The Beauty and Joy of Nature Conveyed Through Your Own Travelogue Website
1. The Joy and Beauty of Life and Nature
Retirees have the luxury to slow down, to listen, to observe, to create, and to spot life's many beautiful moments; and they stop at those precious moments to enjoy them thoroughly through their capacity for passion. There is much to taste of life in the “now”. So enjoy the experience. Live more in your heart and less in your head. Enjoy the best of humanity and the best of nature. Live every moment with Joy and Peace. They enjoy sightseeing trip frequently and take many nice pictures and movie clips of those wonderful moments.
In touring beautiful national parks, as one travels along the magnificent parkway, jaw-dropping stunning scenery keeps on unfolding in front of, behind, to the right side and to the left side of you. There is no let up and your eyes are kept very busy. Some tourists said that when they were touring such fantastic highway, they would not dare to blink their eyes because they did not want to miss those splendid scenery that kept on unfolding. No matter from what angle you are shooting your camera, it is a dream-like artistic painting. It is a paradise for photographers to take their endless dream shots. The pleasure and satisfaction for the tourists and photographers are unparalleled.
2. Greater Purpose in Life by Sharing the Joy of Life and Nature
孟子說:「窮則獨善其身,達則兼善天下」。
Some retirees have been doing volunteer charity work to help other people and to help some charity organizations. Feel good about yourself. Do good things for others. As Lily Yeh of Barefoot Artists Inc. said that “Not that my light is shining brighter than anybody else, we all have that inner light within us. My role is to light up other people’s pilot light so that we all shine together.” Joy is a light that fills you with Hope, Faith and Love. In such spirit, to have joy, one must share it. The heart that gives, gathers. We find joy in our hobbies of sightseeing and photography. We treasure it and enjoy it even more when we can share our joy with our friends and other people. While you meet something beautiful, the first thing you should do is to share it with your friends anywhere, so that these beautiful things will be able to spread out literally around the world. A heart of joy is a virtue that brings happiness to others like a spring breeze.
According to Professor Tal Ben-Shahar in Harvard University on achieving happiness, Happiness lies at the intersection between pleasure and meaning. Whether at work or at home, the goal is to engage in activities that are both personally significant and enjoyable.
A new study at Rush University Medical Center of 1,238 older adults with average age of 78 found that possessing a greater purpose in life is associated with 50% lower mortality rates among older adults. (The study is published in the June 15, 2009 issue of the journal Psychosomatic Medicine.) Working on my Travelogue website plus paying the fee for such Web Hosting Service is a way of labor of love for me to contribute some joy to the society all over the world.
The digital camera technologies have been advancing rapidly and have been making it easy for many tourists, especially for retirees, to enjoy taking nice pictures or movie clips of beautiful sceneries on their sightseeing trips. Camera lens has, therefore, becomes our tool to share our joy with many friends and other people all over the world (用眼睛看世界、用心靈留下美景的記憶, 用鏡頭萃取旅遊中的 心、景、情的訣竅與美好, 用鏡頭和世界交朋友). What will matter is not your memories, but the memories that live in those who loved you. Time waits for no one. Treasure every moment you have. You will treasure it even more when you can share it with someone special. Photography is a way for you to create something and make your life more zestful, more colorful, more meaningful and Just do it!
The benefits of using compact super-zoom cameras for such tourists are described in my Travelogue web page at:
Some people have been using some Internet Photo Sharing services to show their pictures with corresponding captions to their friends. Some examples of Internet Photo Sharing services are: Flickr (Yahoo), Picasa (Google), Shutterfly, etc. Some other people have been using PowerPoint files to distribute their pictures and text to their friends. Yet some other people use Microsoft Word files with pictures and text to distribute their pictures and experience to their friends. I have also used Internet Photo Sharing service, PowerPoint files and Word files several years ago.
Then about 3 years ago, I learned from May Lee to use Yahoo SiteBuilder (YSB) to build my Travelogue website:
to share my pictures and the associated sightseeing experience with friends and other people all over the world. In addition to still pictures, I also use YouTube website to share movie clips from my sightseeing trips taken by my camera. My Travelogue website has been accessed by friends and other people about 400 to 700 times every day as shown in the following sample Daily Site Access Chart. Many people all over the world have been enjoying the photos and the associated stories on my Travelogue website.
After the download and installation of YSB in your PC, you can access Yahoo online tutorial of YSB at:
Furthermore, there are 171 other websites that are linked to my Travelogue website on April 11, 2010. The number of websites that are linked to my Travelogue website is increasing as time marches on. For example, this number of links from other websites has increased to 336 by July 21, 2010.
I have also been receiving e-mail requests from friends and strangers asking me for permission to use my photos on their brochures, articles or books to be published, or on their PC Screen Savers; and e-mail requests for original photo files to make large photo prints of beautiful scenery to be framed and hanged on the walls in their homes. A director of Recreation Program of a senior center told me that they are using my Travelogue website as part of their tour guides. Another lady sent me a message to tell me that I have left lots of nice foot steps on my Travelogue website for many other people to follow. These are all consistent with my spirit of sharing the joy of my sightseeing trips with many people all over the world.
3.1. Benefits of Using Travelogue Website
Before I learned to build my Travelogue website, I was using PowerPoint (PP) files attached to e-mail to share my photos and traveling experience with my friends. The size of these PP files ranges from about 2 MB to 7 MB. One day a friend told me his problem caused by such big PP files even though he enjoys those PP files. He went on a trip for one week and he had no access to Internet and e-mail during that week. When he came home after that week, his e-mail inbox was clogged up by several e-mails with big fat attached PP files such that he missed many important e-mails which were rejected because his e-mail inbox was full. Beside my e-mail with attached PP file, other friends were also forwarding other e-mails with attached big PP files to him. Therefore, he urged me and other friends to use other method(s) to share the photos without clogging up his inbox or inboxes of other friends. This problem gave me a strong incentive to learn to build my Travelogue website to eliminate this problem of clogging up the e-mail inboxes of friends. By using Travelogue website, my announcement e-mails to my friends are just a few lines of text and are very small and short (without those attached big fat PP files).
Furthermore, the advantages of Travelogue website over other Internet Photo Sharing services are (1) more freedom in controlling the size of photos on the screen, (2) more freedom in the amount of narrative footnote describing my experience associated with each photo, and (3) the ability to link to other related photos and stories in other web pages in my Travelogue website or in other outside websites. Feedback from many readers of my Travelogue website told me that those narrative footnotes and additional information in the related Internet linked web pages are very useful and helpful in their planning of their future sightseeing trips to those beautiful places.
The additional benefits of using Travelogue websites are described in Section 5 below.
4. Yahoo SiteBuilder
Several friends have asked me over last three year period about how I build my Travelogue website. After answering this same question several times, it is time for me to provide such answer on this web page so that more people can also build their own Travelogue websites to share the joy of their wonderful pictures and their sightseeing experience with many other friends.
Yahoo SiteBuilder (YSB) is very user friendly and easy to learn. Yahoo has free Online Tutorial to show you how to create your own website easily. Learning to use YSB to build your own web page is almost like learning to use Microsoft Word to generate a Word page with text and pictures. No computer software programming skill is necessary. After the web page is generated on your PC using YSB, you press the “Publish” button on YSB to publish the web page to Internet for other people to access and to see. It took me only 2 days from starting the online tutorial to publishing my first basic website on Internet. Then I learn more features in YSB gradually to improve my basic web page.
YSB has an extensive HELP menu to explain how to use various features. Yahoo has technical support to help YSB users. Furthermore, there is a user group of YSB at:
YahoSiteBuilders@yahoogroups.com
for experienced users to help new users by e-mail group discussions.
Yahoo SiteBuilder (YSB) can be downloaded free from the following Yahoo Small Business website:
Then you are ready to follow the Online Tutorial to play with and to learn YSB that has been installed in your PC.
To publish your website onto Internet, you will need a web hosting plan including (1) a domain name for your website and (2) Yahoo Web Hosting service which can be obtained by accessing the following Yahoo Small Business web hosting page:
The monthly price or annual price for such web hosting service are also on this web page.
There are probably other website building software tools that are also very user friendly, easy to learn and easy to use. But I have no experience with other website building software tools. I have 3-year experience with YSB and Yahoo web hosting service that I can describe here on this web page. I hope that such information is useful to you if you are looking for a simple and easy way to build your own website.
5. Networking with Many Friends and Strangers All Over The World
My Travelogue website has been attracting many visitors, friends and strangers all over the world through the following networking processes:
5.1. Friends' Friends
When I complete and publish a new web page on my Travelogue website, I send an announcement e-mail to many friends. If the content of the new web page is also of interest to the friends and relatives of my friends, they may forward my e-mail announcement to their friends and relatives who may also forward the e-mail announcement to their friends and relatives.
5.2. Internet Search Engines
Yahoo SiteBuilder provides special spaces for a user to enter the title and some relevant keywords of the website and of each web page. These titles and keywords are Internet search-able through various Internet search engines such as Google, Yahoo, MSN, etc. Some strangers have found and reached my Travelogue website through such Internet Search.
5.3. Internet Links
There are more than 171 other websites that are linked into my Travelogue website as of April 10, 2010. Some visitors of those 171 or more websites came to visit my Travelogue website through those links that they can click. The number of websites that are linked to my Travelogue website is increasing as time marches on.
5.4. Inter-Linked Web Pages of Related Content
Some web pages in my Travelogue website have related content of common interest and I provide Internet links among those related web pages. For example, in February 2006, I toured Bosque del Apache National Wildlife Refuge (NWR) in New Mexico to see huge number (about 18,000) of red crowned sand-hill cranes in their wintering ground at Bosque del Apache NWR as shown on my Travelogue web page at:
Then in August 2009, I toured Creamer's Field Migratory Waterfowl Refuge in the heart of Fairbanks, Alaska to see large number of red crowned sand-hill cranes in their autumn staging ground in Fairbanks to prepare for their autumn migration flight south to Bosque del Apache NWR as shown on my Travelogue web page at:
I provide Internet links between these two web pages so that visitors to the web page on sand-hill cranes in Bosque del Apache NWR in New Mexico can also visit the related web page on sand-hill cranes in Fairbanks, Alaska easily and vice versa.
5.5. E-Mail Interactions
In the "About Us" web page of my Travelogue website, there is a space for visitors to communicate with me by e-mail interactions. I gained many new Internet/e-mail friends with common interest through this process.
5.6. Access Statistics
YSB also has a Web Hosting Control Panel to show me various website statistics such as (1) Daily Site Access Chart as shown above, or (2) Monthly Site Access Chart, or (3) Access Counter of each individual web page in my Travelogue website so that I know which web pages are more popular and which web pages are less popular, etc.
6. Advanced Features in Yahoo SiteBuilder
I am not a software engineer. Therefore, I have been using only the simple basic features of Yahoo SiteBuilder (YSB) and keeping my Travelogue website at fairly simple and basic level.
However, YSB has substantial amount of advanced features for more advanced users to add many fancy features onto their websites. Some examples are: (a) YSB provides support for most FTP software, Flash, Shockwave, videos, music, etc. (b) Includes 380+ customizable templates for business and hobby uses. (c) You can easily change any template to create the site you want. (d) Drag-and-drop tools make it easy to add new pages, change layouts, switch colors, edit text, etc. on the fly. (e) Add flair to your site with tables, royalty- free graphics, and pre-built forms. etc.
7. A Strategy for More Effective Presentation of Photos on My Travelogue Website
My strategy for more effective presentation of my photos from a sightseeing trip on a web page usually does not follow the chronological sequence of the pictures taken during the trip. For example, the first picture position on the top of the web page is considered by me as the prime spot to show the most important picture from this trip. I ask myself if I am allowed to show people only one picture from this trip, which one is that most important picture? Therefore, I pick the best, the most beautiful and the most impressive picture from that trip to present it up front on this top, primary position on this web page. Then I go down to the second spot to show the second most impressive picture from this trip. In this way, the viewers are immediately impressed when they open up this web page. With the good and strong initial impression, the viewers tend to have more patience to follow through to see all the pictures and the associated stories on that web page.
On the other hand, if I were to follow the chronological sequence, the first five or ten pictures may be dull and not very impressive. Some viewers, who are very busy and short of time, might get bored by the first few unimpressive pictures and quit, such that they never got a chance to see the most beautiful pictures which were buried way behind in # 18 or # 21 position according to the chronological sequence. This is my strategic thinking on how to achieve more effective presentation of my pictures on my travelogue web page.
By using this strategy, my procedure for processing my pictures for presentation on my web page is:
(1) I create a new picture file folder with the name of “Selected Pictures” for storage of selected good pictures worthy of consideration for presentation on my Travelogue web page. But I keep all the original pictures without any changes or any photo editing in their original picture file folder. In case if I change my mind later for any reason, I can always access the original photo file folder and make a new copy of the original picture to do new and different photo processing. (2) When I first review my pictures from a trip, I assign a priority star rating such as 1s, 2s, 3s, 4s, 5s, etc. (meaning 1 Star, 2 Stars, 3 Stars, 4 Stars, 5 Stars, etc.) to each selected picture, make a copy of each picture from the trip, prefix such star rating to the name of each selected picture and put the selected picture with its star rating into the “Selected Pictures” folder. (3) My photo management software then uses the first numeral in the names of the pictures to organize and to sequence these selected photos with star ratings (i.e., grouping according to their star ratings). (4) So, when I am ready to put my photos onto my Travelogue web page for a particular sightseeing trip, I just follow the sequenced grouping of pictures in this “Selected Pictures” file folder, starting with the selected pictures with the highest star rating, then go down the list toward those pictures with lower star ratings. I stop at about 25 or less of pictures per web page per trip. Many uninteresting pictures with low star ratings never get on my web page once I reach my typical limit of about 25 pictures per web page per trip.
In this way, I do not bother viewers with many boring, uninteresting pictures. I show them only those very impressive pictures with high star ratings. The first picture on my Travelogue web page is always the most important and the most impressive picture in that trip.