Its been a month since I can back from my holiday from Taiwan and I am still sorting out all the photos that I have. I must say its really not easy especially when all these took place during the first week of last month. When I look at some of the photos, I have no idea when it was taken, but the memories of it would remain. Anyway, its been a really fun week, meeting new people, taking in new refreshing sights, taking lots of photos and of course all the food!

I was choosing to go either Europe with my secondary school friends or Taiwan with my national service friends. In the end, due to budget constrains I did not really have a choice, but go with the latter one. The Europe trip would exceed my Taiwan budget by 3-4 times! Anyway, the trip was really great!

When people come back from their holidays, often, they took a whole of photos, but many do not know what to do with all these photos. However, us the Generation Y-ers, like to post them on facebook, or friendster or other photo sharing websites to share them with friends and family. This still might take quite a while if you decided that you want to add captions to the hundreds or thousands of photos. However, there is another idea, not necessary any more effortless or time saving, but to simply have an online album to trace their holiday journey.

Although this might still be possible with picasa or flikr etc, where the photos have a logical flow, and you can see what's coming next, having an online album in the form of a website is definitely much cooler. It will not only have your own personal touch, but also you can customise the features. Viewing the photos on your own holiday website is difinitely a different experience from just scrolling through them in picasa. Here, you can narrate and share your personal experiences. If the holiday is a group one, it can also be used to keep in contact with one another or used for networking. However, most of holiday photo websites out there are static, that means that it would not be updated anymore as people move on.

Having saying all that, it requires alot of determination, effort and time to consolidate all the photos from the possible sources (your friends), to setting up the site, and uploading them. If you are already feeling all lethagic thinking about all this, then I think it might not be for you, cause it would not be good if the project is abandoned halfway.

If you are all hyped and excited about starting, you can start by signing up for a blogger or wordpress account. There is tons of resources on the internet just waiting for us to exploit. Its just up to your personal preference, since I am a long time blogger user, I guess I will stick with it. So if you are ready, you can start compiling the photos and uploading them: below are some resources you can use:

Web Hosting for photos:

• Picasa (google account) very easy with picasa uploader
• Photobucket
• Flickr (yahoo account)
  

For me, I use either picasa, due the ease in uploading or photobucket.

Websites:

• Blogger
• Wordpress
  

I would like to provide more options, but these already provide more than enough tools to have you on the go. I suggest blogger, but if you want to use wordpress, do go ahead. I feel very restricted when using wordpress.com or if you are a fan, its better to use wordpress.org but you have to get your own server to host it. So the easier way out? Use blogger.

Some templates for you.

If you use blogger:

• Blogskins
• Btemplates
• Fresh Blogger Templates
• Blogger-templates
  

If you use wordpress:

• Google it!

Use these only if are unsatisfied with the boring templates that blogger or wordpress originally provides. Using your a different and appropriate template also adds to having a personal touch for your website.

For blogger only:
Once you are all setup ready to make your first post here are some things to keep in mind.

Blogger have their publishing system from newest to oldest post. This means that if you want your page to be in chronological order, you have to do it differently:

• you can post the pictures in reverse order. At the post editor bottom, click "post options" to set the date. If your posts are reversed, they will appear chronologically when published. You will need to select the setting to not show post dates to not confuse yourself. Post dates can be written in the post itself.
• you can remove the archive widget and create a link list widget instead. Thus, people view the pages by how you order the links. Remember to enable post pages in settings. Again, it is better to remove the post dates. Post dates can be used as headers for link lists or put in post itself.
• Not recommended. You can post it backwards, this is not the same as the above, as it means going through ur holiday from finish to start. This save you the hassle of editing your post dates, but you will most likely confuse yourself.

If you really want and if possible, please submit to wishlist to have the function of adjusting the chronological order an option. You will be saving alot of other people's time and effort.

The way I do it is according to the second method. For this, try to have few long posts instead of many short posts. Cause, we will be doing the linking manually, this gives you total freedom to order the posts. Also, I set the settings to display only one post at the main page and this post would must have the most recent date. Once done, you will see something like my website, although, its not complete yet or very well done.

But its just an idea. Hope it helps.