So after arriving a long day touring around Copenhagen, followed by touring round the Viking museum, followed by driving around heading north and all the rest of it – we were glad of the break offered to us by Del, a friend of my parents – who used to babysit me apparently.

We took the chance to catch up on some washing (very much needed) and some comfortable sofa’s! It also gave me the cahnce to catch up a bit with things on this here blog.

So – what is Sweden like as a tourist destination.

Well, it certainly is worthwhile trying to make your trip in the summer months of July-August.  Everyone talks of the massive parties and just lively atmosphere that seems to swell in Sweden, and in particular the region of Skane in the summer.

We came up to Sweden because we thought arriving before the high season would mean cheaper campsite fares (it does) but the down side is that we have got worse weather than we had back in England!  Rain and Wind, and bloody viious wind at that!

The other thing we have found hard to find in Sweden is somewhere to empty our waste water and fill our clean water ( ver- & ensortung).

We were spoiled for choice in Denmark with tha stations being placed at every motorway service station, but in Sweden we seem to have lost them completely and this is compunded by our innability to lay our hands on the much coveted Nordic Camping Guide, which gives directions to all of these stations and more.  No campervan dealer, motorway service station, fuel stop o camp site seems to have a copy, though they have all heard of it.

I am starting to think that there is a conspiracy going on….

Moonlit Beach @ Karlskrona

Random Shots from Driving through Sweden

As you know, not long ago this site moved from a Blogspot blog this this shiny new thing!

This is just a quick note to say that all of our feeds will be changing soon and if you’re not on the new feed you may stop getting all our wonderful information!

If you signed up on the old blogger blog then please subscribe to either the RSS or Email updates.

If you signed up on this new site (overlandwannabe.co.uk) then you do not need to do a thing!

Thanks for your support.

Good Evening everyone,

In my last post I was wondering what on earth Technorati is, how it works and how to increase your “authority”.

Technorati seemed to be a bit of a dark art form, with information hidden away and I didn’t really understand how it did what it did.

Well, I have found the answer.  And actually it is rather an anti-climax.  Technorati’s authority is worked out by looking at how many blogs link to you.

That’s it.

As you can tell I am a bit bemused and expected this to be a lengthy article on the inner workings of a secret internet traffic boosting bit of kit, but nope its just a link looker at-er.

One thing to note though is that it does not count comments.  So you can’t actually do anything about it unless people are linking to you in their posts.

So here’s an idea, I’m going to build a list.  Once that is done all you have to do is copy it into your own site and then add links to your favourite sites, tag them and then ask them to do the same.  This will result in more blogs linking to us through posts etc and will work well for the good of the blogging community, hurrah and all that and for my next trick I shall end all wars lol.

Ok – here’s the audience participation bit – Add a comment with your blog’s URL below and I will duly add you to the list in the hope that you will do the same… And don’t say I don’t give you nothing!

Happy Travelling!

I have been attempting to grow the traffic on this site since I first started blogging.

I have concentrated a lot on the magical world of search engine optimisation and found this to be a bit of a “dark art” that is incomprehensible to most, although having an SEO plugin for wordpress seems to be helping, expect a post on that soon (when I actully know more about it).

Technorati - what is it?

As for other sites for social media; Digg is widely regarded as the grand-daddy of all of them and then there is StumbleUpon, which pretty much does exactly what it says on the tin.

But I was quite interested in Technorati, it is completely blog focused and seemed to have more “things” than I have seen on the other sites.

So off I went to find out more. Technorati states that:

Technorati was founded to help bloggers succeed by collecting, highlighting, and distributing the global online conversation. Founded as the first blog search engine, Technorati has expanded to a full service media company providing services to the blogs and social media sites and connecting them with advertisers who want to join the conversation, and whose online properties introduce blog content to millions of consumers.

So I am now signed up, have entered all my information and you can now find my profile here

The steps for your own profile are reasonably simple: creating your own profile, creating your blog profile, adding a description (250 characters max) and adding keywords.  Nice and easy so far.

Back to my profile page after the set up and I have an authority of 0 (zero).  hmmm.  Next up – how on earth to increase this rating.

Well that my dear readers wil come in another post.  As I am still actually finding this out.  See, I told you that this blog was indeed “live”.

I have an idea of how to work Technorati but I really need to investigate.

Have you got any information on how Technorati works?

Ok, well on my previous post I discussed the kind of things you should think about when transferring from Blogger to Wordpress.

Patty Mooney commented on that post and asked:

I am curious why you decided to transfer to Wordpress from Blogger? Looking back, would you do it again?

Well that will make a good post, thought I,  and so here it is.

First of all, Why set up a blog on Blogger?

I am a bit of a Google convert to be honest.  I love GMAIL, Adwords, Google Analytics, Google Connect, Google Docs etc, etc (and it really is a long list!) So it was only natural for me to set up a blog on Google’s blogging service, Blogger.

I didn’t really research into Wordpress too much, at the time I set up my original blog WordPress 2.7 was just a sparkle on the motherboards at Wordpress.  The older version did have loads of people recommending them, at the end of almost every post about how good WordPress there was the word “BUT”.  And then a whole load of things that Wordpress was bad, slow or just confusing at doing.

So with my blogger blog set up and running, and with a boost from Blogger by being nominated at “Blogs of Note” (which resulted in over 20,000 visits) why on earth would I change?

What are the limitations of Blogger?

Now I’m not going to discuss all of them, but only the ones that were relevant to me.

First point was the ability to add pages, I wanted to have organised content so that people could easily search through, find the information they wanted more easily.  Secondly I also wanted the ability to add contact forms, places for a store (secret project coming soon!) and other ways to make more money online.

I am also a bit of a geek, well actually quite a large geek.  Having my own domain and the ability to add Plugins, Widgets and complete access to my own domain, add to that my own email domains an hey presto, that’s the geek in me fulfilled.

Also I wanted to have a professional looking site that would allow me some funky ways to access and upload to it.  having FTP access allows me to upload things much more quickly than having to wait for Blogger’s image uploader.  All of thee are things that I had to think about for travelling – time on Internet = money, even more so than when online at home.

Of course the final push came from trying out a free wordpress blog first of all.

The immense plugins library and availability of themes really tipped it for me.

I have a plugin for a contact form, a plugin for search engine optimisation, a plugin that automatically creates a sitemap, a plugin that automatically cuts posts to previews, a plugin that enhances the site search (try it, it’s load of fun) and there is also a secret plugin, if you leave a comment you will find out what it is!

And – These plugins are so easy to use!

There is no painful set up  – most of them do not require any coding skills or to even touch the website’s code!  All I need to do is download, unzip and upload the plugin into my library and WHAM, I can see it in my Plugins page on the admin area – go into it’s own settings page and that is it.

And I think that is the real beauty of WordPress.  Think of it as being the iron structure within a skyscraper, you can clad the outside however you want and also furnish the inside of the structure to make it work the way you want it and look the way you want.

Having the ability to grow and expand this site was a major factor in changing to WordPress.

Looking back, Would I do it again?

Yes – I can definitely state that I would still have moved from Blogger to WordPress.  I would of course do it differently, but then again, would I know what I know now?

I’d say to everyone to think carefully about changing your blog. I know for a fact that I got it wrong, I moved too quickly and had a far too complex template to start off with.

Have you changed your address or service or are you looking to? Or do you have any further questions, please add them to the comments below and I’ll reply to you.

Bring on the trumpets, roll out the red carpet and marvel at the wonder.

Yes the front page is just one of the massive changes we’ve made around here.

You may also notice the menu bars at the top, where all the pages reside and the wonderful categorised posts to allow you all to find your way to the information you want an awful lot easier.

I would love to hear from you all, both old readers from my blogger blog and new readers who have found this site.  Posts will be more focused now on the conversion side of things, as the new van is coming soon.  After that we will have a little spree of planning posts then off to the travel posts!

We’re also planning for a little video action here as well, all in time though folks.  Unfortunately I am a man, meaning I am unable to multi-task.  A woman could have probably created this site in half the time, but then again a woman….. No, had better not.  I’d be shot, or at least loose some readers.

Well enough of the chitter chatter.  Please Bookmark this page, subscribe to the feeds or subscribe to the email feed, all of these can be done using the links at the top right hand side of this page.

Are you thinking about doing your own thing like this site?  contact ITSimple.co.uk

Well, I’m breaking out the champagne, who’s joining me?

Hello to all you readers. I now have nearly three hundred followers (stalkers), which is brilliant.  I haven’t bee able to look at all of your blogs because the connection whilst I am here in Germany is not the fastest and online time is limited, mainly by my Facebook obsessed sister!

Please leave a commnent and I will check out your blog as well.

In our brilliant little stellplatz there are many, many campervans. A lot of them are coachbuilt wagons that are incredibly expensive.  Unfortunately my budget will not stretch to any of these travelling mansions.

There are also a number of van conversions here.  Most of them are, of course, Mercedes Sprinters or Volkswagen Crafters and Transporters.

All of these types of wagons are brilliant for converting into campervans. Below are a few things that you may want to think about before converting choosing or converting your own van. I have noted a few of these points before in my post talking about travelling Europe and Scandinavia in a Van – Link here

When choosing a van ask yourself these questions.

Do you want to have a van that you can stand up in?

Having somewhere to stand up whilst getting changed or just moving about can make a huge difference.  If you do buy a hi-roof van then make sure you check for water ingress at the connection between the van and the roof.

Think about where you will be travelling, If you will be travelling a lot into towns and cities then bear in mind that you may not be abe to get in a lot of car-parks due to the height.  I would always recommend taking public transport into major cities though.  Much easier and usually works out cheaper.

How big do you want the van to be?

This will affect your design, think about how many people are travelling with you and what you will be taking with you.  Also bear in mind the extra costs that you will incurr if your travel plans include any ferries, most of them will charge by the metre.

Van widths vary between manufacturer, with the Mercedes Sprinter being narrow but long whereas the Fiat Ducato is short but wide. The LDV Convoy is long, wide and tall.  Making it a perfect choice for conversion in this respect. You may not be able to get down every county lane in a wider van, but fold your wing mirrors and hope for the best!

Weight

Anybody who passed their driving test after 1997 in the UK is unable to drive any vehicle over 3.5tonnes gross vehicle weight (GVW).  (I am not sure how this translates for other countries, if anyone would let me know I will be grateful.) Make sure you check before you buy the vehicle that you can actually drive it!

A lot of Mercedes Sprinters and VW Crafters are 5.5t rated, having them down-plated to 3.5t is a hassle that you could avoid by buying the right van in the first place.

Also make sure you take the weight into consideration when converting the van.  The van must never weigh more than its stated weight, even when full of people, packing and food.

Also if you plan to visit Austria or Switzerland then note that your Vignette (compulsory road tax for all) will be more expensive ifyou are over 3.5tonnes.

Is speed something that concerns you?

If it is, then you may want to look at the Mercedes Sprinter – it is a beast.  Unfortunately the more powerful vans usually means a more expensive insurance policy and less economy therefore more money spent on fuel.  Speaking of fuel – go for the Diesels everytime, try to get a turbo charged one, they have good enough power and reasonable economy.

Tomorrow I will be posting a list of all the vans I have looked through and considered.

Fameseekers can post a comment here!

Thought I’d give my life story a rest for one minute to bring you some wonderful linkage to other sites around the blogosphere that may be of interest to you.

First off is “The Journey Continues“.

I found this blog whilst on Blog Search for anything tagged with Overland. Silama, the author is constructing his very own wagon for travelling across, well, anywhere I suppose. I have to say that this is one of my own dreams, construct (or buy) my own campervan / expedition vehicle.

Unfortunately my off-centre mind has now conjured up the image of me perched atop a truck pointing to the distance and declaring in a distinctly pirate fashion “We be a goin yonder thata way! yarrr”

I’m not sure why the pirates came about, perhaps thats another crazy plan that I’ve secretly got lodged in my mind.

Prepare ye’selves for “Pirate Wannabe” blog… coming soon, or perhaps not, still if enough of you ask then i’m sure I could photoshop something, you weirdos! hehe!

… And then this caught my eye….

Perhaps the mightiest beast of all beasts. Based on the Unimog, but almost completely rebuilt is this monolith.

The description of the MaxiMog sums it up really

“The base vehicle is a highly modified Mercedes Benz Unimog chassis with a custom body, completely new power plant, computer controlled suspension, and integrated electrical, hydraulics and electronics systems.
Many of the onboard navigation, power, lighting, communications, computation and electro-optics systems were developed specifically for this vehicle.”

Hey hey!

I finally got round to that “makeover” I promised ages ago. Come check it out and let me know what you think. I’m off to fix the comments facility on a friend’s blog.

Happy Travellin’
OverlandSi
(In a considerably better mood than I was earlier, but still don’t want to go back to work)