Our Story
Welcome to Irina’s World.com, thanks for visiting our website. We hope you’ll enjoy browsing through our extensive collection of interesting articles on international travel, history, lifestyles, culture and so much more. And we hope that your virtual travels with us will enrich your day!
Some of you may be wondering why this website is called Irina’s World and what the story is behind its creation and how all this started. If you’re, you’ve come to the right place to find out.
Irina’s World.com is celebrating 11 years in 2011. Here is how it all started...
Irina’s World.com started in September 2000 as a personal web page of Irina Kovalenko. At the time, Irina graduated from the MBA program at Clarkson University, NY (USA) and was looking for a job in marketing and advertising. One of the jobs Irina was really interested in required the knowledge of HTML which she didn’t know at the time, so she went to the bookstore and got a book “Teach Yourself Visually HTML.” Irina found the book very helpful and was able to learn HTML in a couple of days just in time for the job interview. Once Irina learned HTML, she was eager to create her own webpage - this is how Irina’s World.com started.
Being an avid traveler, art lover and history buff, Irina started writing about subjects that interested her most such as travel, history, arts and titled her page “Irina’s World.” But as she added more content on a regular basis and the website grew, she decided to turn it into an online magazine with issues coming out on a regular basis. The website grew in popularity and Irina was getting great response from readers.
Irina’s World.com takes a hiatus...introduction of Irina Designs.com
So in 2002, Irina turned Irina’s World.com website into a pay-for subscription online magazine and started another business venture in 2003 with her mother – Irina Fashions boutique in uptown Toronto. In 2005, Irina gave birth to twins – Maxim and Katia which left no time for keeping up Irina’s World.com website.
During the time that Irina stayed at home with her baby twins, she took on a new hobby – jewellery design. As time went on, Irina expanded her hobby into a Jewellery Design business - Irina Designs.com was born. She also experimented with other crafts which led to her jewellery box designs where she used a mixed craft media such as painting, mosaics, fabric, collage, silk flowers etc. You can browse through her jewellery and box designs at irinadesigns.com.
In 2007, Irina started a new job as a marketing manager and kept busy with her family and jewellery design venture. She’s been also taking graphic, web and interior design classes at Seneca College. And even though Irina has taken a hiatus from adding new articles to Irina’s World.com, the site kept getting steady visitor traffic due to its high ranking in search engines and its extensive and interesting content. And enthusiastic website visitors demanded more website additions and updates.
New Chapter for Irina’s World.com...
Eleven years later – now it’s a new chapter for Irina’s World.com. The site is updated and redesigned with a new look and more user-friendly navigation. The site features all the existing articles which are now easily searchable by subject, country and issue. Irina’s World.com has been updated with a new modern layout (now Irina uses Dreamweaver to design her pages, HTML knowledge still comes very handy though) and high-quality photos to complement each article.
The site is packed with interesting content and beautiful photos which will take you on a virtual tour around the world. It will probably take you at least a month to read through all the existing articles featured on this website. However, if you did read all the articles here, the great news is that Irina’s World.com will now be updated on a regular basis with new articles and features, so check back often.
New articles and features will be posted on the home page so that you’ll know each time there is an update. They will also be added to the website search pages so that you can find them when searching by subject and country. Irina has traveled extensively in the past years and really eager to share her travel experiences and all the fascinating things she discovered on her travels with you. So stay tuned.
The site will no longer operate as an online magazine and won’t be offered on a paid-subscription basis. All the articles will be available on a free basis. You can also read through the old magazine issues when browsing the site by issue.
We’re also looking for new article submissions and advertisers to help us grow this website. So if you have an interesting article that is appropriate in content and writing style for Irina’s World.com and/or if you want to advertise your products in related categories on this website, please contact us at info@irinasworld.com. Or if you simply have a comment or suggestion, we’d love to hear from you too!