The Birth of the World of Wild Camping Website

The idea for this website was conceived back in November 2008 after a particularly good trip from Spain to the UK and back where we only spent one night in an official camp site. At first I thought that the site should focus solely on European free camping, but then decided that it wasn't worth the bother to create the website unless it covered the world in its entirety. In retrospect perhaps I could have made it the "Universe of Wild Camping" ......

The purpose of creating the website was twofold. Firstly to generate a really comprehensive and useful database of great places to wild camp, and secondly to update my IT skills which were becoming a little dated after 5 years out of the industry, and 10 years of being bored with technology. I had a hackers familiarity with HTML and CSS, but next to no experience of PHP or MySQL, and it was clear at the outset that my financial situation and the community spirited nature of the site meant that open-source software was the way to go. This open-source philosophy also meant I could avoid dependence on Microsoft software, a company whose cult-like brainwashing of its employees and aggressive business practices had been irritating me for years ( despite the fact I used to work as a consultant for their messaging technology ).

Initially I lurked around on Joomla message boards asking questions about functionality and development. I was very impressed by the level of responsiveness of other Joomla developers, and also how quickly you could get a site up off the ground. I even downloaded Joomla and had a little play. It was superb but it felt a bit like building with lego - there were a fixed number of types of block ( Plugins in Joomla's case ) and if they didn't suit your purpose, well tough luck. In order to make Joomla create the World of Wild Camping website exactly as I envisaged it I would have to become a Joomla guru, and probably develop or adapt a number of modules myself. This was scary.

After a lot more searching I came across Drupal, a competitor Content Management System, that probably would be better described as a content management framework. It wasn't scary, it was terrifying. The terminology was baffling : "taxonomy" ; "nodes" ; "Views" ; "exposed filters" ; "template engines". Even installing it required an apparently complex and intricate series of IT manoeuvres. At the same time I could tell that Drupal was not a toy, but a complex, flexible and extensible framework for exactly the kind of website I was planning. There were also a score of websites blogs and forum posts from people who described their experience of getting to grips with Drupal as rather like climbing a mountain : pain, pain and more pain, but with a wonderful reward at the end. I like climbing mountains ( literally ) and I was hooked.

Truth is that after an initial fever of interest I put Drupal and the website one side and focussed on other important things like walking the dogs, and enjoying Xmas. In mid-January however the bug returned and I started spending at least an hour a day playing with Drupal, always with the goal of the World of Wild Camping website at the back of my mind. Towards the end of January 2009 I stepped up the pace and my email trail indicates that on February 5th I finally became confident enough that I would be successful that I actually registered the domain. Now I was committed.

I still didn't really have a firm grasp of the intricacies of HTML, CSS or PHP, but was discovering that determination, application, and the help of the Drupal community forums were a good makeshift alternate. The site was live by the end of February, although it took me another few weeks to get to grips with GPS coordinates and integrating Google Maps. There still remains plenty to do but the priority has to be content, and this will only come from contributors. Unfortunately at the moment I am having a battle to gain a respectable Google ranking for relevant terms such as "wild camping" and "free camping", but time and perseverance will no doubt pay off in the end.

Cheers

Dave