I will be taking an 18 day trip out west and plan to take a laptop along with me. The intent is to stay fairly current with a ride report. However, in the interest of keeping family and friends in the loop on my trip I was wondering if also putting the report somewhere else like a travel blog site or facebook would be easier for those not in the ADV community to follow. I am not a facebook user and wonder about their security and policies. I also see some people keep a separate travel blog or website in addition to the ride reports. Any ideas or feedback on how others deal with keeping those outside the ADV community informed about their trips? Thanks Scott
I plan on a running ride report here and also updates on Facebook. I plan on my primary info being here and just some photos and links to the RR on my FB page. Your posts on FB are very limited for space, so you won't be able to write much in each post. See the link in my sig line for my pre-trip planning thread. Tim
With Facebook you can however use the 'Notes' section, which I think makes a perfectly good place to blog. I did mine under there and you can intermingle your photos in there too. Wordpress is another good free option.
It depends on your goals. The more recognition you want, the more work you will probably have to put in. Doing an engaging write up and having good photos is a lot more work than people think. It takes a good bit of talent too. The best way to stay in touch with your family and friends is the same way you stay in touch currently, whatever that is. You can write a group email, etc. That's probably the best way. Group email gets to everyone and everyone sees it. On Facebook, they will also probably see it when they log in. As for blogs, very few people make the effort to go to specific blogs regularly. I would just create email ride report, send to F&F and post the same thing on Advrider and you can give people a chance to subscribe to your email as well if you wish... As for Facebook security policies, are you afraid someone is going to steal a paragraph you wrote or photo you posted? What kind of security do you really need? You're not storing gold on your Facebook account.
Pretty much anyone that wants to know what I'm up to is on Facebook. On my last trip I just put a link up to the single post with my ADV write-up in it. Seemed to work well.
This would also work with LOTS of other blogging options: Wordpress, Blogger, Tumblr, etc. Most of which also have apps for your phone to upload pics and add/update posts.
Just me, of course, but I would at least consider that you can tie up your own domain name and pay for simple hosting for a year for less than a hundred buck investment, and you have full control, and potential visitors dont have to worry about any spunk sticking to them like facebook. I refuse to participate in a facebook world where all your shitte is mined, traded, sold, and run in thier own world of statistical intelligence on you and your visitors. Carry a little HP Netbook, you can compose your daily or weekly updates, full control over text, pics, password some areas, and simply send a link to your homies to follow along. I will pm you an example..
Just use facebook man. Pick out the best 2 or 3 photos of the day, tag the location, and write something witty in the description box. As for data mining...do you have a credit card? a store discount card? a mobile phone? netflix? email? Shit, you have any of that and your info is going into a database just like the one FB uses. I started a ride report and quickly lost interest due to the amount of work it took. It took away from the enjoyment of my trip b/c at the end of the day I knew that I was going to have to spend hours writing & editing the text and pruning/editing photos. It just wasn't fun. To elaborate on what someone pointed out above, unless you are a DAMN good photographer AND writer...no one (other than your Mom) is going to visit a travel blog. Everyone and their brother has a blog now, very few are worth visiting. Even here on ADVRider there are only a handful of Ride Reports that truly stand out.
Facebook is not all bad news. It actually delivers your updates to people and people read them. Chances are that if you put it on a blog, 90% of your readers will not go to your web site to read. You'll be pretty depressed at the amount of your readership unless you're a cross promoting marketing ninja.
As noted, maintaining a semi- up-to-date ride report while on the trip can be taxing, but it's worth trying once. What I fail to understand, is that if you're planning on posting it here, why not just send your family a link to the thread once you start it? They do not have to be ADV members to read a ride report. If you are trying to keep current, you won't want a flood of feedback comments from them anyway.
Scott, Sounds as though you're interested in sharing ONE ride report with a small audience in short term. If that's the case, Google's blogspot.com is the way to go. It's free, easy to use and no need to buy a domain name, hosting etc. And it's easy to delete everything later on or it's easily expanded if you decide you like it. It's certainly better than facebook if you want a presentation without distractions, such as ads. It's also better than an ADV thread, which are often polluted with extraneous comments.