Learn CSS and Website Authoring

I did a complete redesign customization for my blog. So, how do you like my blog now? My old and ugly default template is now transform and its look great now. I like this template. If you like this template for your Blogger blog, check it out:

Resource: Andreas04 Blogger Template


I spent less than two hours hand coding the templates with my details and adding some Google Adsense here. Okay, now I want to change my other blogs that I owned. I'll keep on updating my activities here.Come back soon enough. Cheers..

It's quite strange that I'm blogging about Wordpress blog on a Blogger blog. If you read carefully, wordpress initially is not about blog, it is a content management system (CMS) that simplifies the webpage or in a technical term, Dynamic Website. But what the heck, it's FREE so better make use of it to the max if you know how to.

I like reading manuals, some people don't. I don't like it either if I don't have the time for it. So, to save time, it is better to watch videos. It's like watching 'The Da Vinci Code' written by Dan Brown at the cinema instead in his thick novel. Here's the video: Installing Wordpress.


If you are looking for more details about the database connection. You can read My Wordpress Install Process. If there are any readers out there who wants to find a free webhost to install their own version of wordpress, do drop me a line. I'll give you a couple of links. Hope you'll enjoy the video.

Beside being on Blogger, I also use Wordpress as well as one of my blog network that I own now. Last week, I've built one blog using Wordpress for one of my e-commerce website, the site is completely brand new and I haven't promoted it anywhere yet. So, what happen was, I search on Technorati my nickname just to get a glimpse on where my exposure level is. To my surprise, the wordpress blog for the e-commerce website I've created has been listed on Technorati. I wonder why that happen and most definitely I would like to know the answer.

After reading this page, now I know the answer. There's this feature in a blog called 'ping'. Before this, I normally use 'ping' on an MS-DOS environment to check my website or other website which I couldn't access but that maybe too technical to explain. However, here's a screenshot of how the wordpress blogs or other type of blogs get listed in web listing we never realized existed:

The past few weeks, I've been working around a couple of websites and blogs. I loved Wordpress because of its functionality and freedom to modify it and paste in a couple of ads in there, the only problem is, only self host blog has the ability to be modified. To look professional, I have a paid webhosting which is hosted by some technology company in US. Of course I bought it from a local reseller because I paid the webhost reseller in my local currency (Ringgit Malaysia). My price? Well, about RM60 per year or around USD15 per year. That is not a lot of money, isn't it?

Recently, my paid US webhosting had a couple of downtime and I don't like that since I sometimes constantly online with the webhosting using my FileZilla FTP. So, I tried to find free webhosting which can host php along with a free MySQL database and a subdomain feature. At first I did found a couple of them, I register to a few of them actually. Most of them went down in a couple of days but I find that one of them is http://www.php0h.com is quite reliable in term of uptime plus they give you a huge 200MB space. The downside is, they put an Adsense banner ad on top of each page that you load.

At first, I don't really mind the ads because you have to give credit to your free webhosting owner since they provide the infrastructure for your website. You just build the pages and eat up the bandwitdh. My first attempt was to install wordpress on the free webhosting. The installation went fine and the speed wasn't too bad after all. However, after a while I find it rather annoying the ad keeps seeping in even in my small windows. It penetrates the windows to edit HTML and I couldn't save what I've done. It's a shame..You can read and see what I've built at Ash Web Creation Blog. Oh well, I'm abandoning this page for a new one.

I now found a new webhosting which I'm still testing out. I'll give you the link and review for you to read and probably sign up for one for your Learning CSS and Web Authoring journey.

P/S: I created Ash City | All About Ashrufzz page. Tell me what do you think about it? ;-p

I had a Google Video account for quite some time but haven't really utilizing it. I've just created, edited and uploaded 2 videos on it, one is a home video and the other one using one of my company's video presentation. Check it out:


and my own:

My recent project KL Bizz Tech Village had to be scrapped because the domain was sold. Anyway, the domain name is not mine so I didn't take it personally. I've been playing around with a couple of Content Management System (CMS) that is using PHP-MySQL platform. At the first attempt, I failed to understand how it works but sooner, it became comprehensible after spending some time learning the basics and trying out editing them myself.

The most easiest to manipulate around is Wordpress. Wordpress also provides free blogs same as what Blogger does. However, when I tried to change the design layout and add in some other hand coded stuff, there aren't any template editor like Blogger so basically the free wordpress blog is only for people who likes to blog without the webmastering skills of hand coding.

What I like is the self-host Wordpress where you download the entire package and host it yourself on your paid webhosting. If you don't have the money, you can do what I've been doing. Register for a free PHP hosting and host the wordpress blog there. I've been doing that using my WebTrafficVille blog. Of course there are downside of free hosting where they put a banner on top of your page but hey, the host needs some money to operate don't they? If you need a free PHP Hosting, I'm using an indian free webhost PHP0h.

If you use Dreamweaver as your HTML editor, you can read about "How to edit Wordpress theme using Dreamweaver". It describes what files need to be edited for your Wordpress theme. The best part about your own self host wordpress is, it utilizes CSS quite nicely. For affiliate marketer such as myself, I read about the advantages of Wordpress over Blogger and I find it's true there are elements that Blogger doesn't have that I want.

Nowadays I see there are people who are selling packages of predesigned wordpress and makes them as a functional website. I would love to build one of those, the only drawback I see is whenever the database hosting is down, the website is not accessible. The advantage however is the website loads much quicker since the files to download are smaller.

Here's some other interesting stuff that I've read:

• How Much Should a Design Cost (If you are interested to make web design a living)
• Daily Back Up for Wordpress using Gmail (Backing up is important if you build websites)
• Interview with Problogger (Darren is a full time blogger making a living out of blogging..I myself aspire to be one hehe..)
• Crazy Adsense Experiment (why didn't I think of this before?)
  

Okay..now it's back to work again. I need to sharpen my code reading and writing skills, I'll blog again soon enough.

Blogger was down for I don't know how long before I could post this. Blogger is getting unreliable these days. Reason to take control of your own blog. ;-)