Travelhog.net
“The web’s best travelogues.” The site, which went live in early 2001 and died 8 years later, was a collection of online travelogues, offline books and eCards. Users could submit their own travelogues, send eCards, shop, or visit other travelogues.
Up to 2003, Travelhog.net’s popularity rivaled that of websites of several of Holland’s national newspapers, but lack of commitment and supervision slowly saw the site’s popularity slide. But already in late 2001, Travelhog.net resided in the top 1% of most visited websites in the world.
In early 2006, the website was structurally updated, though the robust underlying system was kept. A lot of the functionality was stripped, taking away the listings of pictures (which Flickr does much better), of links (which del.icio.us does much better) of books (which Amazon does much better) and of events (which no one really did well until upcoming.org came on the scene). The focus went back to the core functionality: listing travelogues.
The graphical redesign of this updated Travelhog.net was strongly based on work by James at Six Shooter Media.
In late 2008, the website was retired and the remaining travelogues were moved to the social bookmarking website oneview, where they were listed in the TravelHog network.
In 2015, oneview shut its doors.
In August 2009, the domain was retired.
Custom travelogues that also bit the dust included:
+ It doesn’t matter which road you take by Vince Yanez. (Now available at Amazon.com.)
+ The Coast Road.
+ Cycling an Island Paradise.
+ Exotic Poland.
+ Mike’s Trip by Mike Deasy.
A rebirth of sorts
In 2015, I started the places I have been, allowing you to keep track of which World Heritage Sites you’ve visited. In 2018, I also included the possibility to keep track of what cities, Atlas Obscura locations, and major brutalist architectural constructions you’ve visited. In a way, the places I have been became the natural successor to Travelhog.net.
Keeping track of your visited cities was something that dopplr.org provided between 2013 and 2018, itself a basic clone of the Nokia-owned platform dopplr.com, which shut it doors in 2013.