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| MagnersMick Member Since: 16 Feb 2015 Location: Overlanding America's Posts: 93  
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Firstly...hello all (wrong place to say hello I know)
My wife an I will be taking a break from work soon and heading over to the Americas (Canada, USA and then South Am.) for a trip in our Overlander (pic below). I want to set up a website for family and friends to follow us and I would love some advice from people that have any information to share. I have used EasySpace to set up a website before but if there are other better ways, I'd love to know. Any tips on automatic tracking of us and our route, but all tips/advice gratefully received. Thank you in advance. Michael.  Click image to enlarge |
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2nd Mar 2015 10:24am |
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| davew Member Since: 02 Jan 2012 Location: North Yorkshire Posts: 888  
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We set up a Wordpress blog site for our adventures, easy to update from an app offline so you can add entries when you're out of internet coverage and can then upload them all to the blog when you get access.
I used a couple of plugins which allowed us to link each blog entry with a location so we built a map of our journey as we went and it also allowed us to plot some approximate future locations so people knew pretty much where we were headed. I found getting into the habit of adding a new blog entry whenever we arrived at a new location was quite cathartic and soon became part of the daily routine. As well as an update on where we were I tried to include a brief plan for the following day so that if we dropped out of contact there would be some indication of our rough direction of travel. I also tried to warn people when we expected to be out of internet coverage for more than a day or so so people wouldn't panic ! We did encounter a couple of people using auto tracking devices that were updating their location on a web site but we found that, from a "viewers" point of view it was very difficult to figure out where they actually were on any given day and there were often strange jumps where they would appear to have doubled back on themselves, sometimes as far as 500km. There was one guy using one of these that we were attempting to meet up with for a couple of weeks and when we finally did meet up it was a complete surprise as his tracking gizmo was still showing him as being 800km north of us ! By contrast, he knew exactly where we were from our blog and was able to navigate directly to us to meet up. For reference, our blog: http://landytravels.com The map page: http://landytravels.com/australia-2014-map/ You can either get a free Wordpress blog at Wordpress.org or, if you want to customise it more and have your own domain, you can host your own Wordpress site somewhere. (I offer hosting of this kind for around £70 a year if it's of interest, including support) In addition to the above we also used MemoryMap (actually the HEMA version of it) and had tracking turned on so we have a .gpx file from almost the entire trip although we've not done anything with it yet ! http://www.yorkshireoffroadclub.net/ |
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2nd Mar 2015 10:59am |
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| Grenadier Member Since: 23 Jul 2014 Location: The foot of Mont Blanc... Posts: 5765  
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I was led to believe that from a personal security point of view, tracking is not a great idea. Risk of theft etc in the US/Canada, worse if in Mexico and further south if you clearly ID where you are at any one time (unless it is available only to family members or for your use once the trip is done). I've not done it myself, or experienced any problems, just what I have heard and given the number of kidnappings etc in Mexico, worth thinking about? Monsieur Le Grenadier I've not been everywhere, but it's on my list..... 2011 Puma 110DC - Corris Grey |
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2nd Mar 2015 6:50pm |
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| MagnersMick Member Since: 16 Feb 2015 Location: Overlanding America's Posts: 93
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Thank you Dave W.
The location/tracking using Google maps on your page is one of your 'plug-ins'. Is that available through Wordpress directly or do you have to 'program' it into the Wordpress site. (I.e. Can a Luddite like me do it or do I pay a pro? (Like you) Thank you Grenadier. Yes need to think about security. You'll note from my post I didn't mention Central America because of the reason you give. We plan (much to my dislike) to miss Central America by shipping from USA to Venezuela or somewhere 'safe' (wherever that is in this world). Thank you Greeni. I lurk on most forums. This is the first forum I've posted to. ...and I'm loving your location  |
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2nd Mar 2015 7:13pm |
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| davew Member Since: 02 Jan 2012 Location: North Yorkshire Posts: 888
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It's a standard off the shelf free plugin, with Wordpress sites you can add plugins from the admin "control panel" and it's all done via the Wordpress servers. That particular one is called Nomad World Map. There are a lot of different plugins available, including some that take a gpx file and plot it on a map for you but the Nomad one was the simplest for what we wanted, allowing us to plot a single location, attach the location to a post and associate a date with it.
The plugin info page is: https://wordpress.org/plugins/nomad-world-map/ You can, if you want to, password protect a Wordpress site or individual pages so if you're worried about security you can potentially limit access to friends and family. http://www.yorkshireoffroadclub.net/ |
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3rd Mar 2015 1:02am |
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