Frequently Asked Questions

Yes. When you find accommodation on Travellerspoint that you would like to book you are redirected to one of our partner sites that provide secured bookings only. This is the case for our budget accommodation, hotel reservation and last minute hotel booking partners.

It is also the case for all other Travellerspoint partners that don't sell accommodation, like the eurail passes, travel insurance, tours and RTW ticket partners!

Yes and no. We provide our budget accommodation bookings in these languages: Spanish, Dutch, French, Italian, German, Russian, Portuguese, Simplified Chinese, Traditional Chinese, Swedish, Japanese, and of course English. We are working on adding more as time goes by.

For bookings besides budget accommodation, this feature is not yet enabled.

Hostels are an inexpensive form of short-term accommodation, especially suited to individual travellers who don't mind sharing a room ('dorm') with other travellers. Some hostels also offer private rooms, usually with a shared bathroom. They are especially popular amongst younger travellers, but unless specified otherwise, most don't have upper age restrictions.

Yes. Hostel cards just help you get discounts at select hostels.

We do not have direct access to the properties' phone numbers. When you make a booking, the phone number is included on your confirmation email.

No. Bookings are done through a third party website, so Travellerspoint membership is not required. But why would you not want to be a member?!

Login at the booking agency where you have signed up your property (Travellerspoint uses several different systems) and make the changes there. The update will automatically display on Travellerspoint. If you have no recollection of signing up your property, please contact us (link to contact page) and let us know on which page your property is showing.

Dorms are shared rooms, particularly at hostels. Private rooms are not shared, as the name suggests. Ensuites include their own bathroom.

Travellerspoint does not process the bookings itself but uses several different systems. Your booking confirmation includes details on where you can retrieve your booking details. If you do not have your booking confirmation email, see 10.

Please contact us with the name of the property you were trying to book, and the email address and name you made the booking with.

Please contact us with the name of the property you booked, the email address and name you made the booking with and your booking number (if you have it).

Before a photo can be added to a blog entry, you must first upload it into your photo gallery. Photos can be added to the photo gallery through the Control Panel or through you Blog Management area (under the 'WRITE' tab, choose the 'UPLOAD PHOTOS' sub-tab). Once a photo is in your gallery, you can add it to a blog by clicking on the 'IMG' button when you are writing your entry.

No. The nature of blogs is to be public. However, you can select to have your blog unlisted on Travellerspoint. Alternatively, you could opt for using a travel diary instead, which can be password-protected.

There are several differences which we have highlighted in this comparison table. Naturally you are welcome to try out both and choose which one you prefer later on. Existing diary entries can also be imported into your travel blog if you decide to continue with the blog only.

This is a manual process whereby blog entries are featured by Travellerspoint administrators based on the quality of the writing, interest of the post or photography included.

Yes. You can either select one of our pre-designed, professional looking templates, or you can choose to customize your blog completely in your own look and feel by updating the style sheet through your blog control panel. Although not hard to do, if you don't know what CSS is, we recommend you read up on it first before attempting this. You can always switch back to one of the templates if your attempts at designing your own blog template are not successful - no entries will be lost in this process!

Please contact us with your suggestion and we'll consider it. If it's unique enough, and has to do with travelling, we will most likely add it!

Yes. Go to the 'Settings' area of your travel blog and set allowing blogentries by email to 'Yes'. An email address will appear that you can use to update your blog with, either via standard email or by mobile phone (MMS or email). Pictures in jpg format can also be sent along and will automatically appear in your blog post. More information on this process can be found here.

From your blogs control panel, click on the 'Manage' link of the blog you are trying to change. In your blog management area, click on the 'SETTINGS' tab. Change as required.

Please contact us with your username and the domainname (ie. the bold bit in this link 'http://domainname.travellerspoint.com') of the blog you deleted. We will then re-activate it for you.

In the blog editing window, click on "Map". Select the trip whose map you would like to include.

Go to your Control Panel and select "Upload Your Videos". We can only accept video files ending in .avi, .flv, .mpeg, .mpg, .mov, .wmv, .mp4.

You can insert a video into your blog entry in the same way that you would insert a photo or map. When writing the blog entry, select "Video" and select either one of your own uploaded videos, or stream a video from selected other video providers.

When you generate a PDF, a file will be created in PDF format and downloaded to your computer. You can view and print this file using a PDF reader which are freely available online.

When you generate in HTML format, the results will appear within your browser and you can print directly from your browser.

There are some advantages and disadvantages to both options. The main disadvantage of generating a PDF is that your maps and videos will not show within the entries. The HTML version will show maps and videos as normal and when printing from HTML these will be included in your printout. The main disadvantage of using the HTML version is that the layout can be somewhat different from browser to browser and this might cause a strange looking printout.

Besides the 'Blog Owner' there are three types of author that a blog can have. Depending on the type of author, their privileges will differ.

1. Writer - A writer can write new entries and edit their own entries as well as see how many comments or subscribers a blog has, but cannot edit the comments or see the subscribers details.
2. Editor - Like writer, but an editor can also edit all entries, whether written themselves or by others. Editors can also view the comments and edit or delete them but can not see subscribers details aside from the total number of subscribers.
3. Publisher - Nearly exactly the same privileges as the blog owner, except that a publisher can not delete the entire blog in one go.

On your My Blogs page, click on the Manage link for the blog that you wish to add more authors for. Select the Authors sub-tab (under the MANAGE tab) and click the 'Add a new Author' link.

Enter the username of the new author, which role they will have (each gives different privileges) and if you wish to allow them to post entries via email and click the "Add Author" button.

The user you have added will now be able to locate this blog on his My Blogs page.

Yes and No.

It is possible for photos and videos, if you have some basic details for them, but it is not possible with the maps. The photos and videos will however not show in the pop up windows you see when you click on either the Img or Video buttons when you are typing an entry as you did not upload these.

To add another users photo (or any photo on any other site), find the location of that photo and include in place of the XXX as follows: [img=XXX]. XXX will be a link like http://www.travellerspoint.com/photos/116989/Petersfield_Lake.jpg

To add another users video, find the unique id of that video and include it in place of the XXX: [video provider=fliqz videoid=XXX]. XXX will be a number although this is currently nearly impossible to locate so you would need to have it provided by whoever uploaded the video. Note that this is only the case for videos uploaded through Travellerspoint; you can add videos uploaded by anyone through Youtube, iFilm, Fliqz and Travelistic.

This means that we currently do not have all the navigational elements of the blogging system translated in your preferred language. Note; you can still blog in whatever language you choose! Unfortunately the parts of your blog that are part of the automatic settings (words like "search", "subscribe" etc.) will not be translated. If this is important to you, then please read this FAQ on how to add your language to the list.

Please contact us using the "Other questions and comments" option as your topic. Include the language that you wish to translate the blog system for and a current email address and we will get in touch with you quickly with a short page of terms that need to be translated. Upon receiving the translation we will do some small checks and upload it so that it is available to all users. Unfortunately we currently cannot pay for this translation, but we can increase your photo limits if you like.

This includes a selection of links at the bottom of each blog post that allow your readers to submit that entry to popular social networking sites like Digg, Reddit and Stumble Upon. This can help in getting more readers for your blog.

This allows you to display full XML feeds instead of just the snippets that show by default. This will also include photos and videos in your blog entries and is particularly useful if you want to automatically publish your blog to for example Facebook so that your friends can read your entries directly in your profile.

Yes, in your blog management area, go to the SETTINGS tab. Where it says "Show complete XML feeds", set the dropdown list to Yes and save these new settings. The next time your XML feed is updated, it will include the complete entries, including photos, maps and videos in your feed.

This option allows you to gain more insight into your blog's XML feed subscriber statistics. Using a service like Feedburner (there are others, but this is the most popular and it's FREE) you can track how many subscribers your blog has via it's XML feed. So not only can you track who is subscribed to your blog via email, but you can now also see how many subscribers you have including your XML feeds. For information on what to enter in this input box, see this FAQ or this detailed 'how to' blog post.

In the input box enter the complete URL (link) that you wish to redirect your XML feed to. This is typically a Feedburner feed formatted roughly like this: http://feeds.feedburner.com/myblognamehere but note that this link will not work until you have created an account with Feedburner and replaced this with the details they give you. More information on setting up your Travellerspoint blog with Feedburner, including detailed instructions on how to create a Feedburner account, can be found in this blog post. In principle any other feed aggregator should also work, but if you run into problems using a different system, please do not hesitate to contact us.

Yes, we offer all bloggers the option to include Google Analytics on their blog. Google Analytics provides really detailed stats tracking visitors, most popular pages, referrals and much more. Best of all, it's FREE - both to sign up with Google Analytics and to add this option to your Travellerspoint blog!

This allows you the option to add a much more comprehensive stats and tracking system to your blog than the default offered by Travellerspoint (which tracks page views and visitors but not referrals for example). You will have to sign up for a Google Analytics account (which is free) to get a tracking number to enter in this input box. More details on how to get a Google Analytics account and where to find the tracking number are included in this blog post.

Yes, to avoid your blog becoming an easy spam target, we require that people commenting are Travellerspoint members. Being a member of Travellerspoint is completely free.

First of all, add them as your friend by browsing to their profile page. When they update their diary they can choose to notify people who have them on their friends list, so if you are one of them, you will receive notification.

Public diaries can be viewed by everyone visiting your diary. You can protect your diary and make it private with an additional password (not the same one you use when logging in). This way, your diary entries can only be seen by visitors who you have given that password to.

To read a members diary, do a search for their name or username using the search field on the left hand side of each page (right under the 'Links' button). Click on the username to be redirected to a profile page including public diary entries. If the diary is a private one, the profile page includes the option to view private diary entries using a password the diary holder has created. Alternatively you can ask the person who is keeping the diary to send you the direct link to their diary, which they can easily retrieve through their 'Promote' area, amongst others.

After you have created a diary entry, your diary entries will show in your photograph upload form. Simply select the diary entry each photo belongs with and they will be included underneath the diary entry. You can also add photos you have already uploaded to diary entries by editing the information through your photo gallery.

Click on the link at the top of the page in your personal Diary overview area to set (or remove/change) your diary password. If you have forgotten your diary password, please contact us with your username and password for verification purposes and we will temporarily reset it for you.

Use the forum search function to search for postings by username. Alternatively, your most recent forum posts will show on your profile page or in the 'Forum Template' index page.

Something that you posted was in violation to the Travellerspoint forum rules. Please read the forum rules before posting to ensure this does not happen again.

Travellerspoint members chip in to help keep the forums clean of spam and advertising. Members that have reached a certain 'rank' can flag forum posts as spam to alert the moderators and administrators of each forum. The moderators and administrators then assess each post and edit/remove accordingly.

A moderator or site administrator has edited your entry and included a comment about why they have done this. See the forum rules for possible reasons.

Travellerspoint bases its ranking of members on their contribution to the site through forum posts, blog entries, referrals and photos (among others). Featured entries, albeit forums, photos or blogs, help boost rankings further. The more active you are as a member, the higher the ranking.

You can change your details on the site at any time by logging in and clicking on the 'Control Panel' link on the left hand side of the page. There are numerous details you can update in the Control panel, including your username and email address, your list of lost friends, your password, your diary and your travel log.

To ensure a maximum of privacy without compromising the site's functionality, some of your details are visible while others aren't. Your email address is never revealed on the site. When other members send you messages, you are notified via email, but the email address is not shown to them. Your date of birth is also never revealed, although your age is.
All other details that you submit are viewable by anyone on the internet. If you don't wish to be known by your real name, you can of course use an alias.

You also have the choice of protecting your diary entries from the general public. You can specify a password for your diary, which you can distribute to those you want to see your diary.

To disable email notification of new messages you receive from other members, open your message center when logged in. If you are currently being notified, you will see a link at the top of the page saying 'Don't notify me'. Once you have clicked that link you won't be notified any more and the link will change to 'Notify me', if you decide you want to be notified again.

Some users have reported problems logging in. While the reasons could range from a mistyped password to a code error, here are some other options that you can try.

• your username and password are case-sensitive so make sure you do not have caps lock on
• enable cookies. More information on enabling cookes can be found here
• make sure the clock on your computer is set correctly (if the time/date is wrong your login cookie may not be saved properly)
• adjust your browser's security settings in your browser's preferences area. If your settings are set too high, you will not be able to log in to our site. You will have to set the settings to medium high or lower to be able to log in
• add an "s" behind http to visit the secure version of Travellerspoint and try logging in from there

You can inactivate your account by clicking on the 'Inactivate my account' link on your profile editing page. This will delete all information you have uploaded or posted, excepting wiki travel guide content and forum posts as these are essential to the flow of the conversation on those pages. All personally identifiable information will be removed.

We have fairly strict rules about website promotions on the site. For example, promotional posts in the forum can be deleted without warning. To promote your site, you can add your website to your profile. Once you have posted regularly enough in the forums or had a photo featured, your link will show up. Alternatively, you could consider becoming a Travellerspoint sponsor or, if you have non-commercial site, we may be interested in a link swap.

Travellerspoint bases its ranking of members on their contribution to the site through forum posts, weblog entries and photos which have been featured through the site. The more active you are as a member, the higher the ranking.

You can use the search function on Travellerspoint to search for your own name and retrieve your username. The search box is located on the left hand side of every Travellerspoint page.

To change your profile, you need to go to your Control Panel. Once there, Profile is the first option.

Yes. All you have to do is go to your Message Center and click Notify Me (at the top of the screen).

There is no setting to stop your Travellerspoint profile from being crawled by search engines like Google. The only way to stop your name from showing up is by changing your profile details so you're not using your real name. Go to your Control Panel and click on My Profile to change those details.

You can reset your password to a new temporary one by filling in some details on this page. If this doesn't work, contact us.

Someone has flagged one of your messages as SPAM. It is currently being reviewed by one of the Administrators of the site and if it isn't SPAM your messaging account will be opened up again shortly.

Send your friends the direct links to your photo gallery, profile, diary or blog via email. If you are unsure of the direct links or would like to send the links through Travellerspoint, you can retrieve all of these through the 'Promote' link in your Control Panel.

Let your friends and family know about the site! We'll even help you keep an eye on how many members you have referred in the Referral section of your Control Panel and use those referrals to increase your member ranking. If you have a website, feel free to link through to Travellerspoint. We've created a few links you can use on this page.

Check out our linking requirements on our Link Additions page and follow the instructions there. This is for TRAVEL sites only and we generally do not exchange links with commercial sites.

Check out our Advertising on Travellerspoint page and follow the instructions there. This is for TRAVEL sites only and we do not offer any banner advertising options currently. We will not respond to queries regarding advertising that can't follow these simple guidelines.

Edit it. Everything in the travel guide is fully editable, so you can just log in and add your contribution. The only exception is on articles which have been locked or featured, which only certain members can edit.

This member has not yet uploaded a photo of themselves and tagged it as 'me'. They might not have gotten around to this, or they might prefer not to have a profile pic available. If you'd like to add a profile pic to your own profile, then follow these simple instructions.

To insert your travel map into a blog entry, simply click on the 'Map' button above the text entry box while you are typing your blog entry. From here, follow the instructions to insert a map in zoomed in fashion directly within the entry. Detailed instructions on inserting a zoomed in travel map can be found in the official Travellerspoint blog.

Go to your Control Panel and select "Update Your Trips". Once you have reached your map management page, select "edit" for the trip you wish to edit.

You can view members' maps through their profile pages. In the right column of the profile page is a section with a list of each member's trips, where you can view maps of each individual trip or, alternatively, a map of all their trips.

Go to your Control Panel and select "Update Your Trips". Once you have reached your map management page, select "Map my Photos". Select the photo you would like to attach. You can then click on the map where you would like to attach it; or you can click "edit manually" and specify the location where the photo was taken.

Go to your Control Panel and select "Update Your Trips". Once you have reached your map management page, select "Map my entries". To add an entry to your map, you need to edit the entry and specify the period of travel to which the blog refers (eg. Describes Travel from 2004-07-03 until 2004-07-15). Hit "Publish". This will add the blog entry to the corresponding leg of your trip.

In the blog editing window, click on "Map". Select the trip whose map you would like to include.

As much as possible, we have aimed to be as accurate as possible with our coordinates, but there may be cities and countries out there that we got wrong (or weren't able to find accurate coordinates for). If you find one like that, contact us, stating the exact city/country name. For the time being, it is possible to manually select the location on the map, by clicking "Select on map" and then choosing the city's location.

It is possible to manually select the location on the map, by clicking "Select on map" and then choosing the city's location.

As much as possible, we hope that all major cities are listed in our database. If you find one missing, let us know (info@travellerspoint.com) stating the exact city name. We will also periodically review all locations which have been manually selected by users and add these to the map.

In the map editing view, select the little box with a minus sign ( - ).

In the map editing view, select the little box with the plus sign ( + ).

In your profile page, select "All trips by (insert your name)". Alternatively, you can select "All trips & photos" in the drop-down menu above your map.

All members can upload their travel photos to their own photo gallery. We then manually decide which pictures are of a high enough standard to be featured in the featured photography gallery, which is used to randomly display pictures on various pages throughout the site.

Nothing. This site is not for profit and is made for travellers. If you aren't happy with your photos being uploaded on our site, don't submit them. If you submit your photos you do retain full copyright over them. We will not use the pictures for any other purposes than featuring on the site without your permission.

We grant more upload bandwidth to our users based on their membership status. Every member can upload at least 25MB a month. Full Members have a bandwidth allowance of 100MB and Respected Members and Travel Gurus have an allowance of 200MB per month. Travellerspoint bases its membership statuses on contribution to the site through forum posts, weblog entries and photos which have been featured. We also recommend that you resize your photos before uploading them. If you create a smaller version of your photos that is only 800px long at its longest side then this will both save you time while uploading and leave you with a lot more space to add more photos.

Tags are categories which you assign to the photo you are uploading. You can give a photo multiple tags. So, if you are uploading a photo which shows you in front of the Taj Mahal, you could tag it as 'buildings' and 'Taj_Mahal'. This means that your photo will be grouped with other photos tagged as 'buildings' or 'Taj_Mahal'.

Simply upload a photo (or any other png,gif or jpg) and tag it as 'me'. This will automatically include it in your member profile for others to see. You can add as many photos tagged as 'me' as you like and a random one will be selected every time the page is refreshed.

So go on, show the rest of the members who you are!

No, not without getting the explicit permission from the person that took the photo and holds the copyright to that photo. You can use the message center to contact the member with such a request.

Travellerspoint does not have any copyright over images uploaded by members and can not grant such permission.

Yes and No. Currently this function is only available to users who have a blog. Once you have a blog set up, follow these steps to post a photo to the site:

* In your blogmanagement area, select the SETTINGS tab.
* Set "Allow posting blogentries per email" to YES and click 'Update Settings'.
* An email address will appear that you can use to send photos to from either a mobile phone or via regular email. These photos will then appear in your blog, however be hidden from your photo gallery until you have updated certain details.

Details on how this works exactly are included in our Moblog Explanation.

Users can use the Report button to notify moderators that a comment should be inspected. Typical reasons to report comments would be that they contain nothing but advertising or spam, inflammatory or derogatory content. Please note that the owner of the photo which received the comment can also remove and hide comments, so if the comment was added some time ago and you are unsure whether to report it, the owner of the photo has probably already ok'd it.

The photography moderators are notified that a comment has been reported as inappropriate content and will make a decision on it. They will either delete it or mark it ok for public view.

Yes, if several of your comments have been flagged as inappropriate, commenting will temporarily be disabled for your account until moderators have made a decision on the comments. If they are considered fine, the ability to comment will be restored to your account. If not, your account will either be closed permanently or the ability to comment will be removed permanently.

Assuming it is not your internet connection, the most likely cause of a very slow upload is the size of the photo you are trying to upload (typically bigger than 1MB). Resize your photo to a smaller size and try uploading again. Not only will this be faster, it will also mean a lot less bandwidth so you can upload hundreds of photos more per month. To learn more about resizing photos, click here.

To resize your photos you can use free programs like Irfanview and Picasa which you can download. There is also paid software that allows you to resize photos, like Photoshop and Fireworks. If you do not have access to a photo editor, you can simply upload photos in their original size to Travellerspoint. The only downside is that it will take longer for the photo to upload and it will use more of your free monthly bandwidth.

All photos are resized during the uploading process so in principle there is no reason to resize. Your uploading will go a lot faster though if you have resized in advance and you will also use less of your monthly bandwidth this way. On the other hand, if you don't resize you always have access to an original version of your photo online which is a great way to backup photos (we use smaller copies that we make for displaying on the site). And sometimes you might just not have access to a photo editor so resizing is not an option.

No. The space your photos take in on our site has nothing to do with the monthly limits that are in place. So deleting photos from your gallery will not give you more space to upload photos. Instead, please contact us if you need some extra photo space.

Add as many details as possible. Particularly important are the firstname and surname. The Lost Friends list works, because it is regularly indexed by Google and other search engines. When people search for their name in a search engine, there is a good chance that they will see that someone is looking for them.

You should make sure that you have filled in your travellog, as this will help members searching by 'travelled country' to find you.

Of course. You don't think we make stuff that doesn't work do you? We know of lots of reunions through our system, even with friends people lost contact with more than 25 years ago and who live in different countries. Even one of the founders of Travellerspoint got back in contact with a grade school friend of 20 years earlier through the site!

That's great! We'd love to hear more details, so please contact us and let us know more about it!

You can choose to contact the Travel Helpers for the overall region you are travelling to as well. These Travel Helpers are available to answer questions about any country in that region. It is also a good idea to post your question in the forum, so that anyone browsing the site can answer.

The Travel Helpers are all volunteers and other members of the site, similar to yourself. Some Helpers may respond within a few hours, while others may take a week or two. If a Travel Helper doesn't respond to your question within a fortnight, please contact us and we'll contact them to make sure they still want to be a Travel Helper.

You can contact multiple Travel Helpers at once by posting your question in the forum. If you specify a country when posting your topic, this will send an email to all the Travel Helpers for that country letting them know someone needs help.

Travel Helpers are Travellerspoint members dedicated to helping others plan their trip by voluntarily offering information you would have a hard time finding in a guide book.

You will have to unsubscribe as a Travel Helper. To do so, you need to go to your Control Panel and select the Travel Helpers option. Tick the boxes for the countries you would like to unsubscribe to and hit the delete button.