I’ve spent the past week upgrading the SectionHiker website to make it faster and to future-proof the technical underpinnings for a few years. I’d probably put this off for too long, but now that it’s done, I’m happy with the result. The website stack still needs some tweaking, but it’s about four times as fast as before and has room to grow. You might not realize it, but this website is a one-man show and has largely been since its inception in 2007, 19 years ago!
SectionHiker started out on an early version of WordPress hosted at BlueHost, but quickly outgrew its origins as my readership grew. Since then, I’ve stuck with WordPress and the WordPress ecosystem. In hindsight, sticking with it was probably one of my best business decisions ever because it’s given me the flexibility to evolve the website faster than I could have if I’d hosted it on Squarespace or another cookie-cutter hosting service. When you put all your marbles on a closed platform run by other people, you’re limited by what they offer, and nickel and dimed to death whenever you want more.
I’ve had to become a full-stack WordPress and networking guru, which hasn’t been easy at times, but I have a computer science background and have managed data center operations before, so I know how to figure out the complexity. However, it is a very different world from the old days. Back then, all the technology was on your server, completely under your control, and in the WordPress world, most of the add-on functionality was free. That’s changed! Today, everything is widely distributed and in the cloud. I pay nine separate network service providers to host different aspects of the SectionHiker website, and I have to pay annual license fees to a dozen more software companies.
It also doesn’t help that Google keeps moving the goal posts, first with search engine optimization and now with AI. But what can you do? You adapt, experiment, and change horses when a better pony comes around. Having the flexibility to do that is worth its weight in gold.
Now that the hard part of this upgrade is done (I was literally changing the infrastructure while the site was up and serving content), I’ll be focusing on getting more gear reviews out for you as we all gear up for this year’s hiking and backpacking season. I have a couple of big trips planned overseas this year in England and Eastern Europe, which I’ll be writing about, and some local wilderness fly fishing aspirations in Vermont and New York State.
I’ve also started writing a monthly column for the Hinesburg Record on hiking, backpacking, and fishing on Substack. The Record is an independent, nonprofit news organization, and an easy way for me to get more involved in my local community. I’m also quite involved as a board member for the Green Mountain Club.
What I really like about Vermont, which I’ve never experienced anywhere else, is how outdoorsy the population is. There is no shortage of fun to be had and companions to do it with. I can’t say I’m a huge fan of all the dirt roads during mud season, which are more slippery than when they’re covered with ice, but I love the rural/agrarian lifestyle here and have embraced it with relish.
I hope you enjoy the website improvements, and let me know if you see anything amiss that I haven’t caught. Now put on your seatbelts and let’s take off and fly!
Nice work. What you’ve done is not a trivial thing. Looks good!
Glad you posted this piece because it gives me a spot to tell you how good the site looks. Often when a website gets a fresh look, it’s not an improvement but not this time. You’ve done a really good job of making the look and feel of the user experience shine. The fact that you’re seeing speed improvements is icing on the cake. Well done, sir.
I live for 1 second page loads on mobile with a newpaper theme. That’s the geek shining through. I owe thanks that my GF who went away for a week so I had some free time to get this upgrade done!
A man after my own “Craigslist” lite-weight heart lol. Love it.
The bloat in many of today’s javascript off-the-shelf framework design/code libraries suck for super-fast loading.
WordPress has gotten kind of bloated – you spend most of your time taking things out – extra fonts, extra javascript, extra css – to make it go fast. It’s crazy. But the tools are pretty good to do that.
Dope, as usual! Thx Philip!
From a novice hiker who started hiking the the Whites yearly for the last 10 years, I can’t thank you enough. Your advice is invaluable!
I notice, at least in my browser, under “Recent Comments”, only the poster’s name is displayed and not the title of your post. Is this a necessary compromise? In addition to your excellent posts, the comments are interesting as well. Currently, it’s more difficult to tell which comment goes with which article.
Thanks for all,
Andy
Yep – working on that. thx!
Thank you! Much appreciated.
I noticed that I can no longer see Recent Comments on the opening page. Only when I open a review then that panel appears. Maybe its some sort of setting on my end or the Safari browser?
Some functionality that’s lagged behind in the recent upgrade. It’ll come back.
The site definitely feels faster and fresher, Philip. Well done! And comments are time- and date-stamped again, even older ones.?
Keep up the great work! I love reading your review and advice.
Just about everything related to computers and tech in general is over my head, but I can tell you put a tremendous amount of time and effort into your Sectionhiker blog. I very much appreciate it!
The comments section displays much nicer on mobile since the upgrade
Phillip… Please know that Section Hiker is my go website for all things “outside”. I look forward to 3:00 every Sunday to a welcomed “DING DING” notification. Great work and great info as always. THANK YOU!
Upgrade looks good! Curious about where you are hiking in Eastern Europe…Peaks of the Balkans is very high on my list right now!
Also, I used to get an email when there is a reply to my comment, then didn’t. Is that a feature that can be restored?
The Caucasus Mountains, a roughly 1,200 km (750-mile) range between the Black and Caspian Seas, serve as a major geographical boundary between Europe and Asia, primarily located in Russia, Georgia, Armenia, and Azerbaijan.
Email updates are tricky and not as reliable as you’d expect. I send them through a commercial service (required) and a lot of them are blocked or end up in spam filters at or just before they reach their destination. As many as 75% never make it to the destination. But I haven’t looked into it for a while, so I’ll reveiw the connections to make sure they’re still intact in what I control.