The New Caretaker Gazette Website Is Live

After more than four decades of connecting caretakers with property owners around the world, The Caretaker Gazette has a new home on the web. The new caretaker.org went live on May 1st, and we wanted to take a moment to walk you through what’s changed, what hasn’t, and why we decided the time was right for an update.

What You’ll Notice First

The site is faster. Pages load quickly, the layout adjusts cleanly to phones and tablets, and finding your way around is more straightforward than it used to be. If you’ve ever tried to read a listing on your phone and given up because the text was too small or the page took forever to load, those days are behind us.

Browsing and searching listings is easier too. Whether you’re looking for a ranch position in Montana, an estate caretaking role in the UK, or a quiet housesit somewhere warm for the winter, you should find it faster than before.

We’ve also added social media feeds to the site so you can see our latest posts from Instagram and Facebook right on the homepage. For readers who don’t use social media, nothing changes. For those who do, it’s one less click.

A Better Inbox Experience

One of the bigger improvements happens behind the scenes, but you’ll feel it. Some of our subscribers claimed that they were not receiving the numerous email blasts that we emailed out each week because they were landing in spam folders or getting delayed.

The new system delivers our email blasts more reliably. That means fewer missed emails, fewer trips to the spam folder, and a better chance that the listings you’re waiting for actually arrive in your inbox when they should. If you’ve had trouble receiving emails over the past year or two, we expect that to improve noticeably.

All of our historical newsletter archives came along for the ride. Nothing was lost in the move, and back issues remain available to subscribers just as they were before.

Why Now, and Who Helped

The honest answer to “why now” is that the old site had served us well but was starting to show its age. Pieces of it were no longer supported by the underlying software, and we were spending more time keeping things patched together than we wanted to. Rather than continue that cycle, we decided to rebuild the whole thing properly so it could carry the publication forward for the next decade.

For the rebuild itself, we worked with Blank Box Digital, a small agency based in Austin, Texas. They handled the design, the migration of all our existing content and subscriber data, the newsletter system overhaul, and the full launch. The project took several months of careful work, and we appreciated that they took the time to understand what our readers actually use the site for before changing anything.

We mention this because we know a few of you have asked over the years who builds and maintains the site. If you run a small publication or business yourself and have wondered whether something similar would be worth the effort, the team that built the new site was a pleasure to work with, and we’re happy to recommend them.

What Isn’t Changing

The Caretaker Gazette is the same publication it has always been. Same mission, new rent-free listings coming in every day, same focus on connecting trustworthy caretakers and house sitters with property owners who need them. The editorial standards we’ve held for forty plus years haven’t moved an inch.

Your subscription works exactly as it did before. Your login, your subscription term, your renewal date, all of it carried over cleanly. If anything looks off with your account, please get in touch and we’ll sort it out quickly.

The listings themselves are still the heart of what we do, and the process for submitting a caretaking opportunity or responding to one hasn’t changed.

Thank You

A publication like ours only works because of the readers who stick with it year after year, and many of you have been with us for a very long time. We don’t take that for granted. The whole point of this rebuild was to make sure the Gazette keeps showing up reliably in your inbox and on your screen for many years to come.

If you run into anything that looks broken, doesn’t work the way you expect, or simply doesn’t make sense, please write to us at caretaker@caretaker.org. We’re watching closely over these first few weeks and want to hear about it.

Thanks for reading, and thanks for being part of this community. Here’s to the next chapter.

New to caretaking? Read our guide on how to become a house sitter or property caretaker.