Do you want to go to New Zealand for a month or two?
The how, why and yeah on the Web site
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| Visit the Official Site of Destination New Zealand |
I decided the easiest way to keep family and friends informed would be to write my goings on from week-to-week (or month-to-month) on the internet. People can read it as they please, I can share photos and they can easily reply.
There are quite a few tools you can use to make a travelogue or blog, but none of them were really suitable for what I wanted. So to make it exactly how I wanted it and as flexible as possible, I made the whole thing myself from scratch.
The dynamic parts of the Web site are written in PHP with a MySQL database powering it. The photograph across the top was inspired by this photo from Brazil I took.
I wrote every little bit I could before leaving, so I wouldn't have to worry about it while travelling. Pretty much the only thing that I have to write is the travelogue. The site knows my flight details, so it will change automatically whenever I land in a new country. It knows where my photos are kept on Flickr, so if I upload a few more, it will be shown on the site straight away. Generally, it's an all-singing-all-dancing Web site.
The photos are hosted on Flickr as they have great tools for managing photos, offering different sizes, allowing for comments to be added plus you get to put them up with a massive community who you can share them with.
I wrote, designed and organised the site on my PowerBook G4. I used Dreamweaver to assist me with the site design and scripting, and Fireworks to do the graphics. If I was going away for longer, I'd probably take my notebook with me. But for this trip, it's not really needed.