Having been both helped and inspired by the various websites for past and current overland trips we were keen to create our own site. We were inexperienced with website programming or design but keen to learn. If we knew how to set up a site then we could manage and update it ourselves. The cost of paying someone for this service was too much. We decided to get a fridge instead!

Bill researched the best laptop to get and decided on the Panasonic Toughbook. The hard drive is encased in gel to absorb some of the jolts from potholes. These are very pricey new, so we had to find a re-conditioned one. E-bay was the answer. We decided to buy from a dealer and so far so good. It works brilliantly and hopefully will be ideal for the Africa trip.

We had Microsoft FrontPage software installed on the laptop from our PC. I did a Learn Direct internet course for £19, which started me off on the basics and then got "FrontPage 2003 for Dummies" from Waterstones. Our FrontPage software was 2001 but the book covered the same stuff. I also relied heavily on the FrontPage help button and a lot of trial and error.

It took about a month of playing around before we were happy to publish the site. We chose the name and then a friend of Bill's set it up on his server (http://www.riconian.com) and organised the domain name. Thanks Andy! We use FileZilla to upload the new pages to the FTP site. You can download this from www.download.com It is really simple to use after a few explanatory e-mails from Andy.

http://www.learndirect.co.uk/

http://www.dummies.com/WileyCDA/Section/id-100004.html

There are other options such as Blogs http://www.blog.co.uk/main/

Hope this helps

We hope to have the site on http://www.africa-overland.net/future.html soon