I’ve decided to start over again and get back into some travel writing, web design, and general being a nerd at life. Naturally I started this on a Sunday afternoon expecting a fully functional, working, amazing website to be exploding with content by tonight. Anyone who has tried to do that knows it doesn’t really go to plan. While themes are advertised with ‘installed in less than 5 minutes’, they rarely ever look like that amazing demo when you actually install them. After hours of playing around with options, frustration and batteries running low, dinner has been eaten and I’m back to the default theme in WordPress. So it seems like a good time to be ‘Starting Over.’

How did I get to this point? A few years ago I let my previous domain name expire. I wasn’t using it and figured that no-one else would really want my misspelled domain name. Turns out I was wrong as it got snapped up by some charming folk who decided to use it to funnel traffic to a porn site. I found this out from a message on LinkedIn. This is something that I’d call a less than ideal situation to be in.

“Purpose. it’s that little flame that lights a fire under your ass”

Avenue Q

So what is the purpose of this project anyway. Is it to light a fire under my ass and get me out and about a bit? Maybe. Is it an outlet for me to learn a few new skills and get a little creative? Possibly. Will it have a million and one visitors racing to the site each day? I hope not. At this stage I plan to use it to share my travel experiences and the journey in creating this beast of a website. So what features do I want it to have and how am I going to get them?

Features

• Story Telling: This will be the main function of the project. The site will need to be easy for me to share my travels and experiences in building the website.
• Picture Sharing: I like to take a photo or two (my current iPhone has about 41,000+ photos) so I want to be able to show off some of my favourites easily.
• Reviews: I like to use TripAdvisor and the like to review places. I’ll want to elaborate on these a bit more and have a place that I can speak my mind.
• Research: I’ve got an undergraduate degree in Science and two masters degrees in International Law and Tourism. While I’m not currently studying, I’d like to be able to do a research project or two, like all good nerds do.
• Reading: They say that good websites and blogs are niche and don’t try and cover everything. I say ‘to hell with that’. I’ve started to get into reading so maybe some book reviews just for fun
• Experimenting: I’d love to eventually not have to use plugins and themes from others to build this site. I’ll aim to experiment with a bit of coding and customising some bits and pieces to get everything just so.

“make a journey, typically of some length”

Definition of ‘Travel’

While this creation is ‘Travel with Carl’, it’s clear in my list of proposed features that ‘travel’ takes a broader meaning. I hope I enjoy this journey, and if you are reading along with me, I hope you enjoy it too.

Thanks to @andrewtneel from #unsplash for the featured image