Starting a travel blog?

Well, I blog about my travels, although mine is strictly personal. There are no ads (which is one way to make money) and it's really just for friends and relatives, although it is public. However, I do not promote it.

Regardless, I use Wordpress, which I really like. If you are at all tech savvy, it's easy to use, and there are lots of themes you can utilize for your blog. It's free for the basics, although if you keep blogging and add photos, eventually you'll use up your allotted space and have to start paying. But the cost isn't high. Here is a link to mine if you want to look at it: https://mostlytraveled.wordpress.com/

Wix is another popular platform, and I think there are some people here who use that. There is also Weebly and Ghost. Medium is one that allows you to make money by subscription, so that might be useful to you.

I would try them all out and see which one you like the best.

ETA: I commiserate with you about Chowhound. I was so sad when that went away. I still miss it.

I also blog on Wordpress. It’s pretty easy to set up and then really easy to post on. I do pay for a dedicated website name and for extra storage for photos. It costs me about $40 a year. I’ve been posting on the site for just about 10 years and it is nice to have all my travels stories in one place. I do not make any money from my site.

Mardee and Valerie..you are two reasons that this forum is great...no nonsense, no judgement..thank you both for answering so quickly. I'm a little scared of technology but WordPress sounds as if I can mange it..

I've written so much on other forums and now would like to have my own "home place.."

I've written dozens of trip reports, mostly about Italy and Spain, so if either of you would like, I can link them here, otherwise, I am going to pursue to WordPress idea..very soon..a little scary but sounds like a good project!!! (I write under this screen name on Fodor's)

Thank so much, once again, to both of you!!! All the best..ek

Interesting, and good information.
I write on fb when I’m on my trips and people ( not public, just friends) say they love the stories.
I won a small prize in a contest with one trip-story a few years back.
They are really quirky observations, not reports of famous sites or museums I see.
During Covid about five years of stories were lost due to me trying to update my security settings on fb….I couldn’t retrieve them no matter what I did.
So now, I may copy the remaining ones into a more permanent site.
Thanks for the kick start!

I had not backed anything up and all were lost.

One approach would be to compose in Word or something similar first, and then just paste your text into WordPress when you do the layout for your blog.

I also use Wordpress to blog about my personal travels. As Mardee said, there are free versions and paid versions - more features available with the paid platform. I have used it since 2014 and am at 49% of my free storage space. Jetpack, the app used to post stories from phones and tablets, is sometimes a little clunky but mostly because I don't use it regularly and have to do some re-learning each trip. In fact you reminded me that I need to set up placeholder posts for my upcoming trip - I find it easier to do this on my desktop before I leave so all I have to do is populate it with photos and words and not mess with formatting.

With regard to backup, here's what it says about my free plan:

Data backup and recovery Our systems back up your WordPress.com
website data regularly, so in case of an event that causes data loss
(like a power supply failure or a natural disaster, for example), we
can recover it. While all WordPress.com sites are protected, sites
with higher-level plans can access daily backups via the dashboard.

There are other frequent forum posters who also blog, hoping they'll chime in with what they use to produce their works (many of them are excellent!).

Mardee mentioned one I like, "Ghost".

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ghost_(blogging_platform)

[snip]
The initial concept for the Ghost platform was presented in a November 2012 blog post by project founder John O'Nolan, who was also the former deputy lead of the WordPress user interface team.[6] O'Nolan presented Ghost as an "idealistic and fictional" solution to the increasing difficulty of using WordPress to build blogs, its original purpose, rather than as a more complex content management system.[7]

[snip]
Ghost is free to download and use. In addition, the Foundation offers a paid platform for users who prefer a managed solution, as an alternative to self-hosting. For a monthly fee, users can build a Ghost website or blog, on a fully managed installation, with weekly updates and access to email support. The hosted platform is owned and operated by the Ghost Foundation, and all revenue generated from the service is used to fund further development of the software, and the project's infrastructure.

edit: the link for the managed blog at Ghost with pricing:

https://ghost.org/pricing/

One approach would be to compose in Word or something similar first, and then just paste your text into WordPress when you do the layout for your blog.

No need for that. Once you add your text to a draft version in WordPress, it saves automatically or you can also save it manually. Then you can preview the page before you publish it. Lots of fail-safe measures in WordPress.

That said, ekscrunchy, have you tried searching the Wayback Machine for past Hound discussions? I'm sure you won't find everything but you might find some. I also know that a lot of them went to https://www.hungryonion.org.

I also blog on WordPress (the paid version). For me, like Mardee, it's just a hobby and a way for me to share with friends and family, and anyone here who wants to follow my travels, though our Webmaster has cautioned me against posting a link to my blog here as a violation of Community Guidelines #6:

...promoting your website, blog, ... etc for the purpose of ... boosting traffic is prohibited.

I also don't run ads or make money. In fact, it costs me plenty because of the cost of Wordpress hosting (I use Bluehost and I'm very happy with them) and several plugins I find to be necessary.

One downside of Wordpress is that you can't draft a post if you don't have WiFi or another internet connection. I'm not sure if any of the other platforms allow that. If I want to write on the plane, I draft a post in my favorite text editor and then copy it into Wordpress later.

Following this thread. On occasion I've thought about starting a blog. Not for commercial purposes, just for fun. I'd really like to be able to add photos to a trip report.

I have twice blogged. First, cooking. Later, when my son and I took our sabbatical trip around Europe. I used Blogspot. It’s free, and as far as I know it’s still there.

Once you add your text to a draft version in WordPress, it saves automatically or you can also save it manually.

Yes, it saves your blog as an html file [along with any added image files] on the WordPress server. It is available as long as you maintain your WordPress account. I was addressing the OP's concern regarding having an archived local copy.

I also use Wordpress for a website to memorialize (some) of my trips, but I don't "blog" (the world does not need any more "bloggers" or "influencers"). Mine is just a website for myself, family and friends, to record details and share photos, so when I share a link with someone I always ask them specifically NOT to share the link with anyone or post it elsewhere. The endless self-promotion and narcissism associated with "bloggers" and "influencers" is not something I want any part of - even though that's obviously how such tools are designed and pitched to users.

Wordpress is OK as a basic tool, but IME it can quickly get clunky and error-prone if you push it beyond the basics. Being able and willing to get your fingers a little dirty with some basic HTML coding will help - but is also fraught with risk since Wordpress seems to take over and automatically over-ride hand-code you've entered sometimes, and may "fight you" once you delve into the code view. Without adding extensions it's fairly limited, so your site will tend to look like a million others, in case that matters to you. Free or just cheap is always nice, but ultimately you often get what you pay for. I do pay a little extra for some customization and storage (I have LOTS of big photos).

David, you raise a good point about the proliferation of "bloggers" and "influencers." While I confess to being a "blogger," and I'm happy to have readers and for my readers to share my posts with others, I don't do it for money or influence or (I'd like to think) for narcissistic purposes.

There are some very successful travel bloggers who have made a lot of money at it. A part of me wishes I'd jumped on that bandwagon long ago. But even writing my personal travel blog can feel like an effort and a burden much of the time. It's like a monster I've created and now have to keep feeding. (I know I could stop any time, but I don't, and I probably won't.)

The kind of blog you are talking about is filled with listicles. "Top ten things to do in Barcelona" or "Top ten things to avoid in Barcelona." I've actually seen such duplication on the same blog. Among the things to do: Stay in hostels. Among the things not to do: Don't avoid staying in hostels. I kid you not. It's how many of these bloggers keep creating content quickly and without giving it a whole lot of thought.

My blog, like yours and Mardee's, is essentially a chronicle of my travel experiences. No recommendations, no product endorsements, and very little travel advice. I do have a handful of advice articles, such as "Ten Steps for Planning the Best Trip Ever" and "20 Top Topics for European Travel." I even have an article on how to ask for and offer travel advice on forums like this! But I don't review hotels or restaurants or tour guides or anything else.

I have to ask, David, why did you decide on Wordpress for your site? It seems overly complex for something you only share with your family and friends. Just curious...

Oh my..such great information. I will take time to digest and report back.

Mardee, I'm one of the Chowhounders who posts on HungryOnion.org (erica1)...It's a very good site and does not have the "policing" of forums like Fodor's.

I'm such a tech novice but I am going to take a good look at WordPress, to start, and return to ask questions.
Is it better to create a screen name that's similar to those used on other forums.,.,for me it's only this one, Fodor's and HungryOnion with once-in a while questions on TA....or does it not matter much..(??).

I have a lot to learn, and from now on, will refrain from mentioning 'blogging," or the despised "Influencer." Heaven forbid that I become a 'content creator" who reports about checking off the items on my "bucket list!!" !!! I don't even have a a "phone stick!!" (I think there is another word or these but cannot think of it right now....)

ekscrunchy, I wouldn't worry about using the words "blog" or "blogger." They're just words—it's what you do with them that counts. :-)

G3rryCee, I forgot about Blogspot, although it's called Blogger (on the blogspot domain) and I believe it's still owned by Google. I used that for my first blogging experience, but I find it pretty limiting, which is why I switched to WordPress.

I have to ask, David, why did you decide on Wordpress for your site? It seems overly complex for something you only share with your family and friends.

@ Lane - Well, it met my needs, which are a couple notches above "absolutely basic" but short of super-fancy. My requirements were pretty simple: needs to easily integrate photos (lots of them) and other graphics; needs to allow some modest formatting for text and graphics; needs to be customizable enough so it doesn't look like every other personal website; basic stuff like automated backups, easy reversion and version control. I'll admit I am a stickler for design (I worked in software development for many years on photo, design and writing apps) and frankly I had been hoping for something even more capable than Wordpress - some kind of a professional-level website authoring tool that doesn't require lots of hand-coding...but I've tried a bunch and they all have too high a ratio of work-to-results.

I settled for Wordpress because it was "good enough" and customizable enough - though I'd love to find something that allows me to indulge my passion for design more without requiring constant hand-coding. For comparison, I prefer the pro-level tools for photos and layout (Photoshop, Lightroom, InDesign) but am less enthusiastic about MS Word as a writing tool (all of which are apps I actually worked on). But if there's a good, pro-level website authoring tool out there that meets my criteria, I'd be tempted to switch from Wordpress (so I'm all ears). So yeah, I usually don't have any trouble with "overly complex" - I actually like complex (just not if the juice isn't worth the squeeze).

Another Wordpress user here! I have been blogging (link in my bio) since 2012 and value that I can go back and revisit my journeys. I have a blog I am discontinuing, too, and found a service where I can have it printed into a book to preserve the content in an accessible format.

Blogs used to be different. Look up "things I won't work with" sometime.

But David is right, if you want it to look more than a generic simple thing, Wordpress would be better than Ghost. It's more the "craigslist" of blogging tools.

All of the hosted plans at Ghost have free trial periods (see link above). If you don't know what you want then starting simple and going up from there (if necessary) seems like a good idea.

WordPress is actually quite powerful once you start adding in plug-ins, and it IS possible to customize, but it's over-sold as something that a novice can just open up and start using, if you want to do much more than what's offered by one of the many themes. But the themes do get better all the time, and new themes are always being added.

s it bettIr to create a screen name that's similar to those used on
other forums.,.,for me it's only this one

Given the world we live in today, I suggest not linking too many things with similar names to protect your privacy.

FWIW, I have my Wordpress blog settings set to discourage search engines from scraping my site (it's a setting under "reading" for those who use it). I am fully aware that nothing on the internet is really private, but I haven't had any trolls that I am aware of.

"I am fully aware that nothing on the internet is really private, but I haven't had any trolls that I am aware of."

A new version of "Security by obscurity". Too small to be bothered. :-)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Security_through_obscurity

[snip]
Obscurity in the context of security engineering is the notion that information can be protected, to a certain extent, when it is difficult to access or comprehend. This concept hinges on the principle of making the details or workings of a system less visible or understandable, thereby reducing the likelihood of unauthorized access or manipulation.[2]

Security by obscurity alone is discouraged and not recommended by standards bodies.

ek,

I suppose Facebook could be used as a sort of travel blog, but it's likely better to have one site that's dedicated just to travel. One of the apps that I was looking at for Blogging is PolarSteps. It seems to offer a lot of features, including maps which trace the places you've visited. Another one to check out is FindPenguins. I checked the app store tonight and there are LOTS of different options.

I typically diarize my trips in some detail in a Word document, and then use selected parts of that along with photos to provide the content for my Blog.

Thanks, all...I will play around with WordPress to begin with.....will keep you posted on how it goes...right now I have only one trip planned, for October to Puglia, so I could begin there......would I link all my other Puglia trip reports to that one,, even if they were posted on another forum?? Or re-write the old ones (I did not take photos that last time I was in that region..). Or should I just begin fresh?? I have SO many reports on the Fodor's forum....it's the same screen name as this one..