Website hints

Maintaining a website on the move is not necessarily easy so I thought I would write a few notes about how we go about it. I carry a very small Windows 98 laptop computer which I use for work (I do tech support for the company I used to work for) and this is of course very handy for doing the website and downloading photos from our digital camera.

Creating the website

We use Macromedia Dreamweaver to create the website and SuperJPG to crop and resize the photos. The website is very basic, it uses no javascript, applets, front page extensions, etc. I chose to do it this way because I don't have the connection bandwidth to spend a lot of time checking whether a feature works correctly. Also I wanted the website to be accessible to everyone and to be easy to download to a handheld device for reference on-the-road. I don't see why it wouldn't be possible to write the website on a handheld, especially one with a keyboard, if you didn't mind writing it in raw HTML.

I normally either upload just the files I know need updating, or use WS FTP Pro to "synchronise" my local copy of the website to that on the web server. Our copy of Dreamweaver is version 4, and the built in synchonisation facility doesn't seem to work well.

If you didn't want to carry any sort of computer, it is possible to create a website "on-line" in an internet cafe. Internet Explorer 6 has a basic WYSIWYG editor built in, or write raw HTML with a text editor. To get pictures onto the site you will need a USB camera memory card reader, see below.

Our web hosting company is www.modesthost.com, they seem pretty good, charging $48 a year for a 500Mb site with 20Gb monthly bandwidth allowance. There are nice web stats you can see which pages are the most popular, email control and we've had no problems with them.

Uploading the website

Frequent updates are important to keep your audience's interest and to let the folks back home know how you are getting on. There are five ways to update the site that I have used:

• Post the updates home on a disk. While we were in Europe I posted my Dad complete copies of the website on an Iomega Clik disk. This was OK, but as got further from home the post got slower and as the website got bigger it needed more of the disk (I posted photo backups home the same way).
• Network connection in an internet cafe. This requires a computer with a network card and a working knowledge of Windows networking. When you have a successful connection it is great, but it can be hard to persuade the internet cafe staff to let you try, and always needs a bit of fiddling before it works. Typically I read the network settings off a cafe computer (you need IP address, subnet mask, DNS address and gateway IP address to make it work) and then enter those settings into my laptop, unplug the cafe's computer's RJ45 network lead and plug it into my computer instead. You can usually switch back and forth between the two computers without anything crashing. Sometimes the cafe networks have extra authentication, web proxies or firewalls that mean it just won't work.
• Landline modem connection. For this you need an ISP with global access, such as Iberpass, and access to a telephone line. There are a number of different telephone sockets in the world (many hotel phones are wired straight in) but the socket at the modem/telephone end of the cable is pretty standard and is the easist place to connect. If you a long time in one country it is well worth getting a local ISP as the likes of Iberpass are expensive.
• Mobile phone data connection. With a local SIM card this can be an excellent if slow way to connect to the internet. In Russia for example unlimited GPRS access was available for 50 cents a day, and in China calls to China Mobile's internet service were just 2 cents per minute. Using a mobile phone bypasses the problems of connecting to hotel phones. With your own SIM card from home, calls are much more expensive, as much as $5 a minute, whether you are calling an ISP in your home country or in the local country!
• Memory "dongle" or card reader. You can get very dinky "dongles" that plug straight into a USB port and have up to 512Mb of Flash memory (eg. Disgo and Attache), or simpy carry a small USB reader for whatever card your digital camera uses. Virtually all internet cafe computers have USB ports and the proprieters are much more likely to let you plug in a simple USB device than they are to let you connect to their network. Windows versions that are later than Windows 98 don't need drivers to access these devices, many internet cafes still use Windows 98 though so be sure you know where you can download a suitable driver from. I began using this technique halfway through our trip when my network card failed, and have found it to be very convenient. The card reader is also a useful backup to the camera's download lead, and in the event of computer failure would be for backing up photos and doing the website. To upload the data, either keep the installation files for an FTP program on the device, or use Internet Explorer as the FTP program. If you enter an address of the form:
  ftp://<username>@www.mywebsite.com
  then it is possible to access a non-anonomous FTP site. You then simply use Internet Explorer as a file manager for your website.
  

In addition I believe that in cities in the States WiFi wireless networking is an option. Although I used an Iridium satelite phone extensively for email, especially in Siberian Russia where the cell phone coverage is pretty hopeless, I consider it too expensive for updating a website (approx $1/min for a 2400 baud connection).

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