Welcome to the new and improved World Hum. We started the site in May 2001 with four stories, no photos and no long-term plan beyond publishing travel narratives that we liked - here’s a snapshot of the home page from soon after the launch.

In the last four years the site has grown tremendously. Writers the world over have sent us evocative, compelling stories, and thousands of readers have made World Hum a regular stop. But the site’s antiquated design and mechanics were hindering its growth. World Hum needed a makeover if we were to pursue a goal that’s been percolating within us for some time: to create the Internet’s best travel magazine, and a self-sustaining one at that. We realize that might be the Internet publishing equivalent of summiting Mount Everest. If so, consider us happily ensconced at base camp, suffering from a hint of altitude sickness, digging the view, and looking forward to the climb ahead.

With the redesign, we’ve combined the best of the old site with a host of new features. The dispatches, interviews and weblog that have long been the heart and soul of the site remain. To these, we’ve added five new sections: Ask Rolf, Books, Speaker’s Corner, How To and Greetings From.

Some familiar names will pop up more often. We can’t do this alone, so we’ve asked a few of our favorite writers to become contributing editors. Here’s a rundown of the new features:

Ask Rolf
Vagabond travel writer Rolf Potts answers your questions about travel, doling out hard-won wisdom from more than a decade on the road in Asia and beyond. Potts is a former Salon.com travel columnist who wrote, “Vagabonding: An Uncommon Guide to the Art of Long-Term World Travel.”

Books
Travel books don’t get enough press, so we’ve created the Books section to feature original reviews and other book-related features. Frank Bures, whose reviews have appeared in many publications and whose World Hum story, “Test Day,” was featured in “The Best American Travel Writing 2004,” will oversee the section.

Speaker’s Corner
Speaker’s Corner gives writers a chance to rant or rave about a topic close to their hearts. In the first installment, travel writer and Ethical Traveler Executive Director Jeff Greenwald laments what has become of Burma, the Southeast Asian nation Western adventurers once dubbed the “Golden Land.”

How To
Learn how to dive deep into another culture. This time around, contributing editor Terry Ward, whose travel stories have appeared in The Washington Post and the Los Angeles Times Magazine, parses the subtleties of kissing hello in France. It’s not an easy feat.

Greetings From
Postcards and hand-written letters home have given way in the Internet Age to mass e-mails. The best of them convey powerful raw emotion and undistilled impressions. In Greetings From, we’ll feature some of the most compelling e-mails in their original unedited, uncensored form.

In addition, we’ve brought World Hum’s electronic guts into the 21st century. You’ll find a search engine—a feature some of you have been requesting for years; an easy-to-subscribe-to monthly newsletter; RSS Feed; weblog categories for special interests; and the World Hum Store, where you can find books written and edited by World Hum contributors. Coming soon: World Hum merchandise. 

To those of you who helped make this possible with your financial contributions to the site, thank you once again for your support. It has meant a lot to us.

Finally, we’re accepting advertisements for the first time. We want to build World Hum into a site that can survive for years to come. Please support the sponsors. They’re helping to support us. And if you want to place an advertisement, our Blogads interface makes it simple to reach our dedicated core of readers.

We hope you like the new site. Please drop us a note and let us know what you think.

The editors,
Jim and Mike