An Auspicious Day: Looking back on Byteful Travel’s History & Looking Forward

Believe it or not, today marks the 5th anniversary of when I registered Byteful.com; and not coincidentally, it is also the 10th anniversary of day I created my very first website.

So today is auspicious for me.

To be honest, it took me months to settle on a domain name, but once I felt good about getting “Byteful.com”, it happened to be November of 2006. I decided that it would be more fitting to register my first domain on the anniversary of my first website, so I waited a few days until November 17th, even though I had no idea which company I was going to choose as web host or exactly what the site would turn into. But I did it anyway, because I knew that this was the right path. I had faith in my instincts.

By January, I had settled on DowntownHost.com, and I’ve been very pleased with that choice since they’ve treated me very well and have a great team working there. And on February 11th of 2007, I began my journey with Byteful.com by writing my first blog post.

Back then, this site was called “The Byteful Project”; and, like many things ending in “project”, it somewhat amorphous. In fact, the first year was basically a self-directed experiment. I had to ask myself: “If I could create anything for the web, what would it be? What did I really want to make?”

What kind of Tree would You be?

Truth be told, I struggled to find a niche I enjoyed, so I did a lot of experimenting. I wrote poetry. I published desktop wallpapers that I’d originally created just for myself. I published articles on health, spontaneity, and perspectives. And I also published photos. I felt like a germinating seed that couldn’t decide if I wanted to be an apple tree or an orange tree.

But, in the end, instead of finding the answer, the answer found me. By early 2008, I began occasionally writing about my travels, kicking it all off with “Do Henry Vilas Zoo Animals Mock Me?” which was the first in what I called “The Byteful Travel Series”. Little did I know that would become the focus of the entire enterprise.

A Timeline of Transformation

Since then, the vision has grown and transformed. The list of major events in the timeline is a good indicator of how things have evolved over the years:

• 2001.11.17 — First website I ever created (now defunct)
• 2006.11.17 — Domain Purchased
• 2007.02.11 — First article published on Byteful Travel
• 2007.03.21 — Launch of Byteful Gallery
• 2007.10.07 — Launch of “InspirationEverywhere”
• 2008.02.10 — First travel-focused article published
• 2008.05.04 — First travel video published
• 2010.06.26 — Launch of Byteful Travel Blog Carnival
• 2010.12.01 — Launch of the “Where’s Marco” photo game
• 2011.03.03 — Launch of the Byteful Travel Shop
• 2011.08.24 — Launch of “Choose a City” pages
• 2011.11.17 — 200th article published

And I must point out that it was a stroke of weird luck that, in addition to the two anniversaries I mentioned above, this just happens to be my 200th post.

Strange how life works, isn’t it?

And even after all this, I know I’m still just getting started. There is so much to come that I can barely put my feelings about this into words. The road rolls ever on, and I know the coming years will highlight the wonders of Hawaii, Japan, Korea, Australia, and more. Life is too short, so I’m going explore while I still have time.

Will you join me?