Now that I've got my passport back after a protracted UK visa process (background here) and looking to travel again, my blog is ready to come out of hiatus.

I've decided a complete overhaull is needed. I originally set it up the blog in 2006, a few months before traveling through Asia. I used the original Blogger platform and a custom blog template (K2). However, since the move to Google Beta I've been restricted in what I can change. And two years is a long time in the blog world.

Moving to Wordpress
So this week I moved it across to Wordpress. It took about five minutes using Wordpress's Blogger migration tool. It was seamless and all photos and formatting were included. Incredible.

For someone like me that is more interested in wrting and photography than web design, Ive been impressed with Wordpress' ease of use. Yest it's also powerful enough to customise it to look exactly how I want.

Blog as a portfolio
The next task is going to be looking at the writing, both the 100-odd posts already there and what I'll be writing in the future. Originally my blog was for family and friends to follow my adventures from back home in Australia. But more and more I'm using it professionally as well - a place to refer editors to show my travel experience when pitching articles. It'll also be used as a portfolio for work already published.

So the big question is whether I go back and clean up the previous texts, ensure I have written in a consistent style and improve the posts that were written hastily or without much inspiration. Or does this alter the significance of the posts, that while raw, were accurate reflections of how I was feeling at that time.

Niche
I've also been thinking about how to stand out in a crowded market. The number of TravelPod, BootsnAll and Wordpress blogs out there written by affluent, first world backpackers like me must number in the millions. Why would anyone want to read mine? There's also a sense or pride: if I'm going to blog, it may as well be unique and worth reading.

Some of the ways to achieve this might be to focus on a niche area. Like  1000 Wines tasting wines while backpacking around the world (Vietnam too, brave man). Or train fanatic The Man in Seat 61. Or just be really, really thorough. Like Uncornered Market (I still argue these guys are way over the top - I hope they're enjoying traveling in between posting).

But then I ask myself, do I want my blog to drive what I do when I travel? When I go to a city I stil want to see the museums and do the river cruises like all the other tourists do.