What did I need to make this blog idea happen? I figured at a minimum I needed hosting, a domain, an email, a youtube account, and perhaps somewhere to store pictures and a log. Oh and a website…that’s a whole other article.
My answers seemed to be…
Domain: I struggled until I remembered that I already owned a domain called survivalinstinct.co.uk! I bought it ages ago when I was just bored and trolling on a domain search site with ideas and found it was free. I thought I might so something with it someday as getting domains with real words these days is impossible! So… although it wasn’t really appropriate I could make it work. In a way survival is more than just Bear Grills and it just be keeping normal life interesting.
Hosting and Email: I used www.nublue.co.uk. I have a few friends that used them after some minor research and found they were really easy, had great support for setup and were pretty cheap. I wanted something that was half way between setting it all up myself and it being one of those “do it all for you” deals. They also include email hosting so that meant I was covered there as well!
Youtube: I planned to create videos as part of the blog. I didn’t want to use my personal email account and found that creating a google account using the email I’d setup on survival instinct via my hosting was actually pretty easy. Google used to make it difficult to get google services without having a google email. Not any more. It was great. I created a google account, logged into youtube and created a channel. Yeah there was a load of settings that I’m still not totally sure about but it’s working.
Pictures: I think for now I’ll use my personal Instagram account. It’ll be that or flickr. I think flickr for huge galleries and instagram for one off images to accompany a blog entry. I’m not sure that makes sense yet but we’ll see. I might mix it up later.
Oh I forgot … a logo. Is that really necessary? I asked a few friends and decided that survival in modern society doesn’t really have much to do with instinct at all so I put a not equal sign between the words. I looked ok. Logo complete!
