Tuesday, February 08, 2011

Starting a travel blog: Deciding on the basics

I’ve longed to build my own travel blog and now with more free time and motivation from other travel bloggers – I decided  it’s about time to build a separate travel blog.

Photo from: Maria Reyes-McDavis
After a bit of reading – I summarised three key recommendations for starting bloggers like me:
  1. Blog Concept:  Figure out your focus. What will be your unique selling point and will make you different from other travel sites?
  2. Title: Once the concept is ready, decide on the title and domain name. Make it catchy & SEO friendly. For Wordpress domain hosting, some suggested Hostgator.com (feel free to give others)
  3. Look and Feel – This is crucial as it sets the tone of your blog. For beginners, I suggest using free themes first. Free themes from Wordpress.org or Woothemes are worth checking.
After this, you should be ready to blog. As for me, I hope to be ready by next week.

I would also recommend these links:
  1. W3schools CSS tutorial (for CSS support)
  2. Build your own Travel Blog ebook by Nomadic Matt  - a good tutorial but you have to pay to download though it’s worth the download fee .