around you of people who have already made the move down under, your can start to unpick the complex tangle of forms and procedures you’ll need to complete and undertake in order to fulfill your dream.

If you’d like to join our community then Click Here to register. Its simple, completely free of charge and you’ll make some new mates along the way.

I Look forward to seeing you on there

Australian Immigration Articles – What do you guys want?

Mark — Sat, 13 Sep 2008 03:42:46 +0000

OK, so at time of typing I’ve written over 330 Articles and Blog Entries here at getting down under.

Some of these have been pretty useful and quite popular, others have been… well, pretty pants.

The content for my Blog entries is pretty straight forward as I’m just talking about what my family and I have been up to since arriving in Australia or commenting on stuff which I think might be of use to wannabe Aussies.

The articles I write however are based on information which I wished was a little more readily available when we made the move down under and I’d like to research and write a few more.

At the end of the day I know through my web stats that we have many return visitors so I must be doing something right. Our Australian Immigration Advice forums are also starting to do pretty well but more importantly we’re also starting to see the creation of a nice little community which I think is important for any site.

With this in mind I’d like to seek some advice from you guys for a change. What kind of articles and information would you like to see available here at getting down under.

I’m happy to do the research and leg work to find and present the information to you but I’d really like to make sure that before I do this leg work and write this stuff that it’s actually something that you’d find useful.

Advice and suggestions are very much appreciated so let me have it. Simply post a comment below and I’ll see what I can do for you guys

Cheers all

Mark

Fresh New design for Getting Down Under

Mark — Sun, 06 Apr 2008 15:35:42 +0000

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

BBC’s wanted down under drawing in the crowds

Mark — Sun, 06 Jan 2008 01:20:47 +0000

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

Getting Down under » Site Stuff

Submit an Article to Getting Down Under

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Getting Down Under Move Complete

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Forums Down … Grrrrr!

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Getting Down Under gets a face lift

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