Using Blogs to Share your Travel Photos

The ExplorOz website offers a section for our audience to create web pages for writing stories, displaying photos, videos, and document files. This section of the website is called Blogs.

Our blogs system is designed to be very simple for people to quickly upload photos, or write a travel journal with minimal fuss and have it available to share with family, friends, and the wider ExplorOz audience.

Blogs are publicly visible and are found on the site menu. Blogs are chronologically indexed on the main page, but can be searched in numerous ways. Currently, ExplorOz Blogs have totalled a staggering 7 million views so we provide the perfect place for people who want their photo journals to be seen!

To have a Blog, you need to have a Membership subscription. If you are an individual or couple you'll need Personal Membership, if you are a business owner (in the 4WD, caravan, camping, or tourism industry) you'll need Business Membership.

Here's a few quick facts about adding photos into your ExplorOz Member Blogs:

• There are no file size restrictions for uploading photos
• Photos are auto-resized to fit our system requirements
• Photos are displayed as a standardised thumnail size in the blog view and can be clicked to show an enlarged view (we display to a maximum of 800 pixels)
We do not offer an image download option
• To place a photo into your blog, simply open your blog in edit mode and click the "Add image/file" button. A window will pop-up for you to browse files off your computer - you can batch upload an infinite number of files.
• You will be prompted to label each image with a caption. You can edit this after submitting the blog.
• Each image you add to your blog will appear as code within the text window, and will appear like this... [gi]autoassignedimagenumber[/gi].
• If you load a lot of images in one go, they will appear in order of successful file upload. If you need to re-order them, this must be done by moving the [gi] tags for each image in the edit text window.
• After uploading your photos your blog is still pending in edit mode until you click either the "submit" or "preview" button.
• Because people viewing your photos can click to enlarge your photos, we advise that you do not attempt to resize the photos in the layout (although advanced users may like to try the different effects that can be achieved by dragging images corners to resize).
• We recommend placing all photos together below each relevant paragraph of text - do not attempt to layout individual photos in line with text.
• Remember, you can create as many different blogs as you like, so why not create a new blog for each day, or each place that you visit?

A nifty feature of ExplorOz blogs is that it is designed for uploading blogs and photos when you are away on your holiday. You can create blogs using your iPhone and sending an email - this means you do not need to log onto the website. This is possible, because Blogs are only available to subscribed Members, so our server recognises your incoming email and tags your entry into your Member Profile (note - you must send from the same email account as registered in your profile).

So, snap a pic on your iPhone of somewhere or something interesting and send it from your iPhone via email to blogs@exploroz.com - you must give your email a subject and this will be used by our server to create your blog title. If you have a little time, we recommend you add a story to your email to explain where you are and what the photo is about. And because iPhones can store email pending if in an out of service area, you can still create travel blogs from the remote Australian bush!

Because ExplorOz blogs can be created without photos, or with photos only, or as a combination of text and photos, you have the option of choosing your preferred display layout when viewing Blogs.

To choose to view Blog photos only, simply click the "Photo View" button from Display Options.

When viewing Blogs by Photo view, you'll see each photo thumbnail individually. You can click to enlarge any photo and then keep clicking next to progress to the next photo.

Photos in Blogs can be rated using a 5 star rating scale. To rate another person's photo, you need to firstly switch to Photo View - only in this display mode will the rating options be visible and you simply drag your mouse over the number of stars you wish to rate it. Ratings are tallied and given an overall average score. This is only accessible from Photo View.

From time to time, ExplorOz holds a Members' Photo Comp, using the Blogs as the entry and judging process.

Here are links to the previous comps:

• 2009 Photo Comp - (376 entries shown in photo view)
• 2010 Photo Comp - (531 entries shown in photo view)
• 2011 Photo Comp - (679 entries shown in photo view)

For each of the above comps, the winning photo was selected to be printed onto canvas as part of a unique piece of ExplorOz Photo Memborabillia. This canvas was then raffled at each year's National Members Gathering and the funds donated to the nominated charity at the conclusion of the Gathering. The photographer whose photo was selected, also received an enlargement of their photo donated by our sponsors and free tickets to the raffle.