FAQ

Simply put—required reading for frequent flyers.

BoardingArea was founded on the idea of making it easy for you to follow your favorite travel blogs and along the way discover new ones. Imagine that, all your favorite frequent flyer blogs in one place. Publishing over 2,000 stories a month, you’ll find new interesting blogs or simply stay up to date with what’s the news is right now.

Then worry no more. If you notice, we don’t require you to register to read BoardingArea so we’re not collecting any information about you there. We don’t know your name, your frequent flyer number or even what your last award redemption was. And we’re good with not knowing that.

However, we do place a few cookies in your browser for two reasons and these cookies can contain some data:

• If you decide to use our My BoardingArea feature, it will set what is known as a preference cookie — also known as a “functionality cookie”. This cookie allows us to remember choices you have made in the blogs, stories and even regions you have decided to follow—this is its only purpose. No name or password, just a cookie that will remain on your device until you erase it or your browser does.
• The other cookies that are set on your device and browser are those related to advertising, comments to a blog or our Contact page, similar to almost any and all other websites you may visit. All information related to that data and our policy on them can be read here.

Complain about a blogger or a blog? That’s OK, we don’t take it personally and there may be good reason for this. There’s two ways you can complain:

• Complain directly to the blog / blogger themselves by following these instructions.
• Complain to us. We’ll read it and reply to you with how we feel about the complaint and just as important if we think there is anything we can do for you. There’s not a long line, but the best thing to do is use our Contact form.

We hate that when it happens. The most common problems are that it has ended up in your junk/spam folder (obviously by accident) or a filter with your email provider doesn’t like us as much as you do. And trying to sort all that out will cut into your travel time.

BEST ADVICE: Start all over by going here where you will be prompted to enter your email address again and let’s go from there.

Glad you asked. We’ve made that easy by including a link at the bottom of each newsletter. See the “Update your preferences.” link. Click. Change. You’re done. #readmore

Good question. We’ve made that easy by including a link at the bottom of each newsletter. See the “Unsubscribe from this list.” Click. You’re gone.

The short answer is—NO. BoardingArea is a collaborative of the best blogs for the frequent flyer and they create more than 60 stories a day for our readership. Each blogger is a frequent flyer who’s passion stands out in their content. As such, we see no need for outside content of any type. #sorry (and truly, thanks for asking.)

We do. It is a weekly newsletter curated by our readers who select the top 12 stories for the week among all the blogs of BoardingArea. For the frequent flyer—by the frequent flyer.

You can subscribe here.

Hmmm, it’s here somewhere. We’ll go find it (the question and the answer) if you use the Contact page to ask it.

One of our favorite questions because the answer is YES. Here’s how easy it is. When you click on My BoardingArea (arrow #2) you are in your custom page. When you click on the BoardingArea logo (arrow #1) you are back to the main page. You can always go back and forth with just an easy click, not missing anything but still having your custom view of what you like to read.

On the My BoardingArea page, select Customize Page and then choose your interests by clicking on the + (plus sign) next to each Blog, Topic or Region. Once you have selected them all, click Save and you will be taken to your custom BoardingArea homepage.

Want to remove a single blog from your BoardingArea feed? Click My BoardingArea in the menu, select Customize Page and then “Select All” on the first page listing all our blogs. From there you can deselect any blog you DON’T wish to see. Finalize your choice by clicking Save at the top.

Good question. We are and have always been privacy centric which is why we do not require an email address to use My BoardingArea. The only data we collect are Identifiers of the blogs, topics and/or Regions you are following. Those are set in a cookie which you control (they can be deleted at any time) whose only purpose is to make it easier for you to read what you want. The only use of that data is to anonymize it into reports that tell us which blogs (not readers) are being followed.

Bad news. No. You’d have to customize a My BoardingArea on each device you are reading from. While there may be some opportunity to do so based on the browser you are using, it won’t come from us. But we are always working on ways to enhance your read ability so don’t take this answer as final.

We hate that when it happens. This may happen because of any number of things, such as:

• You may have cleared your browser cookies.
• Your preference cookie became corrupted. “Hello Google …..”
• You may have set your browser to reject third-party cookies.
• You may be using or have used a VPN.
• An ad blocker may have come into play.
• And some times if you use a tool to clean up your device (freeing up storage space, etc.) it can alter, move or delete the cookie that kept your My BoardingArea information.

The most common of these reasons is the use of private browsing such as Incognito in Chrome or private window in Safari. Often times private browsing mode will cause the cookie to be deleted when the session ends. This means that you’ll have to start all over. Not what you wanted to hear, but we were hoping we’d never have to tell you. Thanks for understanding.

Then worry no more. If you notice, we don’t require you to register to use My BoardingArea so we’re not collecting any information about you there. We don’t know your name, your frequent flyer number or even what your last award redemption was. And we’re good with not knowing that.

However, we do place a cookie in your browser and this cookie can contain some data:
When you use the My BoardingArea feature, it will set what is known as a preference cookie — also known as a “functionality cookie”. This cookie allows us to remember choices you have made in the blogs, topics and regions you have decided to follow—this is its only purpose. No name or password, just a cookie that will remain on your device until you erase it or your browser does.

All other privacy information is outlines here.

First of all, regions may not always be regions. In some instances, they are also about the language of a blog. Follow along. In the DEU region (Germany), all the blogs are written in German for primarily the German readership. In the BRA region (Brazil), the blogs are written in Portuguese for primarily the Brazilian readership. However, for the JPN region (Japan), it gets a little different. We have a US resident blogging in the Japanese language and we have a resident of Japan blogging in Japanese as well. Each blogs with passion generally with regard to where they are resident with the commonality being the Japanese language.

SO—at times a region may represent a region (regardless of language) and in other instances it may represent the language of the blog. (and now you know why we don’t have an EU blog …)

When in your My BoardingArea feed, choose Customize Page toward the top of the page to return to the Interest Select page and refine your choices for Blog, Topic or Region.

If you’re not satisfied by what you’ve already selected on the My BoardingArea page, you can change it easily by going back to the Customize Page option and altering your choices. Always click save.

You can search a specific blog’s content by going to My BoardingArea, clicking Customize Page and selecting the blog you want.

You can! Just choose which Blogs you want and make sure all other fields under Regions or Topics are cleared from potential previous selections before clicking Save.

BoardingArea represents many languages and regions around the world. While we’re always looking to add more, our current list can be found and selected from in the My BoardingArea section after choosing Customize Page and under the Region tab.

Hmmm, it’s here somewhere. We’ll go find it (the question and the answer) if you use the Contact page to ask it.

An agreement?—an area in which we totally shine. None. We don’t want to mire your passion for blogging with contracts. You are free to come and go from the network and we would put as much in adding you as helping you leave. Our record stands for that. You don’t see many blogs leave BoardingArea. We’ve lost two in the past 3-5 years and both were sold. We know, most people would say it is crazy to not have a contract. We say, contracts are for those insecure with their ability to always support the blogger.

What happens if down the road you decide BoardingArea isn’t working out?

Since we have no contract and we don’t cache or own any of your content it’s pretty easy to hand over your site to you. For us, it’s a small matter of removing our network plugin, packaging your site into a zip package, and providing you a download link.

To make the transition away from BoardingArea smooth, we recommend:

• Initiate a content freeze before we create your site’s package zip file, so you have the latest and most accurate representation of your site. The package will be a snapshot of a moment in time, so it may be out of sync if the site changes in any way after the package is created.

• Downloading the package before the link expires. The download link expires 7 days after it is created.

Your BoardingArea hosting will expire 30 days from the date we are notified you will be leaving the network. This means that your site will be removed from BoardingArea’s WPEngine host and all of your site’s data will be permanently deleted.

We understand that not all partnerships work out, so we will do our best to maintain a positive line of communication along the way to leave things on a good note.

As for ‘selling out’. We own no part of any blog on our platform. Our Rule #1 is never to interfere with your editorial. You always own all your content and we do not tell you what to write and when to write. You haven’t ‘sold out’ when choosing to have BoardingArea as your host, it actually might be the best investment you will ever make for your blog.

No. The copyright to all your content remains yours regardless of us hosting your blog.

No. What’s yours is yours, both in name and content.

Actually not. We share advertising revenue we sell on your behalf but you won’t be PayPaling us any money to be part of our network.

Yes. And we have an app for that!

Let us explain more about this. You likely understand that the niche of road warrior / frequent flyer / miles + points landscape is fairly crowded and getting more difficult to stand out and build a successful blog. We certainly believe there is still room for success, but there are a lot of blogs out there. And the economics of a blog are more difficult these days with advertising revenue for bloggers at new all-time lows. It might be difficult for a new blog to earn more than a dollar per thousand page views these days. But we don’t think that these elements should discourage those interested in telling their stories. Blogging is all about sharing information, advice and experiences and our multi-author blog, Travel Update, allows bloggers to be able to do those things without worrying about the process of developing a blog.

Truthfully, there is a growing #fail rate for new blogs because of the transition with balancing family, work and lifestyle changes along with trying to become a blogger. Because of this, we offer you an opportunity to contribute as much as you like, begin to build your own blog brand, be featured on BoardingArea and learn how to balance those things without worry about writing daily or even weekly. As you grow in your skill set and attract a quality readership and you feel comfortable enough to go out on your own, we can move all your posts from Travel Update into your own theme and off you go. For some of the newer bloggers, it might make sense as well to move your early posts into the multi-author environment  of Travel Update and take advantage of less pressure but with all the help you’ll ever need to still grow your blog.

The Travel Update multi-author blog format is perfect for new bloggers or bloggers with an idea and are first time bloggers.

The short answer is, yes. We are well-equipped and will require you to move your blog from your current set-up to the BoardingArea network. BoardingArea is strictly a WordPress-hosted environment. We work on WordPress every single day to make sure our bloggers are supported.

Here is an example scenario:

• You currently blog using Squarespace
• You spent money on a theme that you want to keep
• You have lots of subscribers to your blog’s newsletter
• You pay GoDaddy to host your domain/URL

Both Squarespace and WordPress are easy-to-use platforms so the process of creating content is quite similar with almost no loss in skillset between the two. But we will have to move your content from Squarespace onto a WordPress environment. While there are no automatic tools to convert from Squarespace to WordPress, we are able to migrate all of your blog posts, all of your web pages, all of your images, and the URL structure of your site. All you have to do is remain focused on creating your next best blog post ever.

For newsletter subscribers, you could likely continue with your current newsletter service if you choose (as newsletter services are separate solutions from your blog’s hosting) or move to something like FeedBliz, MailChimp, or one of any number of newsletter services.

We will ask that you continue to pay GoDaddy to host your domain/URL because your migrated blog remains yours while on the BoardingArea network. We will help to configure GoDaddy to make sure your domain settings are correct.

If we can’t use your current theme, then we can help you build one that is similar or completely different. We’re flexible on your blog’s looks.

Bottomline: Once moved onto the BoardingArea network’s WordPress platform, you will continue blogging just as before.

Security should always be important to any blogger. BoardingArea is an enterprise customer of WPEngine, known as the largest WordPress specific host in the world, hosting over 1.5M websites. We are among their largest customers and count on them for extraordinary hosting. All the blogs of BoardingArea are included in what is known as an advanced network which uses a custom blend of Cloudflare features to improve the speed, scalability, and security of our blogs. The advanced network delivers increased security and performance with Layer 3 & 4 DDoS protection which helps against malicious attacks. Cloudflare is known for its security protocols which leads to readers having a better browsing experience. Additionally, advanced network supports HTTP/3. HTTP/3 accelerates HTTP requests by using QUIC, which provides encryption and performance improvements compared to TCP and TLS.

If there is, we haven’t reached it yet for any of our blogs. We have blogs that have more than 25,000 photos hosted (we use Cloudflare’s CDN which specializes in the optimization and delivery of images and includes Polish lossless image compression for faster image delivery.) Almost all vloggers post their videos to YouTube (for hosting) and display them as content insertions on BoardingArea. Limits? We don’t have them.

Hmmm, it’s here somewhere. We’ll go find it (the question and the answer) if you use the Contact page to ask it.