Dear all,

First of all, I would like to apologize for missing out on posting last week. Having spent slightly over a week in the deeps of the Red Sea made it impossible for me though to actually post and hey, this has to remain fun, it shouldn’t become yet another thing I have to do 😉

So, here we go. One of the issues that kept me for long from setting up a site has been the actual act of developing one, while having no idea how to go about it. And actually, there’s only good news when it comes to this matter, since it’s made easy and straightforward, no need of getting into fancy/complicated programmes .

Basically there are 3 main steps: 1) look for a host for your site, 2) choose a name that is not yet taken, and 3) install a designing programme after which you are basically ready to go.

Myself, on the advise of a friend, got my site hosted by Antagonist. Easy and straightforward, good value and no hidden costs. So far, so good, it has proven to be a good choice for me, yet again, feel free to ask around or to shop around on the web, there are plenty of options out there.

Once you have decided on a host, you get to what is probably the toughest part, to find a name that isn’t taken yet and which reflects what you want to show and share. On the Antagonist site, you can easily check whether the name you want to use has been taken, and this for the main domains: .com, .org, … Going through different options, you’d be surprised what is already out there. Key for us was to make clear it was about sharing, photography, nature and wildlife, and then the search starts, wildnaturejourney, journeyintothewild, wildpix, nature-untamed, … we eventually ended up with picsfromthewild a name that reflects our intentions well.

Once this is decided upon and your payment for the hosting is done, you can install all you need by following the installation instructions and by installing a design programme directly on your site: WordPress and Joomla are the most commonly used ones. From a quick internet search, I chose WordPress and havn’t looked back since: easy to use, nice themes (the way your blog/site is built up), lots of interesting plugins (visitor counters, contact pages, … they’ve all been developed before, no need for you to re-invent them), …

OK, I’ll leave it at that, in case you have questions or comments, please feel free to point and shoot.

Still having to make up for big cat shots, please find a classic one for the road

All the best,

Guy