Website Design and Hosting

How this site was built:

Seawanhaka.com was built as a way to keep in contact with people at home and to share our adventures with the world. Seawanhaka.com has been an awesome way to keep in touch with our landlubber friends and family! It also is a great way to share photos, stories and events that have happened to us along the way.

This site was built using mostly html, or hypertext markup language – the most basic programming language used on the World Wide Web. I created this site on the SEAWANHAKA's onboard laptop computer, using 2 programs – Notepad and Photo Editor. After the site was built, I bought a web hosting service and transferred the website files from our computer to the web host’s server where it could be viewed by anyone with an Internet connection.

As our sailing journey progressed, we updated the site in two ways:
At sea, by emailing updates to a friend on land who posted the updates on the site
In port, by uploading new pages to the web host server from Internet cafes or libraries.

Seawanhaka.com has been a huge hit with family and friends, both new and old. It has also been a very fun way to keep a journal and a photo album of our travels!

How to start your own site:

Creating a website can be as simple or as complex as you would like it to be. Some people are happy with a one-page website they created in as little as 10 minutes; meanwhile, some companies maintain full time staffs just to maintain their websites. With Seawanhaka.com, I tried to keep it simple enough that anyone could view it on their computer but without skimping on the content. I also continually update the site, adding new photos and updates so that people keep checking back.

To create your own website, you will need the following:

1. Web Host –

What is it? This is a company that has a computer with a constant 24-7 connection to the internet. They rent space on their computer to you for your website files so that anytime someone wants to access your site they can.
How much? Cost varies widely from free to several hundred dollars a month. Your choice of a web hosting package depends on the amount of space you need to rent and what other services you may require (such as a website building tool, email accounts, extras like guest books and slide shows, etc.). For Seawanhaka.com, I chose a webhost that cost about $8/month for everything I needed. The free webhosts work great for beginners but space is limited and the downside is that there will usually be advertisements on your website in exchange for the free space.

2. An address or URL -

What is it? URL stands for Uniform Resource Locator. The URL or address for this website is “www.seawanhaka.com”. It’s the location of a web page file on the World Wide Web, just like a mailing address is the location of a building. With the millions of websites on the World Wide Web, your unique address will point users to your site.
How much? You can purchase your unique domain name for a year or more. Usually the price is about $20-35 per year and you will get a better price if you buy the domain name for 2 or 3 years instead of 1. If you aren’t picky about your domain name, you can get one for free through your webhost (usually it’s a longer name like www.freewebsites.com/members/seawanhaka.html).

3. Website Builder -

There are multiple software programs around that you can use to build web pages (often without needing to know any kind of computer programming languages at all). Front Page, Dreamweaver, and even some word processing programs like Word and Wordperfect have a web page writer in them. There are tons of website tutorials out there on the Internet…just go to a search engine like www.google.com and type in “learn to build websites”. A couple of good ones are:

http://www.how-to-build-websites.com/
http://www.learnthenet.com/english/section/webpubl.html
http://www.w3schools.com/html/

When you have created your website files, you just need to upload them (or copy them from your computer to you web host’s server). I usually put files on a diskette or a USB flash key and take them to an Internet café when we are in port.

Let us build the site for you:

If you read the “how to start your own website” section and wondered if I was speaking in a foreign language then don’t worry, this section is for you!! As with most cruisers I've met, I’m looking for a way to make enough money to keep sailing along and at the same time offer a useful service to my fellow cruisers. I also love reading about other people’s sailing adventures and putting them into a webpage so they can share them with friends and family on land or other cruisers.

I would love to get your cruising website up and running! And, I can help teach you how to make updates yourself or you can email me photos and stories to post to your website along the way. There’s a huge range of options available from very simple (and a very reasonable price) to more complex (especially great if you have some kind of marine business you would like to feature on your site).

Please email SEAWANHAKA Marine Services at wil97709@yahoo.com to see how we can work together to create your own cruising website to be proud of! I look forward to hearing from you!