The bright blue sea usually indicates a coral reef of which there are many in Fiji.

Having the daily responsibility of keeping a website fresh and packed with information can be a daunting task.  Never interested in learning web design and HTML, I’ve preferred to pay attention to the “content” aspect of our blog as opposed to its design, hoping it’s an easy appealing place for our worldwide readers to visit.

Over the past years, our web developers,  Smitten Blog Designs, have done a great job for us and we’ve been thrilled with their great service and ingenuity. If you’re considering a website or blog, they’re happy to assist and continue to answer questions long after the design is established and the site is live.

Brooke, our web person at Smitten Blog Designs has suggested we move over to WordPress, another blog management site, that although it may cost a little more, is easier to manipulate, correct errors, and manage day-to-day postings with photos.  (FYI, we don’t use the help of our web developer when posting each day, only when we have design changes we’d like to make).

Currently, we’re using Blogger and over these past 44 months of posting, we’ve found it tricky and frustrating at times, especially in regard to posting photos and especially in line, paragraph, and photo spacing. 
Our readers may notice that at times we have too many spaces between paragraphs and photos which is entirely a Blogger related issue. Add in a poor Internet connection and I can spend hours attempting to edit a single post.

The hard part for us is letting go of our stats and losing a few readers.  Our web address will always be www.worldwidewaftage.com. Moving to WordPress won’t change that. If you’ve bookmarked our site, it will still take you wherever we may be by using our web address regardless of which blog editing software we may use.

Sewak, our neighbor, planted this garden a few months ago.

Since the onset of our posts in 2012, there are statistics that only we have access to located in the operational “dashboard” of the editing area of the site. If we move to WordPress, those stats will start all over again from zero.  

Losing the stats and beginning again is purely psychological for us. It would have no bearing on the site itself or its readership, only in the pleasure we’ve had in watching our readership grow to over 354,000 readers. 

Each day, we watch the stats, hoping to learn which topics and photos appeal most to our readers. If we move to WordPress the stats will begin anew and we’ll continue to be able to observe the daily activity as we’ve done in the past. All archives (previous posts) and comments will remain intact.

In the realm of things, our readership is minuscule compared to the millions of hits many other sites receive in a year. Even a single YouTube video can receive millions of hits in a matter of minutes. Then again, there are millions of blogs that only receive a few hundred hits per year.

An old shed on the property further up the hill.

When we started and as we continue today, we never expected to make money from our site. To date, we’ve never made enough to cover even our blog design and maintenance expenses. 

Some may assume, we’ve earned enough revenue from our advertisers to pay for our travels. Not the case. We don’t ever expect that to occur, nor do we experience any frustration over not earning enough to offset our travel expenses. This was started as a “labor of love” and continues in that context yet today.

Sure, it would be great to earn enough from our advertisers to cover the costs of the blog itself. The only way this is possible is to substantially increase our readership and for our readers to use the links provided on our site. Doing so simply takes the reader to the main site of the advertiser. Prices and features are the same. The difference is, we may receive a tiny commission if a reader makes a purchase.

We can use your help in increasing our readership by forwarding the link to our site, www.worldwidewaftage.com to your email contacts to those who enjoy travel and of course, “armchair” readers which comprise a huge majority of our readers. 

The view from higher up the hill from our house.

Posting our link on your Facebook page is another great way to increase our readership. Many “stay-at-home” seniors and others, unable to get out, read our daily posts. As a continuing story, many get a kick out of reading the latest, as we do in reading other blogs.

Instead, we’ve used this valuable platform to reach out to friends, family, and all the wonderful people who’ve visited us online to share our story of two senior citizens traveling the world, without a home, without a car, without storage somewhere, and with only three pieces of luggage and a few carry on bags.

The feedback we continue to receive from our readers on a daily basis via email and comments on the site has nourished our souls and spurred us on when at times, we’ve experienced angst and frustration, especially on travel days.

We’ve gleaned a substantial amount of comfort after any experience, knowing we’ll be able to share the story the next day with people who care, people who take their precious time to sit down with a cup of coffee or tea to read our endless ramblings and to see our photos. We are very grateful for each and every visitor that stops by our site.

View of the color changes in the sea from atop a hill in our area.

Our web address, as mentioned above, will always be available at www.worldwidewaftage.com regardless of which blog editing software we use, Blogger or WordPress. Should we decide to switch, it won’t be until after the first of the year and everything will remain the same for our readers

In case you’ve may have wondered, each day after we’ve uploaded a new post, if you enter www.worldwidewaftage.com you will be taken to the newest post we’ve done today. Yesterday’s post will have a different address along with our address, which will include words from the heading to differentiate it from the over 1200 posts we have done to date.

You can always reference past posts from the link of “previous posts” as we mentioned a few days ago by clicking on the little black arrow to get to an older post. Also, it’s easy to search for a particular post using the “search” box on the page.

A natural spring is located on Sewak’s property providing water for all of the neighbors in Korovesi. He shares the unfiltered water at no cost to the neighbors other than the expense to bring it to their properties and store it in tanks. We began drinking the pure water the day we arrived with no ill effects.  This isn’t always possible in many countries.

In the past few days, our web designer Brooke has added a feature for translation and updated the look of our advertisers.  For now, we’re staying put since making such a change would require time spent on our part. 

With only 17 days remaining until we depart Savusavu, Vanua Levu to head to the bigger island of Pacific Harbour, Viti Levu, we’ll keep our time free to prepare for the upcoming move.

Have a meaningful day filled with thoughts that bring you peace and comfort!

Photo from one year ago today, November 19, 2014:

Tom got a kick out of this old Ford “woody” that was on display at the Maui Tropical Plantation. For more photos from the tour of this facility, please click here.