BootsnAll Travel Community

I'm trying to decide whether or not to start a website for my travels, or a blog, or both. I code HTML so I can do anything with a website, but perhaps a blog might be easier.
What can I do with a bootsnall blog? Is there a limit to how many photos I can add or how much space I can use, how exactly does this work? Which would you recommend?

Hey Spanky,

I started out with a website because I figured I could do whatever I wanted with it easily. This was when Brian and I were going to be with each other at all times and we could update the site together... on the laptop that we'd also have to have with us at all times.

Now that plans have changed, I'm going with a blog. I feel like the bootsnall blogs are a little limited in what you can do and the design aspect and photo uploads so I went with a wordpress blog and we are using the hosting from the original site. The plus for a blog is that you don't always have to have a laptop with you as you update your posts from any internet cafe. Once you have everything the way you want it it is smooth sailing... and there are some really cool plugins you can put in.

I guess it really depends on what kind of site you want. I'd think I'd start looking at other travel sites and deciding what you like about each and see which type (blog or website) would make that happen easier. If you're just going to go with a bootsnall blog (i do love bootsnall, but the blogs are limited) I feel like with your html skills you might be better at making a website.

good luck

Pretty much right on - and we feel the blogs are limited too which is something we have on our list of things to improve. It's coming up, but there is no set date yet.

If you know html, I'd say just create your own blog using Wordpress or the like. Bootsnall rules, but I prefer to have my own domain name and keep control of my own postings. If something ever happened to Bootsnall (god forbid!) I'd hate to lose all my hard work in the Internet abyss.

i use the bootsnall one and it was great when I was away...easy to access and great... i am not that savy with html so it seemed logical for me to use that one

I do agree with brooke though that the uploading is limited with how much you can upload (20 megs i think)...but if you pick up that picture tray program you can compress the photos considerable and get plenty up there

Howdy!

Here's some "official" input on this thread - hope you guys don't mind.

Blog v. Website - this is a tough one. It depends on what your goals are. Having done both personally for a long time, not to mention my involvement @ BnA, I'll me run down through some of my thoughts for each - see below, and based on just my opinions, of course.

Blog space is currently limited to 20mb. We're flexible on allowing more when you're actually using all of it, but we don't want to allocate a whole bunch of space per site and then have no one use it, which takes away from the overall available space for those who do use it, or for new blogs.

However, we are working on a much better long term solution for this. Ideas are better flickr integration or imageshack, etc. This way you can have as much storage as you want for images, and it will work seamlessly from the blog interface - stay tuned. You can actually do this right now, it's just not nearly as quick & easy as we'd like. Some success has been reported via flickr's blogging ability, but it's not something we can troubleshoot if it doesn't work for you. http://www.flickr.com/help/blogging/

Some unorganized thoughts on Blog v. Website:

Website:
- ultimate control on everything
- much more work
- your own domain name
- more, technical knowledge required which may limit what you can & can't do.
- it costs you money, although usually less than $200/yr if you use basic features
- And if you have, so what. How do people find it?

Blog @ BnA:
- super easy to set up
- easy to organize with categories, etc
- limited to the features currently offered
- almost no technical ability required.
- free
- we can also help get your own domain name in place, but it's not instant and takes a little bit of work.
- easy to update and add posts from almost any computer anywhere. No FTP or other software required.
- 20mb storage limit, as per this thread.
- Things like RSS are already available so it's easy for people who know about it to subscribe to your blog
- It's easier (pretty much automatic) to promote your blog, since all the tags are shared, and your posts will show on blogs.bootsnall.com home page, etc. So you can get more recognition and connect with other travelers with blog comments easier than you could on your own site.

Another viable option is to pick the best of both worlds. Set up a web site somewhere to have your gallery or any other things you want to set up, then link to your blog as a "travel journal" or and in your "blog intro" and "about" page on your blog set a link back to your web site so people can easily go from one to the other.

There's a TON more, but hopefully this sheds a little input from us to help you choose what's best for you.

I've always had my own website, but when we decided to go travelling I wasn't sure whether to make a travel website or just use a ready made blog.

I tried out a few blogs but found them limiting.

The problem that I thought I might have with a website is that I would need to be allowed to upload stuff, and if I can't get any internet connection that's not the easiest thing to do in an internet cafe.

So what I'm doing instead is going for content management software - joomla - which is free to use.

That way I can have my own webspace, but all the administration is done from online. So I can access it anywhere. I am still taking my laptop with me, but I'll just write stuff in word and cut and paste it in. So all in all much quicker and I get the space and functionality I want.

Cheers.

I think the way you phrase it is sort of a false choice.

Its more a choice between pre-made, hosted blogging sites or rolling your own.

You can get web serving dirt cheap now, and most places will let you install Wordpress with just one click. From there you can customize it with all the plugins and themes you want.

I pay about $5/month for my website. I'm sure you could find cheaper if you really wanted. I do all my updates via the web just like any other blog site package. I never need to FTP anything (although I do occasionally upload a new KMZ file for the Google Earth map of my trip)


Also, from a bandwidth standpoint, you are probably better off using Flickr or some other photo hosting service than hosting your own photos. Photos and video take up waaay more space and bandwidth than text. If you do that you can probably get the cheapest pacakage you can find and it will be more than enough.