Website & Blog Changes

I have been busy making some very necessary changes to my websites, Blogs and other associated sites in recent days. Due to the prohibitive costs of web hosting, I have had to close my various websites and move operations across to various Facebook Pages – which of course has included much of my bushwalking, camping and wilderness sites. These changes will have an impact on this Blog also and these changes will become apparent over time.

You may have noticed some very minor changes here already, with the various links being updated and a small ‘About’ page added to the Blog.

What will also change here is that there will be more posts that will focus on my various adventures (bushwalking and camping, travels, etc) here in Australia, as I travel on day trips, take holidays, etc. There will also be more site specific posts linking back to the Facebook Page which is now my main website.

The main Facebook Page for Kevin’s Wilderness Journeys has a directory ‘note (Facebook’s term for a page hosted on Facebook),’ providing a means for finding all relevant links to further Facebook notes, other sites, etc, associated with Kevin’s Wilderness Journeys and my online presence.

I have also decided to archive the other Blog site associated with Kevin’s Wilderness Journeys – Kevin’s Wilderness and Travels. This is because the role this Blog played has now been superseded by the Facebook Page and the expanded use of this Blog.

Visit my Facebook Page – Kevin’s Wilderness Journeys at:
https://www.facebook.com/kevinswilderness

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Our New Look

The New Year has begun and what a great way for the Blog to celebrate the New Year – with a brand new look!

Some of the changes you may have noticed on the Blog include the following:

– The overall theme and appearance of the Blog has been given a major overhaul, with a fresh, new header image. It has taken a little bit of work to get the image right and hopefully you like it. The banner image also includes a bit of self promotion, with the website address appearing on it.

– The sharing options on for each post now include buttons for Tumbler, LinkedIn and Google+

– There is also an option for rating each Blog article.

I am always looking at ways to improve the Blog and 2012 will be no different. Hopefully there will be more regular and better quality articles on the way, with other improvements to the Blog pages and features as well. All this to come in 2012 and beyond.

Australian Wilderness Adventures: Episode 001 – Cathedral Rock National Park

Today I have uploaded the first episode in what will be a growing series of documentary-like videos for my YouTube channel (Kevin’s Wilderness Journeys). This series of videos will focus on national parks and reserves in Australia (especially New South Wales), with a view to providing useful information for people who may be interested in visiting the national park being considered in any particular episode. I am hoping to provide a preview of the main attractions in each national park and the facilities available for visitors. Hopefully these will whet the appetite for those who view the videos and provoke a desire to actually visit the national parks under consideration.

This first episode focuses on the Cathedral Rock National Park, with a look at the Cathedral Rock Track and the Woolpack Rocks Track. There will be more episodes to come, including episodes on Dorrigo National Park, Bongil Bongil National Park and Myall Lakes National Park – among others. Hopefully in time better equipment will improve the quality of videos available – but none-the-less, I do think the videos are useful to some degree as they are.

The actual size of the video I have in my archives for the first video is 2.85 GB, so there is a fair reduction in file size (and therefore quality) to get the videos online and within the limits of YouTube file sizes and length.

 

Latest News on the Web Site

Latest News on the Web Site

My website is currently down – for the most part anyway. I hope to have it back up in the near future. Why is it down? My previous hosting service put their prices up dramatically from the previous renewal of the site. It was nearly doubled and I found that sort of hike unacceptable. I have therefore sought out a new hosting service and believe I now have great value for money, as well as a far better service. The site will now have the same address as it has had for several years:

http://kevinswilderness.com

The site I was intending to move to at WordPress.com, will now become the Blog for site updates, news, etc. It can be found at:

http://kevinswilderness.wordpress.com/

For the time being the site will continue to be down, with improvements being made as the site is transferred across to the new hosting company. Please keep returning to the site as I hope to bring pages back online on a regular basis.

 

New Site Development Going Well

My new website is coming along well – feel free to have a look at the progress at:

http://kevinswilderness.wordpress.com/

There is now a chat page available – with many more improvements to come.

Site is Moving House

There are some massive changes happening at kevinswilderness.com – it will soon not even be called that. The name of the site will be called simply ‘Kevin’s Wilderness and Travels and will be hosted on WordPress.com. The domain name will probably be disposed of, by simply letting it slip off into history.

The move has come about because of the dramatic rise in hosting costs – which jumped greatly after the hosting company was sold to another. It did concern me at the time that a major price rise would be on the way. So the rise has arrived as expected and I’m now moving on. I love the WordPress.com platform, so the move won’t upset me too much at all. Being able to have ‘kevinswilderness’ in the site name has been a great bonus also, as it will mean that previous site visitors won’t find it
too difficult to remember.

WordPress.com offers the opportunity for so much more social interaction with visitors to the site – especially through comments being available on every page hosted there. Expect more photos and videos at the new site, with these to be hosted at Flickr and YouTube respectively. There should also be opportunities for chatting on site (via a widget or a link to Pip.io), forums, etc. The move is an exciting one for furthering the capability and usefulness of the site.

Work is already well under way and I am hoping that the move will provide new stimulus to improve the site, as well as add new features along the way. The social network hosted at Grou.ps will become a more important associated site and I am hoping to try and promote that more and more. I may however look at some other bushwalking/camping social networks that are out there too – perhaps they will provide a better enhancement to the site. Time will tell.

Please visit the new site and add it to your bookmarks/favourites – the old site has only a month or two to go before it ends forever.

The site is moving across to WordPress.com at the following address:

http://kevinswilderness.wordpress.com/