Vagabond Journey.com Online Daily Travel Magazine

Vagabond Journey.com Online Daily Travel Bazaar

I have been looking at the rather stale and sterile Vagabond Journey.com homepage for the past couple of months just wondering what I can do with it. It does not seem to be doing too much, other than just sitting there on its computer screen stool looking back at me like an old Arab sitting in the street with a smoked out nargila water pipe.

It just ain’t doing nothing. It ain’t going anywhere. For a homepage to a travel website, there is very little movement on it once so ever.

I have also always wanted to run a print or PDF magazine.

I have come to the realization that I should just combine these two objectives.

I should cut a few corners, compromise my journalistic vision a little, and structure the homepage of Vagabond Journey.com as an online daily travel magazine.

There are many scattered parts to this website, and I know that they do not come together too cleanly. What I need is some website adhesive — a way to connect everything together.

On Vagabond Journey.com there is the travelogue, which is one of the most visited sections; the photo gallery, which has thousands of photos; the Travel Help site, where I try to answer a new travel question every day; Backpack Journalism, which is where I display the original versions of my articles that have been published in print magazines and newspapers; Travel Tips, which is the place where I collect the tips that are originally published on the travelogue; the Travel Forum, which is just starting to get going; a travel guide, which has been slacking as of late; and a section for Travel Book Reviews, because I like getting books for free and interviewing their authors (the new version will be online in a couple of days).

Vagabond Journey.com is all over the virtual earth — I need a map to hold it all together.

The map will soon be the homepage.

I intend to structure it like the front page of a newspaper, with different sections and this and that. And in these sections I will run the RSS feeds from all of the various portions of the website, so that the front page is always changing, and could be used as a one stop page to find out everything that is going on in the vagabond journey.

I am currently experimenting with various RSS feed parser programs to find one that can upload both the text snipets and embedded photos from the feed, and do it in a way that is really published on the page (not Javascript).

I am looking at Carp LE right now, but the full version of it is going to cost me around $50. if it works good, then it will be worth it — as these RSS feed snipets are going to be that which makes the site into an online magazine. But I cannot just waste $50 on a whim, so I am testing out the free version right now.

I am also thinking of using Joomla to publish the homepage and more solid features of Vagabond Journey.com, but I am not getting too far in my experimentation. I keep getting hung up on the PHP coding, and cannot even figure out how to change the header.

These new programs may take a couple weeks for me to learn how to use properly, and I will more than likely break the homepage to this site a dozen times within then next week. I am even going to try to make it look good . . . whatever the value is in that.

Perhaps this is a warning: I am screwing this beast and it may wiggle a little — expect things to be messed up.

Perhaps this is a call for help: Do you have any ideas? Any suggestions? A lifeline to toss out to a man who will soon be fluttering and kicking in a raging sea?

Thanks.

Walk Slow,

Wade

Vagabond Journey on publishing a magazine
How to publish a magazine
Publishing PDF Magazine
Writing for Magazines and Newspapers
Ethnography Journalism and Travel Writing

Vagabond Journey.com to become an Online Travel Daily Magazine