About
Having dithered and procrastinated for far too long, I’ve finally put finger to keyboard and started the process of bringing the wildvista.com domain to life.
It was back in early 2004 that I first started thinking about creating a website to share tales of my recent travels with friends and family. I hand-coded a simple portfolio site for a small selection of travel photos (still partially viewable here, on the Internet Archive), and shortly thereafter moved from Essex to Hampshire (UK) for a new job.
And that was about it as far as a web presence went. I toyed with various content management systems (CMS), such as Drupal and Joomla, and avidly followed developments in online mapping applications and digital photography, among other things. Possible themes for a site ranged from an interactive guide to trekking in New Zealand (from a Brit’s perspective), to an enhanced photography portfolio with links through to stock images for sale. But I was getting too hung up in the underlying technology, spending time investigating all the cool things I might be able to build into a website, rather than actually getting on and doing it.
However, I’ve now settled on this self-hosted WordPress blog initially, which ought to be much easier to set up and manage than a full-blown CMS like Drupal, but with enough flexibility to manage and maintain disparate content for the time being. As and when I get to the point of wanting to publish a bespoke trekking guide, or photography portfolio, this blog can be demoted to a section of the wider WildVista site. I’ve also been encouraged by a friend’s blog (Postcard from Timperley), having followed it on and off since its inception in 2007.
All of which tells you very little about what WildVista is going to cover. Well, basically, the stuff I’m interested in, which is, in no particular order:
- hillwalking, trekking, backpacking, scrambling — in other words, the less extreme end of the multitudinous variety of “mountain sports”. Expect to see posts on past and upcoming trips, with plenty of photos.
- photography — mostly outdoor, travel, and landscape. I’ve recently purchased a copy of Adobe Photoshop Lightroom, having long ago reached a point where I needed to overhaul my workflow and start using some sort of Digital Asset Management (DAM) system. So, I may blog about my experiences with Lightroom too.
- web development and design — expect to see lots of posts about the contruction of this site, as I learn more about WordPress, and web publishing in general.
- a retrospective blog, covering my travels in South America, Antarctica, and New Zealand during 2002/2003. I should long since have digitised my diary entries and slide collection from this trip, if for no other reason than to revisit an unforgettable 6 months, and to make the stuff accessible to friends and family (who are likely to be the only readers!).
And with that, it’s time to get posting…
