Welcome Travelers!

Click here to view a demo of this theme.

New Theme Now Available for Downlaod!

• Added support for Google+ in social media controls
• Many SEO features
• Upper and lower background capabilities!
• Google Maps integration
• Many customizations!
• See the version notes on the download page for full details…

Set Colors, Fonts & Images

This free travel blog theme packs many of the same powerful features you will find in similar premium themes. It is designed to allow you to completely customize how it looks, from the background images, to the headers and footers and all colors of everything in between! Make it your own, just like your trips and experiences on the road are one of a kind.

Built in Social Media

We created built in social media widgets, so your fans can follow you or share with their friends all the crazy things you did. But be careful, if you don’t want it spread around, don’t put it on the web! What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas (unless it’s on Facebook!).

Instant Designs

We also included 3 gorgeous instant designs for you to choose from. With a single click you can conjure up a new look and feel for your site with our default theme looks. Or as we stated before, you can upload all your own photos and choose your own colors for just about every area of the site’s layout.

Three Alternate Layouts

We made it super easy in Travel Blogger: Seaward Bound to change the number of columns and their left or right side alignment with one click. Want to have your menus on the left, or maybe the right? Need more space for sidebar widgets? You can select 2 or 3 column layouts, and position them however you like.

Map Your Travels!

We even created a totally cool mapping feature, whereby you can create posts for each of the locations you visited and have them plotted on a Google map. You can have all your trip locations displayed in the global map widget in your sidebar, or inside each post you can display a map for that specific location. See, here is beautiful Bellevue, Washington:

Feature Your Exploits

We put in powerful controls over the “Featured Post” area in the header. You can have different featured posts on the Home page, and a unique featured post on each main Category page. Or, you can show a featured post only on the home page, leaving the rest of your site clean. Or, you can turn off all featured post areas in the header – make it your way!

Built In “Latest” and “Featured” Post Sidebar Widgets

Last but not least, we added some of the most useful sidebar tools – the kind of thing you always end up finding a plugin for anyway. Now you can feature selected posts in the “Featured Posts” widget. And in our “Latest Posts” widget, you can display the top posts from any category you set it to show. You can even place more than one Latest Posts widget to show posts from many different categories in your sidebars. Pretty powerful!

Upper and Lower Background capabilites

Now you can have even more control over the theme by stetting separate backgrounds for your site or blog! This gives almost endless opportunities to explore your creative side and create stunning designs for your site or blog! Check out the background settings in the Appearance tab for more details.

It’s All Up to You!

We sincerely hope you enjoy the Travel Blogger – Seaward Bound WordPress theme, and look forward to seeing what you do with it. Send us your questions through our Contact page here on this site. Happy travel blogging!

Welcome Travelers! 

Click here to view a demo of this theme.

New Update 1.1 Now Available!

• See the version notes on the download page for full details…

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>>>>>>>>>>>   DOWNLOAD THEME HERE <<<<<<<<<<<<<
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Set Colors, Fonts & Images

This free travel blog theme packs many of the same powerful features you will find in similar premium themes. It is designed to allow you to completely customize how it looks, from the background images, to the headers and footers and all colors of everything in between! Make it your own, just like your trips and experiences on the road are one of a kind.

Built in Social Media

We created built in social media widgets, so your fans can follow you or share with their friends all the crazy things you did. But be careful, if you don’t want it spread around, don’t put it on the web! What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas (unless it’s on Facebook!).

Instant Designs

We also included 3 gorgeous instant designs for you to choose from. With a single click you can conjure up a new look and feel for your site with our default theme looks. Or as we stated before, you can upload all your own photos and choose your own colors for just about every area of the site’s layout.

Three Alternate Layouts

We made it super easy in Travel Blogger to change the number of columns and their left or right side alignment with one click. Want to have your menus on the left, or maybe the right? Need more space for sidebar widgets? You can select 2 or 3 column layouts, and position them however you like.

Map Your Travels!

We even created a totally cool mapping feature, whereby you can create posts for each of the locations you visited and have them plotted on a Google map. You can have all your trip locations displayed in the global map widget in your sidebar, or inside each post you can display a map for that specific location. See, here is beautiful Bellevue, Washington:

Feature Your Exploits

We put in powerful controls over the “Featured Post” area in the header. You can have different featured posts on the Home page, and a unique featured post on each main Category page. Or, you can show a featured post only on the home page, leaving the rest of your site clean. Or, you can turn off all featured post areas in the header – make it your way!

Built In “Latest” and “Featured” Post Sidebar Widgets

Last but not least, we added some of the most useful sidebar tools – the kind of thing you always end up finding a plugin for anyway. Now you can feature selected posts in the “Featured Posts” widget. And in our “Latest Posts” widget, you can display the top posts from any category you set it to show. You can even place more than one Latest Posts widget to show posts from many different categories in your sidebars. Pretty powerful!

Upper and Lower Background capabilites

Now you can have even more control over the theme by stetting separate backgrounds for your site or blog! This gives almost endless opportunities to explore your creative side and create stunning designs for your site or blog! Check out the background settings in the Appearance tab for more details.

It’s All Up to You!

We sincerely hope you enjoy the Travel Blogger WordPress theme, and look forward to seeing what you do with it. Send us your questions through our Contact page here on this site. Happy travel blogging!

———————————————————————————————————–
>>>>>>>>>>>   DOWNLOAD THEME HERE <<<<<<<<<<<<<
———————————————————————————————————–

We have added a number of great new features, and made sure to update it to work with the latest versions of WordPress (3.2 and up) .

We’ve made improvements based on your feedback, adding many of the most requested features our users have posted to our support mailbox. Here is a short list of the new features:

v1.6 Features

• Several changes and optimizations to support newer version of WordPress
• Fixed problem with color settings in admin area
• Fixed custom style settings on frontend
• Fixed Background settings
• Fixed Header settings in admin area
• Fixed issue with WordPress’s new live preview settings.
• Added support for flexible image height in custom header upload
• Added support to add image header from media library
• Added backward compatibility to 3.2 for custom header settings in admin areas.

>>> DOWNLOAD UPDATE <<<

Travel is no different.

Whether you’re passionate about traveling, a weekend adventurer, or head out once a year with the family to experience what the world has to offer, a travel blog is a fabulous medium to share your encounters with others. In addition to any family member with a computer and Internet connection having the ability to access your blog, friends and friends of friends can read what you’ve written about destinations around the globe!

While there are dozens of reasons for keeping a general blog, we’ve come up three very good reasons to keep a specific travel blog. They are:

#1. Any bad experiences at hotels, restaurants, or stops along the way can be vented and heard as you write about your encounters, while the positive events can be pleasantly shared amongst avid blog readers around the planet on the World Wide Web. By choosing a travel specific site, potential readers are on that site with that one topic on their mind- and want to know what you have to say about their potential future destinations.

#2. Pictures, pictures and more pictures. Family and friends can keep a tab on you and your travels by reading all about your adventures and viewing he accompanying pictures that you’ve uploaded to your travel blog site of choice. Beside the fun of it, you’ll be saving yourself a few afternoons of re-showing your pictures to everyone who wants to see them. Simply send them the link to your travel blog, ask them to bookmark it on their favorites and visit it often to see where your travels have taken you now.

#3. Travel blogs bring your journal into the digital era, and preserves it for an eternity. Floods and other catastrophes can’t damage your memory or your blog, but they can certainly wreak havoc onto pictures, private paper journals and yes- can even damage computers and back-up discs, where the majority of invaluable digital photos are stored.

So what are you waiting for? Get blogging!

On the 10th I will be visiting Corfu Island, one of Greece’s most popular resorts. It is well known as the home of the Greece’s best beaches. Check online on the 11th for my blog post!

Corfu Island Map

Tomorrow I plan to visit the home of Giorgos Alexandros – an amazing Greek chef and restaurateur. Come back on the 8th to read the blog post of my visit!

When it comes to writing a quality, informative and interesting travel blog, it’s almost second nature to try and sound clever. In fact, it’s often easy to spot the new travel blog simply by the lofty language that tends to be used. Unfortunately this style of writing tends to alienate readers straight away. As a rule of thumb, if there is an easier word use that. Keep it simple.

Apart from over-using the thesarurus, the next most common mistake for new travel bloggers is the length of the blog post. The most successful bloggers tend to blog frequently but in short spurts. Most blog readers are looking for short, factual and easy-to-read articles on the subject they have searched for. A long blog post tends to looks like a reading assignment and can quickly send the average reader running. Instead of writing a thesis why not split it into two or three medium size posts? That way you have more content, more posts and are more likely to get your readers to return for part two. Keep it short.

Travel blogging is a careful balance of opinion and information. When you start travelling blogging it can be easy to see your role as a famous travel writer but this puts the balance out of equation. Unfortunately search engines don’t rate blogs by how fancy the language or ideals are, but rather whether your article is relevant to the searcher. Likewise your readers are going to be looking for information about a topic with a little bit of human opinion put in there for good measure. Keep it informative.

Of course when you set up a travel blog, or any blog for that matter it can be easy to see your readers merely as readers. One of the major differences between publishing a magazine article and a blog post is that readers can comment directly on blog posts whereas magazines tend to just select a few random reader’s letters. Read your reader’s comments carefully and encourage them to comment and participate more in your blog. This way you’ll keep your hand on your reader’s pulse and at the same time produce unique and varied content that will make your blog stand out from the crowd. Keep your readers in mind.

Setting up a travel blog is a straightforward task. Whether you’re a New York publishing company running a travel guide to America or a Portuguese bed and breakfast producing an Algarve blog the principles are the same. When writing your next post, keep it simple, short, informative and keep your readers in mind and you will be on the track to a better travel blog.

1.  Beers and Beans
Great stories written by a photographer and a journalist currently traveling the world.  Their journalist/photography skills make this blog top-notch, and they are from San Diego just like us, so we like to tune in!

2.  Budget Travel Current Newsweek
Great fresh information about current travel news and travel tips.  This is a great blog to bookmark for those times you just want to read an interesting travel news story making headlines.

3.  Ben Groundwater, Australian Travel Writer
TravAddict knows Ben well.  Having traveled with him through Europe in the past, we love reading what he is up to.  He is one of the best travel writers we know, and his stories will inspire anyone who is thinking about packing up their life and just traveling!  His personal journey of being a budget traveler is well documented and inspiring.

4.  Tim Leffel’s Cheapest Destinations
Tim offers up to date information about travel destinations, and advice for traveling on a budget.  He is a very experienced writer who knows a lot about traveling the world.  He has great advice about cheap destinations and budget travel that is always evolving.

5.   Art of Backpacking
Travel advice, tips and stories about backpackers traveling the world.  Their main message is that traveling is all about the experience, which is why we like them so much!  They have some great posts that are interesting and moving.

6.  On your way travel
Written by a young Aussie female who travels the world and blogs about her experiences.  She is currently living in China, so right now her posts are mostly about her experiences of living in a Chinese city.  It is an interesting read, one for the bookmarks when you need a five minute break from the grind.

7.   Galding
If there is interesting travel news making headlines anywhere in the world, Galding is probably writing about it.  Galding mostly writes in a news-article style about anything and everything related to travel.  Their stories are quirky, interesting and informative.

8.  Y Travel Blog
This blog is really easy to navigate with travel stories and travel tips easy to locate.  It is a great blog that is easy to browse and access travel stories that personally interest you.

9.  The never ending voyage
Simon Fairbairn and Erin McNeaney, are a couple who are traveling the world indefinitely.  They write interesting and informative news and budget travel tips about the places they travel to.  Their posts are very inspiring.

10.   Nomadic Matt
Matt writes great stories about his travels and provides great tips and advice for different destinations.  His blog posts are very detailed and fun to read.

For links to these blogs, please visit the TravAddict blog and you will see them all under ‘blogs we read’.

After establishing your blog persona, you should make sure it’s easy for readers to contact you by making your contact information easily available throughout your site. It is also helpful to give people different ways to contact you, whether it be through e-mail, Facebook, or Twitter, social networking sites keep people involved in your day. If you plan on being unable to access your computer or the internet for a period of time, let your readers know! You can use the WordPress plugin WP-ContactForm or an out of office reply on your travel email account as an auto responder to keep people from feeling ignored when they don’t get a timely response.

It is good to post unique pictures and/or videos to add variety to your posts once in a while. Pictures and videos are a good way of making your blog more interesting and colorful among the many written posts. Including yourself in some of the pictures, or voicing over videos can add a more personal touch on your posts. You can also consider breaking up a longer post into a mini-series of posts over a period of a few days.

In addition to pictures and videos, personal stories are important for relating to audiences, as long as your writing is understandable and keeps people interested. It is easy for travel blogs to become endless rants with random thoughts, which causes readers to lose interest. By by keeping your posts short and to the point and following the “upside down pyramid”, you can avoid confusion and keep readers.

Consistency is a key to travel blogging. By keeping yourself on a consistent posting schedule, you can ensure a successful travel blog in the long run. Just because you set a deadline for yourself never means you should force your writing. Instead, jot down ideas as they come to you and your posts will come together. Come up with a few different aspects of the same trip to generate more interesting content for your blog and to provide different points of view. A variety in blog posts and different takes on the same trip will give your readers a more well-rounded account of your experiences.

Communication and consistency are some keys to being a successful travel blogger. Blogging will keep you busy, and it is okay to take a break once in a while. Keep your readers informed of your absence and let them know that you will be coming back with new, interesting content after a short break. As long as you are consistent with interesting posts and maintain open communication, your readers will be consistent as well.

On my third day in Greece, I am headed 48 miles Southwest of Athens and into Corinth.  Corinth is a coastal town that was rebuilt in the late 1800′s after an earthquake destroyed it completely.  It was rebuilt again in 1928 after another earthquake, and once more in 1933 after a great fire burned the city.

This place has certainly seen its share of hard times, but amongst its surroundings are ancient ruins of the old city, some of the most famous being the Acrocorinth, which was built on a hillside in medieval times.  This city is not only a beautiful coastal town, but it has a rich history.  I am excited to see this place!

Here is a map of Corinth!