Should I host my own blog and photo gallery?

When setting up our website I had to decide whether to host a blog on our site or use a free blogging site such as Wordpress.com or Blogspot.com. In our particular situation I felt it better to host the blog on our site. Consequently I installed a free program from WordPress.org. What the heck, it's open source and free. It's not always advantageous to do it this way. Here are a list of advantages and disadvantages of blog hosting:

Advantages of hosting your own blog:

1. Hosting your own blog is infinitely more flexible in that you can customize the blog to fit your own particular needs. Each blogging site has different rules you must follow. For example WordPress.com doesn't allow AdSense. Others limit what you can and can't do in the sidebars. When you host your own blog you are in total control of it. Compare the two ways of hosting a blog. The blog you are reading this on is a free website hosted on blogspot. Contrast it to the one we host on our website.
   
2. Space - Free blogging sites limit the amount of space you can use.
   
3. You can use your own domain name (eg. familyonbikes.org/blog as opposed to familyonbikes.blogspot.com)

Disadvantages of hosting your own blog:

1. It takes technical know-how to set it up and to customize it. I had to use HTML and PHP in order to do the customization I wanted.

Advantages of using a blog hosting site (wordpress.com, blogger.com, etc...):

1. It's easy to setup and maintain. Sign up for the account and you are ready to start blogging. You can, literally, have your first post up in five minutes.
   
2. Minor modifications are fairly easy to do since they have an easy-to-use administrator interface. According to my wife it's just as easy to make a blog entry in both situations.

Disadvantages of using a hosting site:

1. Some sites require you to register with them before you can leave a comment. Each time someone wanted to leave a comment they would have to log in. Ugh . . . another username and password to remember.
   
2. You're stuck with one of their templates – customization is difficult or impossible.

Photo galleries have just about the same advantages and disadvantages as blogs but there was never a question on which one we would choose. We chose to host our own since the free photo gallery sites limit the space you can use. We plan on posting LOTS of pictures and would soon be paying extra money for another site to host our pictures.

Laptop or Not?

Months ago, when the debate between Nancy and me over whether to bring a laptop on this trip was raging, we were split on the decision. I didn't want to bring one and she adamantly wanted to. My reasoning had to do with the added weight and space of the equipment along with the responsibility of protecting it from the weather and theft. She, on the other hand, vehemently argued that we could not attain our financial goal of covering part of the expenses of our journey without one. In addition, she argued, we will need a way to keep up with the writing for Reach the World.

"If we're going to be selling advertising space on our site we need traffic," she argued. "In order to get traffic we are going to have to write daily blogs, maintain a picture gallery, and keep up with the people on our mailing list. In addition to that we have to write magazine and newspaper articles to attract even more people to our site. On top of all that we have to write up activities for students on both our educational site and for Reach the World. Oh yeah, and what about the You Tube videos? Video editing isn't possible in the confines of internet cafes."

In the end she won. I bought an IBM Thinkpad plus extra batteries - a total of over 7 pounds. Although it's slow and heavy, it's supposed to be rugged and well-built. Maybe, just maybe it will last the entire trip. I'll let you know how it works out as the trip progresses. A computer with a solid state drive instead of a spinning HDD would be the best way to go since they are much more resistant to damage caused by vibrations or the abuse of being on the road. I'm convinced that the best laptop for our purposes would
be the Panasonic Toughbook. It's probably the most rugged laptop built, intended for withstanding extreme environmental conditions. We would have loved to get a Toughbook but the price tag was just a bit too steep - well actually the price was way out of our budget. The other drawback was its weight. There are many lightweight laptops that may also be great for bicycle touring: the Toshiba R500 and the Sony Vaio TZ150. Look for the solid state drive. They are fast, use less energy, and less prone to crash due to vibration or dropping.

In all fairness it's probably better we take a laptop (especially for Nancy since I'll be the one to lug all this equipment). In addition to Nancy's argument, bringing our own laptop is a much more secure way to protect all our valuable usernames and passwords, eg. our Charles Schwab, PayPal, and bank accounts. We plan on doing just about all our financial transactions online and don't want the cybercrooks in internet cafes getting access to any of them. Identity theft has, all of a sudden, taken on a real priority for us. With a laptop, I can set my own firewall, protect/check my computer for viruses/spyware, and safely manage our passwords with an encrypted password manager - more on all these later.

Suppose you didn't want to lug a laptop around? After all, the vast majority of the cyclotourists we meet don't have one. I have a plan for that, it's actually a backup plan if we lose our laptop. There are basic, no-frills software packages you can load onto a 1GB pendrive that can be used on any Windows computer in which you have access to the USB drive. The only thing I would need an internet cafe for is the operating system and internet connection - everything else safely resides on my tiny pendrive literally no heavier than a pen. These portable applications will be the topic of my next entry.

My Philosophy of Technolgy for Travelers

My philosophy for dealing with on-the-road technology is very similar to my philosophy on bicycling equipment: keep it simple and pragmatic. Just as I want to minimize bicycle breakdowns and maintenance, I want to minimize the same things in the technolgy we lug around with us. With the exception of the still camera, I'd just as soon not bring any at all, but because of what we're trying to accomplish on this trip we are forced to pack a wide variety of it. We need pictures for the picture gallery we're running, entries for the blog we maintain, videos to liven up our site, and on top of that we're keeping track of a mailing list of people who are following our adventures. To add to the confusion there are cyber-thieves lurking about in the internet cafes and hot spots we are forced to use hoping to capture our important passwords. There are viruses and spyware itching to enter our computer with the purpose of raising havoc or making our life miserable.

The purpose of this blog is to share what I've learned about the technology we're using on our expedition. I've spent lots of time researching and testing different ways of accomplishing a variety of tasks and wanted to share this knowledge with anyone interested. Even after I write an entry, I'll update it when I learn more or discover things I hadn't known before. If there is anything in particular you want to know, leave a comment. Do the same if you have any advise for me. A technology expert I am not, so don't take what I write as gospel truth - consult the web or other people knowledgeable in the area of your interest for a second opinion. Keep in mind that I'm on the road and its difficult answer questions so my response may take a while.