1. Decide how far you want your local “pilgrims to travel”
   • Hosting an in-person event? Consider a walking-distance-only pilgrimage setup to keep your event’s attendees close by.
     • Set up your pilgrimage sites within 1/4 to 1/2 mile of your main event location.
     • Choose a landmark within a few hundred feet of your main event location as the first stop on the pilgrimage.
   • Hosting an event over several days, or letting people choose their own pilgrimage timing?
     • Walking distance pilgrimage sites will help guests get to know a small part of your local environment really well (e.g. a small downtown area).
     • Driving-distance pilgrimage sites can show off more of your local environment.
2. Match local buildings, parks, landmarks, etc., within your local-pilgrimage area to pilgrimages around the world.
   • Is there a landmark whose purpose matches a pilgrimage? (e.g. a hospital or medical clinic to match the Shrine of St. Martin)
   • Is there a landmark that looks like one of the pilgrimage sites? (e.g. a building that’s confusing to navigate to match the Monastery of the Caves)
   • Is there a journey to the local landmark that matches the landscape of the journey to the pilgrimage? (e.g. a wooded area to match Shikoku Henro)
   • Is there a natural feature that matches the landscape of the pilgrimage? (e.g. a hill or high point to match the Cahokia Mounds)
3. Get latitude and longitude for those places
   • https://support.google.com/maps/answer/18539?hl=en&co=GENIE.platform%3DDesktop
4. Write up clues and short descriptions for the pilgrimages that match
   • Edit the pilgrimages using your prepped clues
5. Delete the pilgrimages you don’t need or that don’t match with anything
   • Delete-md-file instructions link.

How-To

Read our site-hosting documentation here in full

Quick-start for people comfortable with Github and markdown

1. Create a Github username that aligns with the pilgrimage site you’d like people to visit (e.g. if you want your URL to be “mypilgrimage.github.io”, your username will be “mypilgrimage”)
2. Visit our template site at https://github.com/Virtual-Medieval-Pilgrimage/pilgrimage-template
3. Use the green “Use this template” button to “Create a repository” (a set of files that are related to each other)
4. Name the repository “[yourusername].github.io”
5. In the new repository, open up the “_config.yml” file and update the things that make sense (e.g. the name of the pilgrimage, your name instead of the existing author names). Leave everything else alone.
6. Go to the repository “Settings” menu and look for the “Pages” option on the left-hand side.
7. Choose “main” under the build-from option.
8. Visit ‘yourusername.github.io’ to see your pilgrimage in action.
9. Now, look in the _items folder. Open up each file and you’ll see latitude and longitude information. Customize these to your local sites.