The previous website was built – largely by volunteers – over a ten-year period. As a result, we accumulated a lot of “tech debt” (engineering-speak for inefficiency due to poor or outdated systems and infrastructure), which meant that the site was slow, unreliable, expensive to run, and difficult to improve. In order to improve the site and make it more reliable, we needed to move to a new code-base that can support the growing community.
We’ve made major changes to Couchsurfing’s technology that will make it faster, more reliable, and easier to use across web and mobile. Going forward, we now have a platform that is easier for members to use and for us to maintain, and we will be able to make changes and add features much more quickly than ever before.
For the initial release, we focused on rebuilding the site’s most essential tools and we’re going to continue adding new features, settings, and tools over time. We’re a small team and we’ve got a long list that we’re eager to strike off one by one in the weeks and months to come.
Some Couchsurfers will notice that features they use have changed in the rebuilt site – you can read our FAQs to learn more, and contact our Support Team if you have further questions.
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