Do I need to start a blog or something else?

[FlubbaBubba]

There's an ad out there at the mo which triggered my thoughts on this; a father begins 'writing emails' to his not-yet-born child, and continues to do so once it's born so that, at an older age, the child can read his thoughts/feelings in one go.

I'm planning to take my kids on a year-long trip in about five or six years' time and want to start keeping my thoughts/plans/ideas in one place so that I and they (and possibly other families in the future to help give them ideas on how to go about budgeting and planning for a trip like this?) can see its progress from an idea to the actual trip.

SO, my question finally!! is, do I create a blog (and what's the best way of going about doing that?), or is there some other 'tool' I should use?

Ta in advance! :)

Why not just buy an old fashioned diary and write in there? To me that would be much more personal and interesting to read than a blog.

Yep, had thought of that niceguy2 but wanted to be able to add photos, routes etc, and also would be really sad if I lost it en route while actually on the trip. Is def. worth another think though, as you're right, they are so much more personal. (I am making 'scrap books' for each of the kids which I love doing; pre-birth pics of me etc, their hospital tags etc)

bump

I'll echo niceguy and say go for the diary.

If you go for a traditional hosted blog (such as blogger) then you're betting that the company will still be there and still be accessible in twenty years time.

If you do want to do something IT wise then what might be the best option is to learn HTML and do it yourself. That is to say don't have it hosted on the internet but just keep it on your own computer (and backed up somewhere).

HTML is almost 20 years old and the old stuff is still pretty easy to open and use, and there's not many formats that you can say that for. Avoid any fancy techniques such as HTML5 or JavaScript and keep it all very vanilla (that is to say plain) and I think there's a reasonable chance that in 20 years time it'll still be accessible.

Or make a DVD, they're so common that it's pretty reasonable to assume that in 20 years there will still be something out there that will be able to read them. Whether or not the discs will last that long is a fair question though.

That's the problem with technology, it does move and older stuff is often very hard to get at. I've got heaps of old documents that I could only access by doing some very nasty techy stuff.

A book lasts and is pretty much timeless.

Not for year-long holidays, but we've kept a blog/website for each of our three DS's - but that's my thing and I look after all the hosting/backup etc.

If you want a 'full' blog platform without too much hassle then take a look at wordpress - I don't know what that's going to be like to update from the road - so perhaps something simpler like tumblr which would let you update 'as you go along' from a mobile/smartphone.

I'd figure that both of these are going to be around in years to come, but there's always a risk (not much risk in this case with these two) that they'll sink without trace with all your stuff.

Try one out for a bit, see how you get on recording a weekend visit to the zoo or something.

Good point badgerpaws about the technology moving on - hadn't considered that.

Might have a look at wordpress in the meantime just to see how I get on, even if I do a combination of a diary and a more techy version of similar things.

I did hear about someone doing a blog, and having it printed. I googled and came up with this but there are other providers of this service. A friend of mine talked about doing it.

Oooh, like the look of that MmeLindor {mmmh, Lindor chocs... I digress...} seems to combine what I want with what I need!

Yes, I have just been having a little play around on there. I may do a recipe book for my parents using recipes from my blog.