I grew up in a remote part of California and prefer my phone with zero bars; I am not a technological genius. In the 12 years since I first started backpacking much of my original kit has become outdated with lighter, faster and warmer versions. I have made countless mistakes experimenting with different gear and even more lessons from all the trail folk I encountered along the way. Not once during those years of manually filtering water did I think I would venture into the realms of digital blogging…but here we are, maybe I was getting bored watching my new gravity water filter slowly clog.
…or maybe it was the fact that 2020 has driven so many of us towards digital forms of entertainment during quarantine. Personally, I spent hours and days watching YouTube videos about GPS watch reviews. Conclusion: there are not enough female gear reviewers. One day I said to Rachel after complaining about my observation, “Hey, you and I would probably do well if we wrote gear reviews.” Rachel said, “Ya, we should do it!” After confirming her seriousness, we agreed to commit to doing it. Little did we know there would be so much to learn.
What I had to work with
I was born in the late 1980s and didn’t get my first cell phone until high school. I can tell you about the different biogeochemical cycles in the ocean, but didn’t know the difference between hosting, blocks, plugins, and servers. My guiding coworker and soon to be blogging partner, Rachel, had blogging knowledge from 10 years ago, but was not up to date on modern functions.
We enlisted the help of my college roommate and close friend, Sarah Valdez, who works in the social media industry, to help us break down the necessary steps we would need to start a website. It was extremely helpful to have someone refocus our efforts. I wanted to talk about the streamlining article distribution during a busy backpacking guiding season while I should have been thinking about the basics; how to actually make a website.
Below you will find a mini, boiled down, description of the process we used to start our outdoor blog after many conversations with tech savvy friends, internet searches and hours of learning what is what. We could have paid someone to build our site or used a company that had extremely simple and user friendly formats, but we wanted full and total freedom (‘merica!) to create our site. Ultimately, I think it was more satisfying in the end.
What you need to build your site
- Domain name
This is the name and address of your website. You must register this address through a registrar. There are hundreds of registrars. The top choices so for 2021 can be found here. The name you choose for your website/blog might not be available or it might cost you more depending on the wording or the which domain (.com, .org, etc) you choose. It’s best to choose a registrar and start entering various versions of the name of your choice to see the various options.
We also did a web search of websites that might have the same or similar named websites. You might not want to be mistaken for another website if someone mistypes your website.
- Hosting website
Say for example you want to make create a new hiking trail. You will want to choose a National Park to dig this new epic route. That National park will be the hosts of your new trail especially if permits are required.
With your registered domain, you must choose a web hosting site to manage the data from your site. This is like choosing which National Park system you want to build a trail. There are many national parks to choose from, but not all are created equal. A good article on which hosting websites to choose from can be found here.
- Website building platforms
Once you’ve chosen your National Park (hosting website) you must decide on a trail crew to dig and design the physical trail. A website platform is like this trail crew. There are website building platforms out there that offer more options and choices than others while others are free or a work for a small cost. You can find the various choices here.
Notes
- Ultimately, it will be the content you wish to post. Get organized with the types of articles you wish to write about and take lots and lots of high quality pictures.
- YouTube videos about the specific aspects of working with your chosen platforms was extremely helpful rather than figuring it out from scratch.
