Happy 2nd Birthday, Pinaywifespeaks

Time passed by just like a breeze and I was browsing through my archives that I realized February 2008 was when I first started with this blog. And now its hard to believe that I have been at it for 2 years already. There where reasons why I didn’t blog earlier, but I’m glad I did.

This blog has been my virtual playground, a place to take out my frustrations, to rant and vent. How many times did I mess up with my WordPress installation – read posts here and here, that time when I forgot that I exceeded my bandwidth limitations, my paranoia about transferring web hosting, how many times the whole site went into frenzy just because I could not get enough of tweaking the themes?  It’ll be an understatement if I say I learned something from blogging. I should say, I learned a lot. I also discovered a lot of things about myself and blogging..

…That I have the aptitude for things technical and for tweaking this and that. For understanding what’s behind the blog – the themes, the plugins, the site structure etc.

…That yeah, though I’m not a great writer I can work on it and practice more, still some people somehow survive reading my entries

…That yahoo! I could actually earn from blogging! This blog supports itself. My initial outlay was for the domain registration only, while the monthly hosting bills are all taken care of out of the blog’s earnings. I know some blogging purists would say inserting paid links is something almost like a crime but hey! this is my blog, I’m sure people who visit understands that while I love to blog, write, share thoughts, I’m still a practical person, I don’t have bottomless pits of money to support the blog, so occasional paid links are fine and I do strive my best to be discrete and choosy about paid links.

…  I realized I could actually find lots of people who share the same views, who could somehow appreciate what I have to say. I love receiving emails and comments from readers. Some would email me when they are coming over to Cambodia, asking for travel advice, some would give me suggestions, some would critique a post.. This is for me, is one of the most gratifying things about blogging – connecting with people who reads the blog.

… that I could actually find friends through this blog. I found friends I could constantly correspond with through email, some blogging friends from all over, and here in Phnom Penh, I found a great set of Filipina friends (Zarah, Josiet, Che..)  all thanks to blogging.

Blogging has been a superb learning experience for me. Being able to earn from it is an added bonus and I love the extra income I get out of blogging. So what’s in store for this blog for the next year? More posts, just more.. Things I dunno yet, so do keep visiting, explore and experience blogging with Pinaywifespeaks.

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Blogging Chronicles: This site almost went pfft! again..

I’m hardly an expert in WordPress, in fact after a year of using it, I still have a lot to learn. One particular thing I love WordPress is the multitude of plugins available to add  this and that to you blog. Its one of the things that makes WordPress really a standout as a CMS, not just as a blogging platform. Plugin developers also extend great support, but if I can’t find any solution to my WordPress debacles, the codex and the forums is where I can easily turn to for answers.

Just like this weekend, I had my WordPress installation upgraded to the latest version 2.8. For reviews of WP version 2.8 you can find good reads here, here and here. Though the version doesn’t offer gigantic changes from the previous versions, I still decided to upgrade because the changes to the widget admin area I find particularly helpful.

The only problem was that, after upgrading to the latest version and viewing my blog, presto! all my sidebars were gone. All widgets in the admin area were still there, so I wondered what went wrong again. I changed my theme thrice, the same thing happened. That’s why this site was in maintenance mode for 24 hours. I’ve checked out the forums for what went wrong and hmm, it must be the plugins. But which one? Geez, I’m using almost 30 plugins and now I have to sift through all of them, deactivate, reactivate one by one. know there is a tool to check, but there was a time it failed me so I decided to do it one by one. It turned out the plugins I installed for the photo galleries were not up to the current version yet.

Thank God, everything is up and running now. And of course, I’ve given Pinaywifespeaks a new “attire” with a new theme – Atahualpa with custom rotating headers. I just love this WP theme it can be easily be customized with more than 200 elements you can tweak and you can completely modify the look of your blog withouh much HTML or CSS knowledge. I’m so enamored with this theme, I’ve even used it also on my latest blog about Asia asia – Pinkchopsticks.

So now everything is working well and good but I still need to find a photo gallery plugin that would suit what I have in mind (if you know of a nicely styled gallery plugin, drop me a note ^o^). I have a free ad spot banner page which I keep promising myself I would update real soon plus I already have some new free banner graphics up for grabs so I have to upate it soon enough. More work to do..

Guide to Moving from BLOGGER to WORDPRESS

I started blogging with Blogger. Why? It’s a free service, it can be easily navigated and customized by someone as non-techie as me. However, like most bloggers who have grown to be serious about blogging, I wanted to have more flexibility so I decided to switch to WordPress blogging.

WordPress blogs are more flexible and customizable, it is search engine friendly and it has a large support community as well as lots of add-ons like plugins and themes to make your blog better.

Don’t get me wrong, Blogger is a great free service but if you have your own domain, consider moving on to WordPress.At first I was hesitant to make the transfer because I thought installation and its management is complicated and I feared losing Pagerank, traffic as well as the permalink structure of my Blogger blog.

With the launch of WordPress 2.2 though, IMPORTING from other blogging platforms have been seamlessly integrated already with WordPress.I have successfully managed to transfer one of my previously Blogger hosted blog, CelebrityAdsOnline to WordPress and this a guide on how transferring from Blogger to WordPress.

1. Get your own domain and your host. Change your NameServers and use the one’s specified by your new host. Domain propagation would take a few hours.

2. Install WordPress. Most web hosts include WordPress in their control panels. Login to your Cpanel, select FANTASTICO, select WORDPRESS, click on new installation. Fill in the required data and voila! your new wordpress is installed. If your host doesn’t include WORDPRESS in their easy install menu, you have to manually install it. Don’t despair though, WordPress CODEX has a step-by-step guide for that.

3. Fix your PERMALINKS structure. LOGIN to your WORDPRESS (admin page is usually at www.yourdomain.com/wp-admin).

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Sporting a New Theme..

I had the itch again.. Not to scratch but to change my theme. You see, I have several things cooking for this blog and I wanted a theme with clean lines, 3 columns, preferrably with neutral colors, with tabs on top so I could have my pages prominently up there.

There are literally thousands of themes out there with new ones being lauched everyday that I found it so hard to choose. Would you believe it took me two days just to decide which one to load up? I finally chose the Statement theme by BlogOhBlog. I like the look of it, with posts highlighted and the clean, sleek lines.

This is the 3rd time this blog changed “clothes”. I love tweaking my themes and I usually end up messing things but I don’t mind coz I learn something along the way.. (Mostly to back up in case I really mess up lol!). The first theme I ever used was the Inbiz theme which stayed for more than six months, then last October I shifted to the Blue Grey theme, and now the Statement theme..

This made me reminisce how this blog used to look like…

So, how’d you find the new look?

Upgraded to WordPress 2.7 – Coltrane

To be honest, I’ve seen several wordpress upgrades this past few months that I thought this would just be an  ordinary “fix some bug” wordpress upgrade. So, I just clicked on my automatic upgrade link and I had to blink my eyes several times coz I thought I’ve messed it up again. I’ve actually lost this blog twice already when I was upgrading to WordPress 2.5.

I just heaved a sigh of relief when I saw that everything was fine, wordpress is just sporting a totally new look! Do I love it or not? I still have to get used to the new interface but I must admit I kinda miss the colors of the past versions but this new one looks more organized and items more streamlined. Almost all things can now be easily accessed, so just a few clicks will get me to where I want to be.

Toolbars that used to be on top of the screen are now grouped together on the left. Noticeable additions are the QuickPress section where you can easily draft or publish a post from your dashboard, comment threading as well as reply links on the dashboard, paging, one-click plugin installation, sticky posts and I like the Screen Options where you can manage what sections you want to appear on you dashboard.

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CelebrityAdsOnline, My New Site..

I’ve had this site for a couple of months already but it was in blogger platform. I didn’t really pay much attention to it and would seldom update it but then a lot of friends told me it had a lot of potential. I realized that too coz it really gets a lot of search engine traffic, at times I don’t even do much to promote it but it does get some traffic.

I decided to move the entire site to wordpress since I am more comfortable publishing using this platform plus I wanted to use Arthemia Magazine theme for the site and boy! it was a trial and error job for me. After a a day I finally got it on wordpress with nothing lost nor was there a need for me to re-write every post.

For a web design novice like me, it took sometime before I could figure out how to make the magazine theme work out but when I finally finished, it was all worth it!

Do check out the Celebrityadsonline. I’ll be featuring Asian celebrities, their profiles, photos, TV and print ads as well as wallpapers.

60 Standout Free WordPress Magazine Themes, Part 3

Here’s the last installment of my collection of 60 standout and free wordpress magazine themes. Want to see the first 40 themes? CLick here for Part 1 and Part 2.

42. Rebel

43. Small Magazine

44. Structure – theme by Justin Tadlock

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60 Standout Free WordPress Magazine Themes, Part 2

Here’s the second part of my 60 standout and free wordpress magazine themes.View Part 1 here.

21. Hamasaki – theme by Nurudin Jauhari

22. Indian Muslim – theme by Nurudin Jauhari

23. Jello Wala Mello

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