A travel journal website: your trips, your photos, your record
A travel journal is a record for you and the people you'd send a postcard to, not a business. That changes the job: no keyword research, no affiliate links, just entries that capture what a day was like, the photos that go with them, and a structure that still makes sense in ten years. Keep each entry in a collection so adding one from a café takes a few minutes.
Journal, not blog
Travel blogs written to earn money are built around search terms, listicles and booking links. A travel diary website is the opposite: specific, personal, honest about the bad days. That's what makes it worth rereading. Write for your future self and a few friends, and the entries stay interesting long after any "top ten things to do" article has gone stale.
What to write in an entry
- One moment, not the whole itinerary. The conversation with the ferry ticket seller tells more than a list of the six sights you saw.
- Sensory detail: what the place sounded and smelled like, what you ate, the weather.
- People, described kindly and without identifying anyone who didn't agree to it.
- Practical notes you'll want next time: the guesthouse that was worth it, the bus that doesn't run on Sundays.
- A few photos, chosen, not dumped. Three good ones per entry beat forty.
Write little and often. A hundred and fifty words each evening is easier to keep up than a long write-up you promise yourself after you get home and never start.
Entries as a collection
Keep entries in a CMS collection with typed fields you choose, edited in the dashboard. A trip journal site might have two collections: trips (name, dates, countries, a cover photo and a short summary) and entries (date, place, title, text, photos and which trip it belongs to). Each collection is served at its own address, such as /trips/ for every journey and /entries/oaxaca-market-day for a single day, which makes it easy to send one entry to the friend who'd enjoy it.
| Field | Why |
|---|---|
| Date | Lets you put entries in order and find the day you're thinking of |
| Place | Town and country as text, so you can browse by where you were |
| Trip | Groups entries into journeys |
| Highlight | One line you'd tell someone over dinner |
| Photos | Your own pictures, with alt text |
Photos without the clutter
A travel photo journal lives on its images. Keep entries in a CMS collection whose image field holds each hosted photo's address, so they show in the entries' section and pages; uploads are used by app builds. Video doesn't play on these pages, so put clips on a video site and link to them from the entry. Choose photos that show something the text doesn't: a face, a view, a plate of food. Resize huge camera files before hosting them so the pages stay quick on a hotel connection. If you're starting from scratch, the using your own photos guide covers preparing them.
Posting safely while you're away
A published site is public, with no password option. That's fine for a journal, but it means posting with some care.
- Post entries a few days after you've left a place, not while you're there, if you're travelling alone.
- Don't publish that your home is empty, or when you'll be back.
- Leave out the name of where you're staying until you've checked out.
- Ask before posting photos of other people, especially children.
Building it
Describe it: "a travel journal for my year in Latin America, with trips and entries collections, a page per country, and big photos". Editorial (Geist) suits longer writing; Organic (Figtree) suits a relaxed, photo-led journal. Small corrections, such as a misspelt town, can be fixed in place in the visual editor. If you'd rather keep it as a single scrolling story than separate entries, see the simple blog website page for the trade-offs.
Limits
- No embedded maps. Published pages can't embed a map; link to a map for each place, or upload a map image you've made.
- No comments from readers. Friends reply by email or message.
- No email notifications of new entries. Add a newsletter sign-up if you want to send updates from a newsletter tool.
- No private or friends-only entries. Keep anything private off the site.
- No import from Instagram or photo apps. Add each photo's hosted address to the entry.
Questions people ask
Can I add entries from my phone while travelling?
Collections are edited in the dashboard; check it works comfortably on your phone before you go, and draft longer entries in a notes app first.
Can I keep the journal forever?
You can keep it published, and export the site as a single HTML file as a personal backup.
Should I use my own domain?
Only if you'd like a memorable address. The free anticode.dev address works for a personal journal; a custom domain needs a paid plan.