I have to be honest with you: I’m not a WordPress developer, or any sort of developer, for that matter. Most of my experience with these types of tools is connected to writing and using them to publish content. Making something from scratch is a task that I’ve never expected to do. It’s not very hard once you figure it out, but figuring it out takes so much more time than you might imagine, mainly because I’m doing absolutely everything myself.

For the sake of transparency and as a way to keep myself accountable, I’ve created this progress map/idea book to explain what’s working and what isn’t.

What’s working

The site can be opened, which is a massive success for me. The navigation also mostly works, with some missing links here and there, and some dead ends. But, the majority of what it should be all about, such as the route post format, is where I’d like it to be for the future. Sure, I tweak anything and everything all the time.

I’ve created most of the main pages, such as the Toolkit, where you can find the most important links for tools and pages that can help you travel, and the Drives page, which automatically updates with the most enjoyable drives I’ve selected. It looks good, and I’m proud of it, even though it’s just a simple plugin that I clicked three times to make it work.

I’ve also decided on the colour scheme and overall vibe of the blog; I’d like it to be more fancy in design, and the fonts selected reflect this. They might not be the best for the task, but it’s all good.

Currently in progress

I’m working on getting the navigation working 100%. This includes customising the header to have a standout button for the featured route, which I don’t know how to do, experimenting with drop-down menus and the reactions on hovers and clicks, and the footer, Impressum, privacy policy, and everything else you need to have on a respectable website.

Streamlining the homepage and post cards. I’m still not happy with how the home page looks, and I feel like it can be massively improved with good ideas. I’d like it to be more interesting and unusual, but I can’t find a good direction to go with.

SEO optimisation is here, but not entirely. I need to work a lot on the tags, post hierarchy, categories and pages to make it all as streamlined as possible. Remember that I’m not interested in making this a click farm for thousands of hits per day, but I’d like it to show up on Google when you’re trying to find routes. This is perhaps the most important thing I’m working on right now.

Learning how to take photos is a massive one and probably something that’s stopping me from growing this blog faster. I’d like to replace all of the stock photos on the blog with ones that I’ve taken; this includes routes, landmarks, locations, and everything else. This takes a lot of time and requires skills that I don’t have yet, but I am working on them.

Coming soon – or someday

I’d like to have support for more languages here. I understand that German, Polish, Czech, and Hungarian languages will be useful for tourists, and I will try to do my best to have translations in place as soon as possible. A Croatian version is also on my radar, just so I can have something in my native language as well.

I’ve been considering a newsletter for a while, but it is not required. I’ll try to figure it out, possibly through Substack, in the months to come, but I feel like I need more clicks, visitors, and content before I start a whole other vertical. I’m just one man.