Hi everyone, I wanted to let you subscribers know that I am making some structural changes to the HunkerDown.Guide website. So you will notice some frequent changes to the site if you visit it over the next few weeks. It might get a little messy, as I am doing this while the site is live. Please bear with me. These changes are going to really help people find what they need.
Featured on a podcast
I started this website literally on the first day of the 2019 Hurricane Season, June 1, 2019. I had the privilege of being a guest on a very popular podcast called the “Side Hustle Show”. It is a show about starting websites, blogs and other online businesses. I was able to get advice during the recording of the podcast from both the host, Nick Loper, and his guest Kim Anderson. She is a professional blog coach. I was very lucky to get such great advice from them both!
The material covered is not about Hurricane preparedness or tropical weather, but I am providing a link to it here, as it gives you a good idea about what I am trying to make here. You can leave comments below on this post, if you have any additional ideas for content, topics, questions, or new functionality. My goal is to create a really useful guide here, focused on people who need help getting thru a hurricane. I want it to be the number one resource for accurate and practical steps.
As part of that, I eventually want to make this a sustainable business as well. One of my guiding principles on this HunkerDown.Guide project is to be as transparent as possible. That is why one of the first things I put on the site was a disclosure page.
Basically, I am dividing all my content into 3 main pillars – Before, During, and After. If you look at the top of the site you will see I have changed the menu and am starting to add content to the following:
- Prepare Before…
- Threatened by the Storm
- …Recovering Afterward
I won’t go into detail on these, but they should each become what is called long-form or authoritative posts. I have been putting together a lot of written and multi-media materials on these topics and my intention is to lay it all out in these 3 pillars. People coming to the site will have everything in a single, highly organized format.
New tropical weather briefing page
One of the things I have just tackled is the Tropical Weather Briefing Page. It is completely revamped, with lots more weather resources for you. I realized that I was very “Atlantic-centric”, as I live in Florida. I have added full support for our friends in the Eastern and Central Pacific, including Hawaii of course. I am thinking about adding some Spanish-language support for Mexico, if i can figure out how to do so.
For those who haven’t followed it, the Pacific has been much more active this year so far, than the Atlantic and Gulf. You can reach the new weather page here to check out all the maps and advisories. This is fully automated, but I do comment in the top in what I call the Tropical Scan. This scan also shows up dynamically at the end of every post as well.
Renamed the blog
As part of consolidating the content into 3 main pillars, I will keep the blog posting. But I decided to make it more of a news letter type system, touching on timely weather info and also new preparation ideas, etc. I renamed the blog (what you are reading right now), the VIP News. The VIP stands for “Very Important Preparation News” of course 🙂 Seriously, I am writing all this material to help people, and you, the subscribers, are very important people! So I hope you continue to get value form the HunkerDown.Guide. Please always feel free to leave me comments with questions and ideas.
Thanks, and stay safe… Jamie
PS I almost forgot. I changed the logo byline too – “Commonsense Hurricane Survival”.
