MyBlogLog is gone!

Looks like Yahoo! pulled the plug on MyBlogLog.com on the 24/May/2011. Strangely I didn't receive the notice, but found out when my MyBlogLog RSS feed kept giving me error. I had some inkling and forewarnings some six months back when their new CEO announce major revamp to the Yahoo! web business shutting down services or selling them away. Several of their services that I was using like Geocities.com was closed and quite fortunately, Delicious.com was sold to another party.

Since I wasn't sure whether they were closing or selling Delicious I did try to back up all my bookmarks. Now that it was passed on to another company I can rest a little easy. Unfortunately the staff changeover has resulted in reorganization and the new Firefox 4 could not support their extension so I hoping that they will do soon before I'm completely comfy with Xmarks and say sayonara to Delicious for good!

As for MyBlogLog.com, I did have several of my website RSS feeds that went into it get chopped! And now I need to sort out my websites to remove their widget which is now no longer functioning.

Ah! The way dot com companies get shuffled around in the cyberworld you can never be sure who will be handling those services and thus your data and activities will change over time and you have to make adjustment for it. Just don't rely too much on each services I suppose and have contingency where possible (but sometimes it is hard to find an alternative)!

Using blogger layout

Using blogger layout system is a little bit more difficult but it has added features the old template style do not have.

I finally came around to switch my CH website blog to the new layout system and it took me the better part of a day to get the look and feel similar to the previous template.

I could try making it 99% similar looking it would take too much work. I guess an 80% similarity is good enough. The color theme still matches as per the nav menu. I opt for a wider right side bar after all quick blogs tend to be short so a narrow body might be better suited. Besides it is using a fluid width template so it doesn't matter if my right takes up more space.

The Blogger new layout is a little tougher to get working but I was able to do it much faster than before by using this go blog layout template and modify from here. Just a matter of changing colours and alignment adjustment and there you have it!

Wordpress Websites

Wordpress is one of the most popular software app. You can find many Wordpress websites just about anywhere. Even I myself am using Wordpress for my blogging and website creation. It is very versatile.

If you want to build a free website using Wordpress, you can get one at Wordpress.com and sign up for an account there. However using a free website in Wordpress.com may not be the best option. Ok, ok, I should be supporting Wordpress, after all they do provide free download of their software to be installed into your paid hosted website.

And for those who don't want to pay for anything and still like to use Wordpress as their blogging platform, they can build a free website by signing up with them.

But as your needs grow, you will find the free offering is not as versatile as say Google's Blogger/Blogspot in that you can't place any advertisement into your Wordpress blog account. However Wordpress do provide some premium offering to increase your requirement. It took me a while to finally find out the price. Wordpress did not display their premium pricing publicly and I only found out about the pricing after deciding to explore their free Wordpress blog by signing up.

The premium offering can be cost effective as you are just picking up what you want as your needs grow. However in the long run if you are adding up each premium offering, you may end up paying a lot more than just going straight into a paid hosting with a Wordpress installation.



All the offerings are on a per year basis. And if your needs is not a lot, perhaps you just need to add a domain and Custom CSS that comes to about $29.94 per year.

And that was just what my friend did. He got a domain from GoDaddy and pointed it to Wordpress.com and used the mapping functionality which cost $9.97 and bought the Custom CSS for $14.97 so that he could modify the them to include some Google Adsense in his Wordpress blog.

Unfortunately that was not to be. It didn't work. The Adsense wouldn't come out. Originally the free Wordpress.com will not allow you to paste any Adsense or any Javascript from any affiliate. And the addition of the Custom CSS still do not allow any Javascript to work either and I didn't see any offering in their upgrade that allow for adding any Adsense or other affiliate codes.

So he has just plunk in his money for nothing. Although there is a refund policy of 30 days, but I think he may have exceeded the days after trying it for some time.

So in the end, I advise him to get a paid web hosting. There are many cheap and good web hosting companies around to choose from. It is not always that you need a lot of bandwidth and storage space. So a simple and cheap web hosting account might be all that you need as you are starting out. You can always upgrade later if you need more space and bandwidth transfer.

There are always some pitfalls when trying to build a free website. But if your needs are simple, free is good. But if your website ambition is to blog to promote yourself and your work, it might be better to go for a paid hosting. The upgrade offering from Wordpress.com just didn't suit my friends requirement. And if you planning to go for free now, and then thought perhaps later you want to upgrade to expand your website functionality then you need to think carefully about what you want to do with your website.

If it will tie in with your work and business later. Then don't try to build a free website. Go straight to building one with a paid web hosting company.

And of course if you want to really succeed in building a website, try Sitesell Site Build It. They have the best tools for creating a successful website. And of course, it cost a mint, but it is worth every penny. Scrimping initially won't get you far in the long run. Better to jump headlong into it if you know the direction you are heading.

Wordpress vs Blogger

Which should you use? Wordpress vs Blogger. And when I say Wordpress as in self hosted Wordpress not the free hosted one at Wordpress.com. So maybe this comparison may not be so good, because Blogger/Blogspot is free hosted. So maybe the comparison should be self hosted blog vs free hosted blog.

Anyway, I am using both self hosted Wordpress and Google Blogger/Blogspot. Both has their pros and cons. Sometimes we don't want to rely 100% on the free offering because we may not be able to control what happens to the free hosted blog. However Google is a big and cash rich company so there is some assurance that Blogger/Blogspot will not have a major change in its structure anytime soon.

Wordpress as a free open source software has been improving over the years and it is getting better and better. With better user interface and ease of publishing as well as the many free template offering, one could easily set up on a web hosting company and start blogging or creating a website almost immediately.

However doing a self hosted blog like Wordpress do require some good maintenance. You must always make sure you have hardened it against malicious hackers. Just recently I receive some warning from my Wordpress security that some hacker from Ukraine tried to do SQL injection. They even attempted to guess what kind of plugin that I have and exploit those weaknesses found in those plugin that has not been properly programmed. And before that some Koren hacker also attempted to hack into my Wordpress installation.

I don't know why my Wordpress installation is now the target of malicious hacker nowadays. I never experience any on my other website Wordpress installation. Anyway one could never be careful. So If you are not the kind that like to update your installation and putting up various security to protect your installation, it might be best that you avoid installing Wordpress onto a self hosted web hosting company.

And the alternative? Build a free website using blogger/blogspot. Why didn't I suggest the free alternative at Wordpress.com? Well for one, you can't really customize the theme and if you want to place some banner ads like Google Adsense, you can't at all unless you sign up for their premium service. The idea here now is to build a free website blog.

And of course you want to plug in your domain name to personalize the website, you could only do so with Blogger but not at Wordpress.com

So when it comes to free hosted, Blogger is better than Wordpress. But for self hosted, there isn't any Blogger system around for you to install. So the best option is to use Wordpress but you must put in some effort to maintain it and secure it.

Good plugins for bbPress

After digging around online for awhile, I finally settle on a few plugins for bbPress than does a good job at weeding out web spammers. Sheesh, these people really cause a load of headache for any would be webmasters, fortunately there are many tools created by very smart programmers to weed out these bad people online.

I finally found some good plugins for my bbPress that could do just what I wanted:
1. Weed out bots from humans during the registration phase
2. Mass delete the existing spammers who now number about 5000!

The few plugins that I settled for are:
a. mass delete users
b. recaptcha for bbpress
c. human test

After giving a quick spin after installation it worked flawlessly! So one more up against those pesky web spammers.

If you plan for a lightweight software to build a forum website, bbPress is a very good recommendation with its Akismet spam busting ability and a little help from the plugins above, making it one of the best new free forum website application around!

To get bbPress goto http://bbpress.org

The plugins are in the "Extend" tab.

Cheers!
Jan.

Wordtracker is no longer free

Well I guess it has to lose its free wordtracker services. It was good while it was free although only giving the demand side of things. I guess eventually it found that being the only free keyword checking tool around, Wordtracker.com decided that it can make more money by closing its free services. Which is real sad. I still have my good old Site Build It brainstorming tool which is actually using the Wordtracker system. The figure that comes out is different but I'm used to it for analysis. If I have SBI why do I still use Wordtracker Free Keyword tool?

Well, there is a limit to the number of searches allowed in SBI, probably Wordtracker limits it. Sometimes I just want to find a few simple keywords and use Wordtracker in combination with SBI brainstorming tool without using up the points allocated by SBI. Sometimes you just need a mini brainstorm, not a full fledged research.

Well now no choice. Seems like freebies are slowly fading away one by one. I guess dot com companies need to survive and make more money and when they find there is good enough demand, they may just close the free service. On the other hand, like Yahoo, where they want to change direction they too closed some of their free services.

That's the problem when relying on free things. They don't last. Unless the companies that offer the freebies find a way to monetized their services, they will close down.

Anyway them the breaks.

So if you are into building a website seriously and don't want any surprises from those free offering, then a paid services is the way to go. Offering free information to the masses is one thing, but you want to recoup your time investment for some returns.

So far SBI has given me the best returns. So build website for free or paid? You decide. When the dot com decides to close down and take along your hard work with it, don't say I didn't warn ya!

For more information about building a great website that is lasting and profitable check out SBI building a website that works! It has a build in Wordtracker tool called Brainstormer. Instead of paying for just a keyword research tool from Wordtracker, why not get the whole works from SBI (keyword research + webhosting + many more tools) for less?

Simplepie

I have been using Simplepie for some time. It is great for streaming RSS feeds into your web page. A great way to stream information around when you build your own website.

So what is Simplepie? It is a PHP script that you can install in your web host and configure it to get RSS feeds not only from other website and also from within your website. It also a good way to re-feed the various website and blogs that you have and stream them into one easy to access web page too.

For example if you have Twitter, Flickr, Blogger and your very own website, it would be difficult for your visitor (including yourself for that matter) to keep track of what's happening, so why not provide a single page where all your feeds are channelled into it?

So here comes Simplepie to the rescue! Head on over to the Simplepie.Org website and download the latest PHP script.

I liked Simplepie in the sense that I don't have to set up a SQL database. It is also fairly easy to use, though it may be a little bit more complicated than Feedburner. Between using PHP script vs JavaScript, I would prefer going the way of PHP. The content is both visible to visitors and robot crawlers alike and that is a plus point because the search engine thrives on content.

Upload the simplepie.inc file into your Webserver plus the various files as per their specification.

Then it is time to hack your web page. The file needs to be saved with a .php extension and your server must be able to handle PHP files.

Before the main HTML codes add these php lines

require_once('http://www.example.com/folder/simplepie.inc');
require_once('http://www.example.com/folder/idn/idna_convert.class.php');
$feed = new SimplePie();

Then you need to tell it where to find the feed:

$feed->set_feed_url('http://exampleblog.com/atom.xml');

If you got several feeds, you have to use this line instead. Make sure you do not comma the last feed or you will get errors.

$feed->set_feed_url(array(
'http://www.example1.com/feed1',
'http://www.example2.com/feed2.xml',
'http://www.example3.com/rssfeed3'
));

Init the feed with this line and ready for next step.

$feed->init();

Somewhere in your main page add in the following PHP codes and you are good to go. Modify where necessary for the CSS to format the display.

<?php
foreach ($feed->get_items() as $item):
?>
<div class="item_simplepie">
<h3><a href="<?php echo $item->get_permalink(); ?>" ><?php echo $item->get_title(); ?></a></h3>
<p><?php echo $item->get_description(); ?></p>
<p><small>Posted on <?php echo $item->get_date('j F Y | g:i a'); ?></small></p>
</div>
<?php endforeach; ?>

Easy, yes? That's why it is called Simplepie!

Build a free web site pitfalls

Geocities - there goes another free web site service.

The problem when you build a free web site using free website services like Geocities, you are at their mercy. After all, you are using their services for free, so what's more could you ask for if they decided they no longer want to run the free service anymore.

And recently Yahoo has made a lot of changes to make themselves more competitive against their rivals namely Google and Microsoft. So whichever business unit is not profitable, they will discontinue it or change it in one way or another. Yahoo has been revamping many of their services and stop providing many of their services. My Yahoo Briefcase was discontinued, and changes to 360° Yahoo was also made. There were a few more other services as well, so hopefully Yahoo would be leaner and better to compete against their rival. Best of luck, Yahoo!

While for the rest of us who make use of their free services like Geocities to build a free website and 360° for blogging, now will have to consider the next option.

Build a free web site using those free services are like that, you never know what the company would want to do. It is up to them, after all they do need a source of revenue to upkeep and maintain their services. So don't cry foul when they decided to change their terms or close down their free website services.

Although I don't really make full use of Geocities free website, I had it for a very long time, and it was kind of sad to see it go. It was also where I start practicing how to code HTML. The usefulness when you build a free web site is the chance of learning some HTML/CSS programming without having to make any payment for a full web hosting services. However nowadays, the free website offerings now comes with a free web site builder which makes it easier to make websites but at the expense of not being able to get your hands dirty into coding.

Thankfully there are still some free website services that still have the ability for you to do your own coding and upload to their free website hosting.

In closing Geocities, Yahoo offered suggestions where you could still host your web site for free. They are:

• Tripod Lycos (www.tripod.lycos.com/)
  
• Webs.com
  
• Weebly.com
  
• Webstarts.com (I think this site is dead, can't see the website at all)
  
• SynthaSite (now Yola.com)
  
• Wikispaces.com
  

I could add a couple into the list:

• Bravenet.com
  
• Google sites (sites.google.com)
  

And of course using free website will have its caveats, but that is the price you have to pay for not paying for web hosting.

Why free website may not be a good idea if you are into building a website seriously.

• URL address is added on and not your own domain - bad impression if you are serious into getting a web presence for work
  
• You are at the mercy of web hosting company policy - they dictate the terms. If they want to close, they will close (eg Geocities), if they want to change URL, they will change (eg SynthaSite to Yola), it may be ad supported (eg Bravenet)
  
• Bandwidth transfer will be limited
  
• Storage space is less
  
• You lose all the inbound links when they make changes to their URL address (eg Geocities, Yola, etc) thereby losing your website traffic.
  

Good point about free website

• Well, it is free
  
• Good place to learn about website creation
  
• If they provide HTML file uploading, it is good place to learn about HTML/CSS
  

So with the closing of Geocities by 26 October 2009, I no longer can build a free web site with them, though fortunately it is not such a major impact for me. However, I do need to remove links from web site to my website at Geocities; otherwise I get broken links within my website which is not a good as it is frown upon by search engines.

Build a Free Web Site with Webs

Webs.com was formerly Freewebs.com. You can build a free web site here too! They have been around since 2001, longer than Yola but not as long as Bravenet. They use a free web site builder to make your own web site.


It's free, so I sign up just to have a look see. So here's my URL JanLeow.Webs.com. Because they use the provided free web site builder, I'm stuck with their choices of free web site templates available. There was a custom section, but I couldn't get it to work. Perhaps that would require more fiddling but for now I'm just stuck with what they have. You could still customize the template but I find it rather limited in how you might want to customize it.

They have made it easy to create your web site, but if you need more advance features, you would be better off going for a full normal web hosting services provider rather than build a free web site with Webs.com. I find their free web site builder a little clunky, clunkier than Yola's.

Free web sites builders has the advantage of being easy to use, but would not provide you with the flexibility of doing more advance customization and coding. Although they have a HTML code insertion so that you could still insert codes like JavaScript or do some HTML/CSS coding, but the HTML code insertion is not very smooth to use.

Anyway, it is free! So if you prefer something simple to make your own web site, then use Webs.com to a build a free web site.

Build a free web site with Yola

Build a free web site using Yola. So what is it? Well, free web site hosting is good for those who do not wish to pay out of the pocket. So I decided to sign up and see what's it all about, after all it is free!

This site is fairly new, so don't bank on it just yet. They still need to work out their monetizing model to support their freebie. It they can't find a way to generate income, they will fold soon after or at the very best take over by some other company with usage rule changes.

From the initial try out of their build a free web site system, it looks interesting. This is not your normal web hosting company. It works more like Google Sites. ie you can't upload your own HTML files. However the difference is that Yola provides unlimited storage (versus 100MB given by Google Sites) and unlimited bandwidth. AFAIK, there is no way you can use up that much storage space especially with the cost of storage coming down, many web hosting company are giving unlimited storage capacity.

Like Google sites, You build your free web site on Yola online using their sitebuilder tools. Good for those who don't want to sully themselves with HTML/CSS codes and still create a web site with a zing! However it takes some getting use to their system. You are given two choice of web site creation: a normal web site or blog web site, or you could even go for both!

Anyway it's free, so just go sign up and see what's it all about and see if this Yola.com build a free web site is suitable for you or not.

This is my site using Yola.com:

http://yola.JanLeow.com

(Yes, you can use your existing domain, create a subdomain and A Record it to Yola's DNS)

Cheers!