The Happy Pilgrim : A new blog template for Spain

A new blog template for Spain

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In 2013, inspired by my cousin Shelley (now an ex-pat in Doha) I discovered the joys of WordPress. WordPress is an easy to use, customisable free web hosting site with a range of templates to chose from. This is where I began my journey with blogging. I figured if I was going to walk across Spain it would be nice to communicate with interested people back home. I planned to share the fun and humour of my quirky adventures and maybe some of my insights. I don't really expect to have insights to share all the time, but if I have one, and I want to share, I have a platform!

Fingers crossed I would have the energy with all those kilometres ahead of me! I am sure I will send a few Emails but a blog definitely appealed to me, especially if I can write it anywhere and upload it later. For quite some time now I have been having fun practicing my blog writing skills and teaching myself through trial and error how to manage the IT. The ongoing challenge will be to write things that appeal to my audience. If that doesn't work, I will still have a travel diary for my own purposes so "que sera sera"!

I had the WordPress thing pretty much worked out and was quite pleased with myself. I documented many of my favourite walks around Canberra and uploaded photos and experimented with labels, formats and templates. Version 1 - Preparing for Spain had a handful of loyal followers and gave me a platform to experiment on and iron out glitches. As I got closer to my departure date I wanted to launch a "new look" version. I ruminated over hundreds of WordPress free templates and a large contingency of expensive options and found nothing that I really liked. Finally, I stumbled across this one and fell in love with it. What I didn't know as I whipped out the credit card and paid a bargain-basement $6.95US dollars was that it wasn't a standalone product (template and web-hosting tool) like Wordpress. It only worked with a new web-platform called "Blogger". This meant starting all over again and learning something else new...... This wasn't part of my plan!

"What to do? .... what to do?"

Clearly the cosmetic draw of the pretty shiny-new template won me over and here I am practicing on the Microsoft platform "Blogger" with my new $6.95 template (Sora Article). It was a challenge for me at first. Needless to say I made a new friend in India and our email conversations will make an excellent case study one day. My "friend" was obviously good at writing html but wasn't able to demonstrate that same level of competency when it came to communicating with a determined women in her mid 40s who wanted to learn more. I don't think I will be inviting him to follow my epic blog adventures across Spain. In the end it's always something quite simple like changing to an incorrect timezone (who would have guessed?!) This made all the difference and the "higgledy-piggeldy" was fixed and the text lined up nicely. As my departure date closed in, there were still some buttons and links I couldn't get to work. At the time I wrote this first post I was hoping to iron them out and wrote about it with confidence and determination.

The photos below aren't mine obviously because I haven't left yet. I found them on the internet and have used them to practice uploading. My Camino lessons have started long before the walking and I know will continue way after I return home. I started practicing on the iMac and am currently learning how to transfer photos from my camera to my iPad mini. Today I uploaded a new Blogger App on my iPad and practiced editing and publishing my blog from the Apple Store in Canberra. I think I am doing okay and should have it sorted soon.

At the time I first published these draft pages and blog (11 November) I crossed a significant milestone and purchased my flights. I will be coming home via Qatar and will visit cousins Keith and Shelley in Doha. They are fabulous people and a great source of inspiration to me on many levels. Shelley and Keith are creative people and great travellers and also have a fabulous eye for a photo and a dedication for capturing moments in time with journaling (blogging) and also digital scrapbooking. I will be with them from Tuesday 7 July and fly out on Monday 13 July. I will arrive in Doha in the last week of Ramadan and in the "very - very" hot part of the year. I am excited about this last leg and know that the Middle East has so much to offer in both history and culture. I have another 'test page or post' on Qatar. I will fly home to Sydney via Hong Kong. All going well, I hope to catch up with my dear Uncle Christopher in Sydney airport while I wait for my final flight home to Canberra on Tuesday 14 July.

Let's see how this new blog and template works out. Your feedback is welcomed.