Two years ago this month I was playing around on a website that lets you check the availability of website names (domain names). We planned to start a travel blog at some point to document our round the world (RTW) adventure, but it seemed so far away at that point in time. But as I was playing around with the online domain name checker I was trying to think of a name that would best describe us and something that would be easy to remember and catchy. There are a lot of websites out there and some of the names are good and others are awful. As a general rule of thumb, it’s always better to go with a good name, don’t you think? So, there I was two years ago thinking about what best describes us and all the traveling we were planning to do when I thought, “Man, we sure are travel junkies.” Bingo! After a quick check I found that travel-junkies.com was available. Even though we weren’t planning on leaving for our RTW trip for another 2 ½ years, I did not want anyone else to get that domain name. So, I signed up for webhosting with a free domain name and the deal was done. We had our travel blog with a catchy name.
To be honest, 2 years ago I knew nothing about running a blog. I had created simple websites in the past using space on a old AT&T account and had dabbled with HTML and web design on my employer’s website, but nothing spectacular. I wanted something amazing! Luckily, the technology for websites and blogging had come a long way and no longer do you need to know HTML or own expensive editing programs to have a nice website. You can run a website on the free WordPress, Joomla, or Drupal content management systems and install a free or premium theme for the look you want. After doing a bit of research I chose to run our blog on the popular WordPress platform. After a quick install through the online interface on our website we had a blog. Hello World!
After 2 years of trial and error and trying to find my writing style (how am I doing?) I think our travel blog looks pretty slick. I’m really glad I started it when I did and not wait until the last minute. There is a bit of a learning curve and it takes awhile for a website to start showing up on the first page of search engine results. It has also been a bit of a struggle trying to find the time to write posts, but I am really looking forward to being a fulltime travel blogger later this year and will have a lot to write about as we travel the world. So, for everyone that has been following our blog, THANK YOU!!!