Since we bought our first digital camera in 1998 (Kodak DC-210 +), we take photos to create websites for each of our trips, and share our passion with Internet users. These sites are not official websites as we do not have any contracts with the hotels. They are detailed and informative sites based on our understanding and experience of the country we visited.
We are not professional photographers and do not pretend to be. This is a hobby, and the goal is to show you what we have been fortunate to see. All our travel websites are open to the general public, without restrictions nor any logins. We are among those who believe in free information on the web. It is our way of contributing to this wonderful database.
Click the thumbnail on left to access the index page of all our travel sites. Formerly hosted under the name of npsmicro.com and since 2008, under the destilino.com banner. Most of our sites are bilingual.
This is us on the web!
I need to mention this essential tool for any webmaster wishing to improve the geographical knowledge or their visitors. ©Google Earth is a free software that changed the style of all our travel websites. This software allows you to view satellite images from around the world. I always add info on every capture screen. The only downside is that many of these images are not up to date. Some can be more than ten years old. All the Google products are free and must be downloaded into your computer. They offer software for Windows and Apple.
All our websites were hosted into a single server: JaguarPC in Fulshear, Texas. It offers a range of tools, as well as scripts, including phpbb (forum), Coppermine (photo album) and many others. It is quite reliable and fast. However, in 2010, we decided to divide our numerous sites in two different servers. We now have destilino.com and all its sub domains on JaguarPC and all our registered domain names under the banner of InMotionHosting. Both are located in United States to get the fastest speed. The cost has decreased over the years as there are more competitors now.
In March 2011, we registered the domain name: forumscuba.com to host our three bulletin boards (discussion forums). This gives us more stability to all our websites. We experienced problems with the forums that set our account on hold. That was not really good for us! Now if something bad happens to our forums, this will only affect our forums and not our websites. A smart decision but ... again ... with extra costs!
For those curious about our [digital cameras] visit this section of our destilino.com website. As we take hundreds of photos to each of our trips, we frequently change cameras. Our modus operandi is always the same, a compact-style camera with great zoom, stabilizer with « hot shoe » for the hotel's photos and a rugged-style camera, waterproof, small for our underwater photos and during excursions. This camera has to be small enough to carry it everywhere, even in rough environment.
It would be impossible to create a website without the use of specialized software especially for the underwater shots who require special attention. For the design of our sites (HTML file), we use Adobe Macromedia Dreamweaver © and for the photos (JPG, GIF & PNG), Corel Paint Shop Pro © and Adobe ImageStyler © (to add text in images). All our software are registered and updated regularly.
Enjoy your visit of our travel sites!
Normand and Lily
destilino.com
