This is the first blog entry to our new site at GoOverseas.com! I am excited about the launch of this new site and its many possibilities to inform people about the endless opportunities to travel abroad in a meaningful way.

Being our first entry I thought it would be appropriate to discuss my history and involvement in the creation of this site. I was first approached back in late 2007 by Mitch Gordon about the creation of a community website centered around opportunities to go overseas. We were both in Taiwan at the time teaching English and felt that there was still a place on the internet for a website to share resources for overseas travel. However, it wasn't until 2009 that full-time development of the site began.

Personally, I have a background in web development, but the creation of a site of this scale has certainly been a rewarding challenge and I have learned a lot. I choose Drupal (a content management system) to be the backbone of the site and have been very impressed with its capabilities and the support community behind it. For those interested, the site runs on a VPS server with Slicehost on a Linux, Apache, MySQL and PHP setup. All of this was costumed configured which was both interested and challenging.

With the site mechanics up and running our focus now is shifting back to its original focus, providing relavent information to users about going overseas. We want to be sure that there is good information about every country and how you can get there.

Thanks for reading our first post! Many more will come. You can find out more about me on My Profile (must be logged in), and of course you can always email me at Andrew@GoOverseas.com. I am happy to answer any of your questions or even just hear about your own experiences abroad.

See you out there!