Polarsteps – the best travel blog

Polarsteps

The best and easiest way to make a travel blog

 
It is an app and a webpage where you can easily create a travel blog.
 
What is Polarsteps?
As a traveller you may want to keep a blog, for yourself to read back later. But also for your friends and family that they can read what you are doing and if you are still alive.
Especially for the last part, Polarsteps is great! It tracks where you are so if you didn’t call your mother the last week she can see that you are still alive because you are moving on the map. (Or your phone is stolen and the thief marks his path now – but don’t tell her this).

So without jokes, it tracks where you are, that makes it so easy to use.
On a map, it shows where you have been and you can easily add ’steps’ to the different places and add some pictures and of course your story.
On Polarsteps they call a new blog ‘a step’, steps you made on this polar, this world.
This gives a great view to everyone where you are, where you have been and what you have experienced.
 
How does Polarsteps work?
How to start a travel blog on Polarsteps

Start

Go to polarsteps.com

make an account.

Now you can make a new trip.

Give it a name, a short summary if you wish. Add the start date and the end date. The end date you can leave open if you don’t know this yet.

Then choose the ‘privacy’ for your trip. You can add as many trips as you wish and for every trip, you can decide who is allowed to see it.

You can make a past, current and future trip. With a future trip, it starts automatically tracking where you are on the date you say the trip begins.

So you can have all your trips in one account and it shows them nice under each other on your page.

 
Edit your trip

IMPORTANT: If you want the trip to track your location you have to get the app on your phone and allow the app to use your location. It tracks through GPS, so you can use it without data. With data though, it will give a bit more accurate information about your location. It doesn’t use much data. DO NOT set your phone on flight modus, it can’t track your location then.

Every place it tracks will be shown with a small white dot on the map if it makes a mistake or you don’t want that place in your trip you can click on the dot and delete it.

It connects the dots with a white line. Parts that have been travelled by plane are connected by a dashed line.

From every dot you can make a step.

You can give every step a title or just the name of the place where it was. You can add some pictures, a story and recommendations to do in that area. The time and date are ‘connected’ with the dot and it shows the time that the app located you there. You can change this but keep in mind that it’s is connected to the other dots so if you change the time and date the line can be messed up.

When you turn a dot or your current location into a step it will show the first picture in that step on the map at the place this small white dot was first. If you only write something in that step then it makes the dot bigger and black, to show that there is a step.

All the steps are visible in order of the date you placed them, or you were at that location. They show under each other in your trip.

You can also create a step yourself, on any place you wish. For example, when there was no service at all and it didn’t track you correctly, you forgot your phone or some other reason. With your own created step you add also the time and the date. You can fill in a location or point it out on the map when you are creating a step.

 
More information

On your ‘homepage’ where it also shows all your trips, it shows a map with all the places you have been according to all the ‘steps’ you added to all your trips.

If you click on a trip you see on the map only where you have been on that trip.

If you want to go to a certain step in your trip you can scroll down all the steps or go to the place that step was made on the map and click on it.

Every trip gives you information: how many days you already have been on that trip. If you added an end date it also shows how many days the trip will be in total. It also shows how many countries you’ve visited on that trip, how many kilometres (or miles you can change this in account settings) you’ve done on that trip and more.

Your account gives you also some fun information, like how many countries you have been in during all your trips, how many days you’ve travelled and which the furthest place from your hometown was.

 
Privacy
If you don’t want to give up your privacy by tracking yourself where you are you can set this setting off. Then, later on, you can put the places where you have been in yourself.

For each trip you can also change the visibility;
Private – Only visible for you.
Friends – Only visible for people who have a Polarsteps account and follow you.
Public – Everyone can see it.

You can also go for the option private until you are home and then make it visible for the public. That way it can track you down and you can place everything and when you are not at that place anymore you make it visible. This only works for short trips otherwise people will never go to read back all your stories.
 
Polarsteps review and why I like it.
What I like about it is that it shows it all on a map and gives you a quick overview. But you can also easily go to the place you want to see some pictures from; zoom in on the map and click on the part you want to know more about.

It doesn’t use that much data and battery to track your location down all the time. If you don’t use your data but only GPS then it will place all the information, locations, in the trip when you connect to the wifi later sometime.

About the privacy, I choose my trips to appear public because otherwise all my friends and family have to make an account to see my blog. If you don’t travel an account is not really for any use so I don’t want to ‘force’ my friends to get an account.
The fact that everyone quite exact knows where I am is a little strange and giving away some privacy but I choose that I like to share where I am and share my stories.
 
Pros and cons of Polarsteps
+ Easy way of keeping an (organized) travel blog.
+ It shows on the map where you are.
+ Gives you a fun view of where you have been, so also for yourself, it’s nice.
+ Friends now a little bit what you are doing even if you forgot to write the last weeks.
+ Through polar steps, you can also make really easily a photo-book from your trip.

– Privacy, everyone can see where you are.
– You also want a holiday from the online world, so maybe you don’t want to have a travel blog at all.
 
Polarsteps vs other blogs
There are a lot of ways how to make a travel blog. From making your own website to using a website where there is a format already and you only have to fill in the story. Also for this last one you have a lot of different versions with all a little bit different ways of presenting things or how you use it.

The biggest difference between Polarsteps and most other blogs is that it tracks your location and shows on a map where you have been. The blog part itself is quite similar; write a story add some pictures.
I also like that it combines all the trips on the homepage to show where you all have been over the world on different trips.
 
Wish you a lot of fun blogging and travelling!