You’re right, for a few reasons I was gone for a little over a year and spam did build up and I do regret not checking in and making sure there was a mod to take care of it.  That was def’ly a mistake on my part.  Like alot of you guys, I planned countless trips throuh Eurotrip. When I came back I saw the state of things and I wanted to help pull it back together.  My objective has always been to help this site grow so it could become the best tool to help other like minded backpackers connect.  I’m sure I made a few mistakes along the way, but please understand my intent.

Everyone here has so much great information to share and it’s exciting to see the interactions between seasoned and new backpackers. That’s what I love about eurotrip and I think that’s why we’re all here.  I understand people being upset with me for banning auher.  Maybe it was a mistake on my part as well.

What I also understand is that it costs a lot of money to keep a site with this much traffic running and actively upgraded.  We all saw what happened when it was being neglected.  Now we are able to have a clean site maintained with great bandwidth.  The ads here are all very tasteful and nothing more than what we would see anywhere else on the internet.  As the site grows and changes, we always ask for your input especially regarding functionality and features.  And when the upgraded site becomes live you will see that much of your suggestions have been taken into account and implemented.  Yea, I guess I am defending eurotrip because I really do belive that this site offers an amazing platform for backpackers to discuss travel.

ya sorry, that was a miscommunication on my part. i was worried about getting too many people and not being able to deal with all the feedback in a responsive way.

i could use some help testing the following functionality:
member profiles
links directory (link sharing)
travel tips section
places & events (mapped destinations)
forum (this still needs a lot of work, but i would like your feedback)
private messaging (i need to clean up the interface, but the functionality is there)

if you are interested in helping out at all please let mim or i know…

MIM, Swill:  I’ll help with site testing or whatever….

Now, let’s lock this post and get on to other things…

Best idea I’ve heard all week!