A New Website, and Some Other Changes
We’ve taken up real estate on the internet since 2001. Our first website was driven by flash like so many websites did back in the day. I don’t even remember how it looked so I can’t comment on it, and I can’t quite get flash working on my computer as I’m writing this. Needless to say it was probably super cool for the time. If you care to try to get it to load, here’s what I’m missing out on.
In 2006, we largely ditched flash and went for a hipster XHTML layout, when XHTML was still a buzzword. It wasn’t valid XHTML so we didn’t have the cool XHTML Valid banners in our footer. It was a stance against hipster trends, obviously. Here’s what the website looked like in 2006.
Some time passed, and the times changed. The iPhone was launched, Facebook took off like a rocket, the United States elected its first black president, new condos went up in the tourist zone, and some bad stuff happened in 2020 and 2021. Our website stayed the same.
It’s 2022, 21 years after our first website launched, and we’re reinventing our internet presence. The website has changed. We’re also changing some things around the ranch. You won’t notice many of them, we’re simply trying to be more modern and scale our operation (see: eliminating busy work) so we can focus more on riders and their experience, and spend less time doing the mundane things.
Admittedly, it’s hard to compete with the $40 rides that are hawked by tour guides in town, especially when you care about what your horses eat and their wellbeing. We’re focused more on quality than we are on quantity. Personally, I like to think of it as Applebee’s versus Flemming’s, or Ruth’s Chris. If you care about what you’re eating, if you care about your experience, then you go to a nice place. If you just want to eat for the sake of eating, Applebee’s works just as well.
To get more eyes on the ranch, we’re going to start a blog about the ranch, some of our hidden gems in Puerto Vallarta, and food. Maybe it’ll help us rank in Google. Who knows.
At the ranch, the changes we’re making are to give riders a better experience. We won’t lose our personal touch, and nothing has changed hands. We’re just modernizing a bit, and we hope you enjoy it.
