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mark1882

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We are wanting to record our preparation and adventure to the Med so that friends and family can check up on our progress and/or place comments.

Coming to this forum quite recently there are many links to some very good blogs and/or web sites which are not only a great source of information for us planning our escape but also often very entertaining and interesting to read.

So any advice as to which is the best medium/host for doing this and ease of use and any suggested sites would be greatly appreciated. We will be wanting to post photos and narrative and hope to be quite active in keeping the blog/site up to date.

Thanks

Mark
 
Hi we use blogger hosted by Google. We also use Windows live writer, a free Microsoft program, that enables you to write the blog offline and upload it to blogger when next connected to the internet. Also means you have a backup.

Have a look and see what you think
 
Hi, everyone who replies will almost certainly recommend what they use themselves & guess what, I'm going to do the same! But I think for a good reason, which is that you can have a mix of bloggy bits & static bits, making your site more easily navigable. The amount of scrolling required with some blogs does my head in...
 
before we left we tried to keep up wiyh other peoples blogs and frankly most of the time forgot. at times they would delay anp ut a lot out at onr time and too much to keep interest in.

so when we left we decided to do a diatribe that covered short periods and email them to family and friends. we started with about 20 people and now over 200 as more people want to read them and see the pics as we include about 30 pics. the length is 2 microsoft word pages or so.

we have gotten great comments and the persons has to do nothing more than open an email.
 
Another option is to use a Facebook page. This has the singular advantage of being available for update from a smartphone wherever you are - it lends itself to a more ad-hoc approach.

Personally I use a Wordpress blog - can update this from a phone, but not as easily as Facebook.
 
We use Wordpress. Simple, straightforward, free and has an iPad app that we use most of the time. Beware, the blog can become a demanding mistress, taking time and precious data to maintain. Get hold of some photo reduction software which you can use to reduce the size of your photos (typical digital cameras produce 3-4 mb pictures, which will take an age to up load on 3G) to about 100k or so.
 
Why bother? Blogs are a chore to maintain (unless there is a commercial reason) and it is not too difficult and far more satisfying to maintain contact with the important few by email.
 
We've been happy with sail blogs but it isn't as versatile as a website , we have looked at building a website but been put off with the cost and the time , personally I think I'm the only one reading my blog , I started it for the family but whenever I mention something I posted they always ask for the link -so they aren't interested !!

However it's good for me as the memory fades I can use it to find my way back !
 
FWIW I'd say if you've got time & enjoy doing it fine, if it ever does become even a bit of a chore, stop immediately would be my advice. Most are read by very few people & they can come across as very self indulgent. Trick is to make it different/interesting somehow not just me, me, me. I used to manage a university library web site, made a site to sell my first boat & now do a few sites for others but I've never blogged, highly unlikely I ever would & don't do social media either (it's the work of the devil)...
 
ribrage said:
I started it for the family but whenever I mention something I posted they always ask for the link...
Click to expand...
That was my experience too. The best way of following a blog is via an RSS feed, then the posts come to you automatically - you don't have to remember to check periodically. Apart from my own children none of my relatives knew what a feed was - even the concept of a favourite or bookmark seemed to be beyond some of them!
 
We had a Web site but I could write HTML, if you get a book it's very easy to learn. As said you need a picture editor to reduce the sizes. To see how simple HTML is this a brief bit of code for a page with a single picture and then just text:
<HTML>
<HEAD>
<TITLE>Kelly's Eye</TITLE>
<LINK REL="stylesheet" HREF="./include/style1.css">
</HEAD>
<BODY BGCOLOR="#FFFFFF">

<CENTER>
<TABLE BORDER="0" WIDTH="750" CELLPADDING="0" CELLSPACING="0">
<TR>
<TD WIDTH="750" ALIGN="center">
 <BR>
<SPAN CLASS="H1">CANARIES TO THE CARIBBEAN</SPAN></B>
</TD>
</TR>
</TABLE>
</CENTER>
<CENTER>
<TABLE BORDER="0" WIDTH="750" CELLPADDING="0" CELLSPACING="0">
<TR>
<TD WIDTH="449">
 
<P></P>
<IMG SRC="./Imgcanariescaribbean/pontoon1.jpg" WIDTH="454" HEIGHT="341" ALT="Pontoon Las Palmas">
</TD>
<TD WIDTH="5">
 
</TD>
<TD WIDTH="296">
<SPAN CLASS="TEXT">
These are just some of the boats lined up on a pontoon in Las Palmas. All the boats are
dressed overall with signal flags and it made an impressive site.
</SPAN>
</TD>
</TR>
</TABLE>
</CENTER>
</SPAN>
</TD>
</TR>
</TABLE>
</CENTER>
</BODY>
</HTML>
............................................................
<HTML>
<HEAD>
<TITLE>Kelly's Eye</TITLE>
<LINK REL="stylesheet" HREF="./include/style1.css">
</HEAD>
<BODY BGCOLOR="#FFFFFF">

<CENTER>
<TABLE BORDER="0" WIDTH="750" CELLPADDING="0" CELLSPACING="0">
<TR>
<TD WIDTH="750" ALIGN="center">
 <BR>
<SPAN CLASS="H1">CANARIES TO THE CARIBBEAN</SPAN></B>
</TD>
</TR>
<TR>
<TD WIDTH="750">
<SPAN CLASS="TEXT">
 
<P></P>
This is probably the most difficult section I've had to write because I don't think it is
possible to accurately describe what a long ocean passage is really like. Mike likened it to
skydiving, unless you've done it it's impossible to truly understand what it's like. Yes we
had read the book, seen the film and looked at the chart - we knew the Atlantic was a big
place and the crossing would take us a long time, but nothing prepares you for the sheer
scale of it.
<P></P>
<P></P>
 
</SPAN>
</TD>
</TR>
</TABLE>
</CENTER>
</BODY>
</HTML>
 
I've built my website using "raw" html. One advantage is that it has no extraneous garbage generated by a package, and loads quite quickly on a slow line.

HtmlKit from Chiami is a great free editor for raw html. I'm currently using Hostinger as a free hosting service. It works fine.

To be honest, I only update my site about once a year, and then email my friends. However, I meet other cruisers who've browsed it, which is always gratifying, and it gives me an always-available summary log of our voyages to refer to.
 
Keep it up please!

Whilst some families may be disinterested, my thoughts on the blog that I am going to write when we set off is that it is going to be my own diary to look back over in later years and bore grandchildren with!

I have found blogs (along with this forum) to be an invaluable source of knowledge and some give a great insight into the "cruising life". Some look at the blog as a daily essential, but for me a post now and then will suffice - when RSS becomes useful.

Please keep up the blogs you bloggers, and keep posting your queries Mark1882 as we are (hopefully) just a year behind you and are watching with great interest.

To those who use the packaged blog software - is it easy to back up a hard copy? Would be awful to lose the material in the event of bankruptcy or major glitch at the provider's end!!
 
jpegs and a .odt on micro sd cards in film canisters fired by slingshot onto the decks of passing freighters?

Oh wait...people aren't likely to do that these days. Digital Cameras. No film canisters. Rats. OK well plan B...

I run my own web servers but my vice is taking forever hand crafting html to not look like anyone else's stuff. It actually looks to most people quite a lot worse than everyone else's. For blogging I'd suggest a free service which is as simple as possible to allow you to concentrate on content and leave stressing about the css to someone else. I've been putting my technical ramblings onto blogger (as previously mentioned) which uses your google credentials, is free, has all the widgets the average user needs, is easy to add content to, easy to read content from, gives you feedback on readership demographics, allows for comments (and editing/moderation thereof) and you can easily monetarise it if you're that way inclined and it turns out you have mad blogging skills. Not much to dislike other than it being owned by a multinational whose motto we're starting to question.
 
Pavalijo said:
To those who use the packaged blog software - is it easy to back up a hard copy? Would be awful to lose the material in the event of bankruptcy or major glitch at the provider's end!!
Click to expand...
Hard copy? Do you mean on paper? You could print the webpages I suppose.

There are several ways of downloading the contents if a Wordpress blog to your computer, and there are 3rd party backup tools I think. I expect Blogspot is the same. Major blogging platforms have programming facilities (APIs) which allow people to write tools to upload and download stuff, so that you can move it fromone blogging platform to another.
 
Pavalijo said:
To those who use the packaged blog software - is it easy to back up a hard copy? Would be awful to lose the material in the event of bankruptcy or major glitch at the provider's end!!
Click to expand...

If you use blogger...well it would be quite a big deal if Google lost users' data and a very very big deal if they went bust. Big enough that I don't bother backing it up. But they do let you download it all if you want to:
https://support.google.com/blogger/answer/97416?hl=en
 
We have a website and also a Facebook page....I realise a lot of you on here are obviously much much older and therefore totally horrified by social media but as we are of a younger generation all our important friends are on Facebook and so can easily keep track of what we are up too. ;-)
 
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