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Challenge: Travel Blog website for non-techie friend.

A well-traveled friend who takes wonderful pictures and writes fascinating tales of her travels has tired of using mytripjournal.com. She says it is too slow uploading photos, maps and text. She does not want to set up her own website and wants recommendations.

Thanks.

by wootvan
asked 2 years ago

10 Answers answer

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Why not use tripadvisor?

http://www.tripadvisor.com/ then she review the places she stays too and be anonymous.

Blogspot.com is also useful although I have trouble figuring that one out myself.

hobbit
2 years ago

vote-for2vote-against

Thanks for the quick reply @hobbit.

Lori's pictures and writing are solely for her far-flung friends so I don't think tripadvisor.com is what she's looking for. She travels internationally and often is at the mercy of slow internet cafe terminals and says that mytripjournal is too slow regardless of where she works.

wootvan
2 years ago

vote-for4vote-against

There are actually a few solutions to this. Here are some suggestions.

Use blogspot. It's free, and accessible everywhere (except mainland china, probably).

Use Flickr. Easy upload of pictures, and you can put a LOT of commentary on each and every picture. The uploading is pretty fast, even at the other end of a slow connection (although I'd suggest reducing the size of pictures being uploaded to no more than 1024x768, or whatever similar size fits the specification).

Use Facebook (just kidding).

She can also make a web site (yes, I know you just said she doesn't want that, but I'm trying to think of all the possibilities) if she has a gmail/google account. Those are very easy to set up, and then her friends could just check there.

shrdlu
2 years ago

vote-for4vote-against

this is actually a pretty simple place to create a website and she can blog here. It is free. A friend of mine used it to chronicle their home building

http://www.webs.com/

hobbit
2 years ago

vote-for3vote-against

I would recommend TypePad Micro. It's free, and fast to set up and blog. It's stripped down, feature-wise, but that's what makes it so streamlined. I don't know her exact requirements, but it seems like it would have everything she'd need. http://typepad.com/micro/features

I like Wordpress, too. Also free, very user-friendly admin interface. More features than TypePad Micro, but a little more involved. http://wordpress.com/features/

Blogger (same as blogspot) has similar features, but I find the UI to be a little more clunky and the themes less pretty. Nice that Google owns it, so you don't have to create a new account if you use Gmail, etc. http://blogger.com/start

(cont'd >)

joshmonkey
2 years ago

vote-for3vote-against

(cont'd from prev.)

If you're going to use flickr, I'd recommend setting your preferences so that your main page shows the largest size. This has the effect of turning your flickr homepage into something that looks remarkably like a photo blog: a vertical list of large photos with as much description as you want, in chronological order. It's a one-photo-per-entry thing, though, which works better for a photo blog than a travel blog per se.

I use TypePad Micro and link to flickr photo sets when I want to share more than 10 photos per entry.

In the interest of full disclosure, I used to work for Six Apart, the creators of TypePad (and Movable Type, and Vox).

joshmonkey
2 years ago

vote-for2vote-against

(Sorry for this additional post; I want to trying out the new email alerts feature, but I don't think there's a way to retro-actively follow a thread via alerts yet.)

joshmonkey
2 years ago

vote-for2vote-against

@joshmonkey: Cool. Here's your first email under the new system. I love Typepad and Movable Type. They are both underpinnings for some of the most interesting people I know.

shrdlu
2 years ago

vote-for2vote-against

Yeah, TypePad has historically been the platform of choice for "pro" bloggers; up until Micro it has been fee-based, but they also embrace bloggers monetizing their sites with ads and other commercial widgets, which Wordpress does not.

I'm happy to see the new free version, so I can recommend TypePad to anyone, even a casual microblogger.

joshmonkey
2 years ago

vote-for2vote-against

Thanks to all...I think she will have plenty from which to choose.

wootvan
2 years ago

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