I've been working on:

• Discount Shopping - Xmas.apmart.com is a great place for you to buy Gifts, Lights, Trees, Ornaments, Cards, and Decorations for your Christmas
• Cheap Cars for Sale - Cheap Cars for Sale, Discount Cars, Car Auctions including new cars, used cars, broken cars, every type of cars by dealers and private owners
• Christmas Shop - great place for you to buy Gifts, Lights, Trees, Ornaments, Cards, and Decorations for your Christmas

Those are 3 new site and blog hybrids. I've been quiet sucessful in getting traffic to those. Compare to binh.name the apmart.com is getting me both traffic and some money.

I'm not here to brag about money making, but that's what happening around this time I'm absent from binh.name. So far I've gained enough to pay my hosting, the dozen of domain names, and my food expenses. Still, I haven't really withdraw any money from my account for spending, yet.

Shall talk more about it.

New Temporary Theme

First of all, it's a must mention that I have officially adapt this temporary professional theme. You can read some info about that here This Blog is Dressing Up. I already spotted out a few bugs since I applied the theme. Since then, I did fix some and still have some. So could you please, do me a favor and leave me some comment on what type of bug you see?

Changes to Pages

I added a few more functional pages:

1. Search - of course you want some outstanding search function. Yes, my blog is now powered by Google site search.
2. Contact - yes, now you can email me directly from my blog.
3. Sitemap - now you can browse all links my site's viewable content.

Changes to Categories

I admit this is so far one of the hardest job in modifying a blog. The difficulty level is only lower than coding a brand new theme. I will brag about this later on. For now is the update for the new category structure.

The changes include both category name and slug name. I also altered some category from singular noun into plural noun. I don't know if doing so is correct, so if you read till here, please give me some thoughts.

Changes to Permalinks

No, not yet. But I'm planning to change to the no-date based permalink structure. Which means there will be no http://www.binh.name/2008/03/05/this-blog-is-dressing-up/, instead there might be:

1. http://www.binh.name/this-blog-is-dressing-up/ .
2. http://www.binh.name/blog/this-blog-is-dressing-up/
3. http://www.binh.name/post/this-blog-is-dressing-up/
4. http://www.binh.name/posts/this-blog-is-dressing-up/

If it's you, which option would you choose for post? Put yourself as a reader (which u already are) and give me your honest opinons.

Category permalinks also is a hot topic. I want to know you prefer which of the following:

1. Longer hierarchy based (currently):
   http://www.binh.name/category/computing/
   http://www.binh.name/category/computing/windows/ OR
2. Shorter hierarchy based:
   http://www.binh.name/computing/
   http://www.binh.name/computing/windows/ OR
3. Shorter non-hierarchy
   http://www.binh.name/computing/
   http://www.binh.name/windows/

Counting YOUR criticism

Yes, this post is made primarily to ask your opinions. If you are reader, either new or subscribed, could you please point your fingers and tell me what's going wrong here? Of course nice words are also appreciated, but I prefer critics. I will be deeply in debt of your generosity.

I like about BONTB is its short posts. Seriously, I hate to read long blog posts and I still don't understand why I wrote those lengthy ones. Short blog posts make it easy to read and the topic is clearer compare to composite posts. It's also easier for commenting and skimming.

I also like BONTB for providing free blogging help. Yes, you can Ask Bontb! This is a free service similar to what I'm providing right here on my blog. You can ask me for blogging help, or any type of help here. The difference is that BONTB provided the service as a contact form (private email) and he manually publish what he think worth saying. While my service is provided using the existing comment form (public message).

The greatest thing about BONTB is that he is very open minded and honest person. I still remember the last time thanks to him I bought a few PR4 and 5 domain names. Well, I still haven't make those domain active yet and actually haven't made any bucks from them. But if you need a cheap but high-value domain name you may consider to Ask Bontb.

BONTB blog provide many type of useful information. As a matter of fact, it worth visiting so much that I subscribed to his blog on my Google Reader couple of weeks ago. His category list is rather long and I haven't got enough time to dig trough all of those.

Oh, I shouldn't forget to mentioned that BONTB blog dofollows comment author link (no nofollow attribute) so it's a great place to discuss and get rewarded with Link Popuarity and PageRank juice.

I hope this icebreaker blog post will open my fingers up for typing more great posts. Meanwhile, I still am waiting for the new blog design to come out, so Brian, hope you do a good work over there.

Lastly, please ignore this test paragraph for spam links. Own domain name is very good for making blog. Internet Explorer is not as good a browser as Mozilla Firefox.

It doesn't matter if you celebrate Chinese New Year or not, I wish you a year full of successes and happinesses. I wish that for everything you do, there will be joy attached with it. I also wish you spend sometimes off the web and enjoy your offline family and friends. But don't forget your online buddies. I use facebook to keep in touch with people so if you have one please poke me . You can also add me on other social network sites. You can find links to those profiles on my Community page. Should I put that in the About page instead?

I wanted to wait for the new theme from Brian but it seem like he is too busy with other commitments. He emailed me today saying it should be available about mid-March and I hope it will. Brian earlier also suggested me to keep on blogging and build up my content instead of a complete halt. So yes, this is another blog post to keep things running.

Another apology for my lack of multimedia (photos and video) on my blog. Even though I have been taking photos and videos everyday (some day up to over 1000 photos) but have not used them, yet. Perhaps the time taken to optimize them is more than I have so I'm too lazy to do that. Also I couldn't find a plugin that allow me to reduce the thumbnail file size. I hate using the current WP thumbnail system because they create thumbnails heavier than the actual image file I upload.

Earlier I wrote about China's Slow Disaster and I think those are over now because after the Chinese New Year Eve the snow should melt and things should get back to normal. I went to Guangzhou the other day and the station was clear. I could go by the metro trains without any problems. The article received many visits per day but I wonder why those people never post any comment on it.

For the record, 1st Feb (few days before the new year) till now, I have been to:

1. Zhangjiang, 4 days,
2. Qiao island, 1/2 day,
3. Guangzhou, 2 days,
4. Panyu, half day
5. The rest was in Zhuhai

Once again, have a happy holiday for Chinese New Year 2008. Hope the year of the Rat wont bring mice to your house but instead give you an awesome optical mouse.

1. This blog is being redesigned.
2. New sub domains or domains are coming up.
3. The URL structure is not finalized.

If you are kind-hearted, knowledgeable and give me suggestions, I will have rewards for you too. Don't worry, the minimum I could give you are some good keyword back links to your site from my PR3 blog. I'm not rich now so my pocket money is limited. I can make some nice award if what you give change my life.

1. This blog is being redesigned

Everyone who read my blog should know by now that this blog is under re-construction. The design work is totally delegated to Brain Purkiss from PlainBeta.com . For some reasons Brian has not responded to my email for a week already. Brian, if you are reading this I hope that's because you have commitment with college, not because you gave up on my hard requirements .

Brian gave me a sketch 9 days ago. I asked him if I could write a blog post and publish it. He said no. I respect his choice so until his Photoshop file is available I won't publish his progress. What I can say for now is that I like what it look in the sketch.

I hope Brian can code that before this end of month otherwise I will be in big trouble. I don't want to promote my blog only to see people visit it once and run away because it's ugly.

2. New sub domains or domains are coming up

Yes, I might have to buy new domains for each blog. I have a few passions and I want to make separate blog for each. Here I discuss about them.

1. Photos
2. Blogging
3. Web development
4. Computers
5. My life

2.1 Photos

I have too many photos waiting for upload. I have like over 10,000 photos for 2007 and few hundred for the past. I may keep it at photos.binh.name. However I might buy a new domain for that because that's a huge amount of photos and I need proper gallery software. Who would be kind enough to suggest me a perfect photo host and a perfect photo CMS?

Can anyone tell me their favorite photo hosting site? Flickr.com is out of my reach because apparently my ISP blocks it.

2.2 Blogging

I realized that not everyone is a pro blogger. And I realize not a single blog provide everything from A-Z to blogging. And I'm willing to take the challenge to make a blogging site/blog that help people from A-Z. If you want to contribute to my site than I will buy a new domain just for that. Otherwise I keep it at blogging.binh.name . the topics will range from high-technical approach for developers to money making.

2.3 Web development

Another word is Web Design but that's totally incorrect. I'm not a web designer, because that only involve in graphic and layout. I'm a developer from code to layout so I will talk about bottom to top. Especially I'm a SEO oriented developer so my service should be of somewhat unique.

I stumbled a lot of web design company who only provide you with beautiful website but absolutely no visitors at all. I admit I hate that and I would call them b..stards. For instant, I recently visit this of a new Facebook friend's work website Bella Sewing. The design company who did the site surely is some newbie who tried to make big some of money. Web design job for local companies always pay high. Look at that site and I wanted to vomit. He made at least 4 SEO mistakes that I will need to talk about in a separate post.

Brian suggested me to use web.binh.name for this blog and I think that might work. What is your own opinion on this?

While I will write a lot about stuffs like Webpage layout, website structure, ad placement, etc., etc. I might focus more on web programming aspect. I will keep it for broader adience by making use of least technical terms possible.

Does anyone suggest me to write those type of article in another web development site instead? Which is already well established and have many developers as audience and contributers? Like the codeproject.com?

2.5 Computers

I think so far only my Australian friends and my ex-bosses know and accept the fact that I'm a computer expert. I use the term expert and got a few very critism from fellows on Google AdSense Group. Which lead me to think ... what the heck, if I'm not an expert than are you? No, I'm not claiming I'm a better at computers than those guys.

Enough chatter about this topic. I want to emphasize it here because during the period of 7 years studying IT in Australia I was working part time as computer service technician. The term if you don't understand than let me explain, I repaired computers. People who suffer from hard-disk breakdown, graphic card not working, virus, too-slow, dead computer, software error, etc. etc. I have dealt with thousands of those cases. Sometimes I get things done in just 5 minutes, sometimes it take a day and cause me big headache.

Working as a technician was very fun experience and perhaps one of the most useful experience any IT student could get. I can tweak my computer at ease. I use the most useful software. I'm expert in detecting virus without any software.

Of course I won't write about what I did in the past. Instead I will confine them into useful articles and public on my website. My experience can't be described in this one blog post and if you seriously want to learn those real work experiences, you should subscribe to my computers feed as soon as it is out. For now here are some sample: computers tips.

Do you think computers.binh.name or computing.binh.name are good addresses? Should I choose a shorter address. I think I might make a separate domain for this purpose too? What do you recommend?

2.5 My life

Last but not least, I need to write about my personal life, too. I found out I'm very eager in writing about my love life, my travel, my everything so that I can make new friends online and keep my old friends and family members updated.

Who on Facebook would want to read my blog if the first time he visits he sees I'm talking about how to measure webpage's size? Wouldn't they be more interested in knowing what I did since I was a kid to find out our comment interest? Wouldn't they want to see my nice photos, cute dogs, scary snakes, big bears and sometimes my secrets?

What do you think? If what I think is true I definitely need to keep this www.binh.name my personal blog because that's what the domain says. Brian suggest me to put life.binh.name as the subdomain. What do you think about this? If that's the case I thinks diary.binh.name or memories.binh.name might work but they seem to bee too long to type. Of course I'm not going to buy a new domain for my personal blog, that's out of question.

3. The URL structure is not finalized

Uh! I'm feeling ashamed of myself for talking about this URL decision again.

Many bloggers have stripped of the yyyy/mm/dd prefix format for their posts. That works very well because the post look unrelated to time and shorter. I didn't use that because I thought my posts will be blog post and time dependent.

For my personal blog I might keep that date. But for my other 4 professional blogs I think I will strip that out. On the professional blogs I want to write articles not posts. Then that consideration make me think, why not make websites instead of blogs then?

In a comment on Why you should be using a framework, I said WordPress is giving me hard time and I'm considering getting rid of it. The current Category structure makes me feel too limited. I want to write some nice words to describe my categories, not just "Archive for "whatever' category". There are many more issues and I will write another post in relation to this later on.

What's next?

If you are new here, than I guess here is what you should read to learn about my Major Blog Building Considerations. That should give you some extra info about why I am writing this post.

I know this post is rather long. If you read it till this point please also give me some opinions. I will really appreciate your help because this stage is like the bridge to my new level of blogging.

Also... I didn't have enough time to fix my grammer and spelling. If you spot out any mistake please inform me with a comment and I will fix it. Thanks.

1. Manually check the size;
2. Using calculation tools; and
3. The negative effect on visitors

1. Manually check the size

Here is how you can manually check the weight of webpage:

1. Press Ctrl+S for short. Or on Firefox click File > Save Page As..., on Internet Explorer click File > Save As...

2. On the Save As dialog, select the folder where you want to save the page to, and remember it.

Make sure in the Save As Type, you check the Web Page, complete option so that all images, scripts, css files, everything is downloaded. Internet Explorer makes things much easier by giving the option to save as type: Web Archive, single file (*.mht).

3. Open the folder where you save the files, select the file and folder downloaded from step 2.

4. Right click to activate context menu, then click Properties.

5. Read the file size from the dialog box, it should look similar to this:

2. Using calculation tools

OK, you just learned how to check the file size manually. Now come the question, why do such time consuming work by yourself? Well, the answer is more accurate in size. But what about the analysis? Here is a tool that allow you to analyse your web page and estimate the load time.

The tool is Web Page Speed Report. Give it a try and applause the maker for giving away such wonderful tool for free. My warning is that this report doesn't include IFRAME pages from Google Ads and the images loaded by external javascript.

Here is the ... very disappointing fact about my home page, which acording to the tool the size is only 160595 bytes but the speed result are:

3. The negative effect on visitors

I thought about writing the effect of page weight on the visitor waiting time, but I found this perfect article about it. I don't think it's wise to re-invent the wheel so I would like to use that article as a reference. You can start reading Page Weight Tested to get some insight about page weight and its importance.

The page load time will sure depend on the server processing time, too. It depends on how many and what type of plugins you use as well. That's another story to tell. Here is what you need to know before you make a mistake with your over weight pages:

As you can see, I'm not very happy with my blog homepage weight because it's over 200KB. According to the research found on Page Weight Tested that's over 26s load time on a dial-up browser and that's driving 95% of dialup visitors away from my homepage.

Fortunately with the minimal design and minimal sidebar usage my homepage is still smaller than the vast of other blogs. With the weight in mind I made my blog post less than 100KB.

What's next?

Do you still remember my opinion about Major Issues With common Blog Layout? If you haven't read that post then it's a good time to do so now. This post is one of the the first series of 10 upcoming posts. I will try my best to complete all those in the list shortly after the new design is out.

Now you know how to check the Web page weight, it's time for you to take actions. If you are here, I would love to see you leave a comment to say about your own test results?

Update 19/01/2007: The blogosphere seems to be interesting. I found a few posts related to web page size today:

• Does your page load size suck? Mine does
• The Neverending Saga of Bad Webpage Decisions… Ad Placement and Impressions

So far I've been holding back writing and promoting my blog and asked myself Should I Migrate to WordPress MU?. Since then I made the decision to Migrate to WordPress MU and then finally Successfully Migrated to WordPress MU.

I've been showing this Christmas Days theme since 21 Nov 2007 and believe me I really got itchy when looking at it now. Perhaps it is a good choice for a start up blog for a simple look and feel while giving people a clue that Christmas is coming. However, theme become obsolete now. The themes from 7 Free Christmas WordPress Themes 2007 are much better than this.

The New Design

New Year is coming! I need some theme that can meet some very strict requirements. Before continue reading, please open Copy Blogger and Daily Blog Tips in new windows so that you can understand what I mean without having a headache. I want to make my blog look similar to those.

Header

Header should include

1. the logo/site name,
2. site slogan,
3. search box (wordpress or Google)
4. RSS feeds (nofollow links)
5. A horizontal menu that show pages by slug, not full title.
6. Sub-pages should go in drop down, or not shown at all.
7. And other must-have features that the designer thinks fit.

The header should have at least the following characteristics:

1. be lower to save space and possibly allow some 728 banner ad under it. Perhaps 100px height?
2. uniquely identify my blog from others.
3. encourage people to subscribe to my feeds.

The Body/Main content

The body should contain:

1. The Page title
2. Whatever content a blog should have

The body should have the following attributes

1. be at least 468px to fit that size of banner ad and photos.
2. preferably 480px or 500px.
3. Blockqoute should be blockquote.
4. Minimal modification to default styles.

The Side Bars:

1. One sidebar on the left to display most relevant stuff like pages and categories.
2. Two side bars on the right to display relevant links or advertisements. Possibly 150px wide to display 150x150 buttons.
3. A side bar below those 2 sidebars, which is as wide as both of them, to display longer links.
4. Should look professional while saving as much space as possible.

Widgets

Who dare to take a big challenge with widgets? If I will definitely break my way out to design some extra widget place holders such as:

1. the sidebars,
2. the whole pane right below the header,
3. above the post title, OR below it but above the fold
4. below the post content, but before the comments
5. below the comments, before the footer
6. the footer, so that I can change footer

Why? I hate modifying the themes to insert additional content. Do you? Drupal, DotNetNuke and most other Content Management System (CMS) have those, why the most famous one WordPress don't? Too much limitation cause lots of suffering for bloggers.

Every day I waste time on searching for plugins to do very simple job for my blog, still couldn't get satisfied. Then, I need to modify the themes. Then, I need to modify the plugins. They say WordPress require little tech knowledge, my use of it prove the opposite.

Additionally if possible, the theme should have options in the WordPress back-end Options page.

SEO Features

I'm not yet an expert in SEO, yet. However I do have some basic requirements to meet elementary level of SEO:

1. The site name must not be H1 for any pages other than home page.
2. Every page must have a H1 title, including archives, tags, pages, posts, categories, search etc.
3. All styles should be in external CSS file.
4. The lighter the better, so no unnecessary class attributes, use the ID attribute and nested HTML default classes to format elements instead. Example: Don't define a class "PostContent" when in fact the Content is under <div id="content"> already.
5. The main content goes first, then the side bars. No excuses for putting right sidebar in front of the main content.
6. JavaScript for menu? Good idea, but the menu must be written in HTML and dynamic by JavaScript, not use document.write.
7. Ajax? yes another good idea, but please make sure only for sidebars.

The Styles

Technically knowledgable about CSS in advanced level, I would like to have to following styles:

1. The less classes, the better
2. Use ID and HTML element ID thoroughly
3. Smartly format image and objects depend on alignment (barely seen).
4. The less images the better, but must have enough to make the site look neat and nice.
5. The images need to be optimized over 10KB is not a good file size. Consider the dial-up users and the 10s effect.

Am I too tough? The list above is only half of my requirements. If you think you are good enough, go ahead and take the credit. If you up for the challenge?

Free Custom Blog Design

Thanks to Quan Quach from BlinkDagger for writing Win a Free Custom WordPress Design! I come to realise that Brian Purkiss from plainBETA Design and Blogging is giving out a Free Custom WordPress Theme

Do I meet the requirements?

Contest Requirements

1. Must be a WordPress powered blog: OK
2. The desired layout must be a minimalist, web 2.0, like design: OK
3. The blog must be something that I like: OK, but does that mean your friend is reserved?
4. No logo design can be involved: OK, but does that mean you can't do graphic?
5. ‘Designed by’ link must remain in the footer: OK, if it is good then credit is reserved. After all that's the contest all about.
6. The blog already needs to be in existence: OK, you are reading it.

How to Enter

1: Write a post on your blog linking to this post ’selling’ your blog to me: Done

-Why should I pick your blog?

Answer:

1.1 Would you like to design some blog that set its goal to 10,000 subscribers? I'm thinking of expanding my blog to pagerank 6+. Wouldn't you like to get a link back from so high PR site? Then my blog is for you.

1.2 Would you like to design a blog of a fellow web developer and take some nice credit from doing so? Then this blog is for you.

1.3 Would you like to give a hand to someone who help other bloggers and web master live on his blog? Then this blog is foryou.

1.4 Would you like to take some high-requirements challenge and get well-known, instead of designing some simple blog just to throw your business card? Then this blog is for you.

1.5 Would you like to be recognized as a top WordPress designer and get known by the WordPress community? Then this blog is for you.

-What do you want the design to look like?

Answer:

As mentioned above. But I'd love to hear your expert advices if they work better.

-Remember, I have to like your blog in order to pick it. So what’s so special about it?

Answer:

At this stage it is not so special. I only help other bloggers to become better bloggers. I love to help others. So if you help me you are giving a hand to other bloggers, too.

I'm sure my requirements are higher than other bloggers, so will you take the challenge?

2: Contact me with a link to your entry.

Answer: OK, I will contact you after this.

What's Next

If Brian decide not to design my blog, I will end up spending some time choosing some free theme and customize it for my own use. Of course I will make it meet the requirements I set above. If I do, I will distribute it. If Brian does, I might ask him to let me distribute, too. So stay tune for the result.

Update 28/12/2007: I realize some requirements maybe too high for a standard designer, so I don't expect to find or get those immediately.

Meanwhile, Happy New Year and Holidays to anyone who have. If you don't celebrate New Year in your country, why not celebrate it online?

I wish everyone:

• enjoyable moments,
• happy endings,
• great holidays,
• easy jobs,
• lovely friends,
• kind relatives,
• more money,
• stronger.

Some beautiful new year wishes:

Hours of happy times with friends and family
Abundant time for relaxation
Prosperity
Plenty of love when you need it the most
Youthful excitement at lifes simple pleasures

Nights of restful slumber (you know - dont' worry be happy)
Everything you need
Wishing you love and light

Years and years of good health
Enjoyment and mirth
Angels to watch over you
Rembrances of a happy years!

Source: New year wishes from www.rosebriar.uk.com

If you are not Christian and do not celebrate Christmas and New Year, I wish you a happy holiday for whatever reason you are having. If you have some spare time, please kindly leave a comment here to let me and other readers know about what you celebrate.For myself, I did go out not really for Christmas, but on Christmas days. Those are not the happiest moments, but memorable.

Happy New Year music video

While you are here, why not watch ABBA sing the famous "Happy New Year" song?

My Wish List for 2008:

Even though the DailyBlogTips.com's Group Writing Project: 2008 Blogging Goals is over, I still will set my goals for 2008 so that everyone know. My goal by the end of 2008 is to be as popular as Johnchow and make as much money as ShoeMoney. For this particular dot name blog I want to set the goals to:

• daily unique visitors: 2,000+
• daily page views: 10,000+
• RSS subscribers: 10,000+
• number of weekly posts: 14+
• average number of comments received per post: 100+
• Alexa or Compete rank: 5,000-
• Technorati rank: don't know about Technorati
• Google Pagerank: 7+
• monthly revenues: US $10,000+
• backlinks: 10,000+
• search engine ranking positions: top 10
• popularity on social bookmarking sites: Stories featured on Digg, Mixx, StumbleUpon, Mashable and other major socia-media sites.
• popularity on online communities:
  2,000+ communities member on MyBlogLog,
  1,000+ reviews on BlogCatalog
  90+/100 rating on BlogCatalog

Sound impossible? I don't think so. It's only impossible if I drop on the way. Am I too arrogant? Maybe, but what's the matter with that, persistent is the key to success. Setting too high goal can either make me the A-list blogger, or drop me down to non-blogger. Anyway, I'm happy with the goals and might adjust it accordingly.

What's next?

My apologize I didn't complete the 10 Upcoming Posts - Set 1.

I still have too many more unwritten posts, such as:

1. How WP Super Cache Plugin Runied My Blog.
2. How .htaccess Ruin WordPress Login page.
3. How to Reset PHP Server From CPanel
4. How WordPress 302 Redirect Lower your SERP Score
5. How to loose valuable comments because of Popularity Contest.

and many many many more quality content posts to come.

I will also have to resolve the problems with photo hosting. I might open up a travel blog after that decision is made.

Once again, Merry Christmas and Happy New Year.

1. I found out that the migration process is not that easy. The links will break even though I was using ugly permalink.
2. The longer I wait, the more posts I will have, hence the more trouble when migrating.
3. I'm holding back on writing personal thoughts, which lead to lack of communication with family and friends.
4. I'm holding back on writing professional posts, because I'm still not satisfied with the current structure. This lead to stopping my blog from growing.
5. I'm spending more time on worrying, and holding back on building links, which limit my blog from being known.

After I migrate, either I use 1 blog for all purpose, or using subdomains for separate blogs, it will be beneficial because even if I don't like it. I don't need to migrate again.

A Personal Blog

Why I'm considering a making a personal blog, even though it is not a money making tool? It's because I need friends. Professional blog is getting nowhere in term of friendships. Friendship grows from personal feelings, not just mere advertisement purpose. You can read for yourself here:

Making Real Friends Through Blogging?

Why WordPress MU?

It's capable of having a all-in-one database that have:

• A single user store
• Separate blog stores

So I can just log in by one account and can then create and manage as manage blogs as I like, hosted right on my subdomains.

However, not everyone can use WordPress MU, because it require much more technical knowledge compare to other hosting packages. The settings are tricky too, you may get critically hurt if you don't configure it properly.

What's next?

Please be patient and wait for the new arrival of brand new blogs hosted on binh.name. I will be creating a FREE blog hosting service too. How many people out there doesn't know anything about PHP and MySQL? I will do the dirty work for you to monetize via blogging.

The process will start from tomorrow. So for contact please email me shout [at] binh [dot] name.

Thank you all for your readership and friendships. If anything goes wrong I may loose all my database and then have to rewrite everything from beginning. I hope I will have support from you guys to continue my blogging journey.

• Problems
• Analysis
• Answers
• Recommendations

Problems

Here is the quote of what Nealey wrote:

Hi Binh,

First I want to thank you for all your help.

I tried to create a blog for my used cars site but found it difficult. I want the blog to have the structure of a web site. Can you have a homepage , and then a link list to the other sections of the blog? I don't like the way posts work. Can you have pages in a blog? If so how? I havn't done any research on these questions myself yet. I think the help centers are useless. I'm going to try looking for answers, but any help is appreciated.

Thanks,

Nealey

(Source: http://www.binh.name/?page_id=85#comment-158)

Analysis

I was about to ask Nealey to provide more information so I can provide more accurate help. In this particular case the required details are:

1. The blog URL, to see how it is currently organised.
2. Type of blog platform, to see how it can be organised.

After checking her comment I found out the URL to her blog and hence found out the required information as follow:

1. Blog URL: http://usedcarsunder1000dollars.blogspot.com/
2. Blogging platform: Blogger

Current look:

Since this article is focused on website structure, I will not talk about the AdSense placement on the blog. And because this is hosted by blogspot.com, I will talk in the context of Blogger blog.

Answers

Question: Can you have a homepage, and then a link list to the other sections of the blog?

Answer: Yes, you can make a homepage and sections like a normal website would have.

Blogger still help you structure your blog "like" a website, even though it is under-featured compare to WordPress and other blogging platforms.

In fact, blog is just a sub-type of website that has automatic date-based listing of posts. For that reason blog is much easier to manage. Anyone can write blogs, but not everyone can make websites. That's the beautiful of it and that's why it's taking over ordinary websites.

How to create a custom homepage on Blogger.com Blog

Blogger is not that straight-forward when it comes to create a custom homepage. This is not a typical and easily known process. It could be called a "trick to create custom homepage on Blogger.com".

To create this homepage, you need to create a special post following these steps:

1. Create a post and write it as it is a homepage. It will be used to replace the homepage.
2. Set the post date to a long distance future date. This will make it always stick on top of other posts on the homepage.
3. Do you notice in Blogger dashboard you have a link called Settings? Click on it.
4. In the Settings page click on the Formatting link. You can locate the Settings tab right below the header in between Posting and Template tabs.
5. In the Formatting page, locate the first setting box, you should see something like this: "Show [7] [posts] on the main page". Change that number [7] to[1].

Sum up, If you follow the process and complete the trick, you created a sticky post and display only that post on the homepage. In other words, you created a custom homepage for your blog. Congratulation!

How to link to other sections of the blog

OK, this is straight-forward and require very little technical knowledge. However, it require a little more of deep thinking in English and trials. I myself got confused at first, too. Sometimes the big boys forget the Keep It Simple Stupid principle and they unknowingly cause difficulties for users.

The answer is: using Labels. Why? Label in fact is a word used by Blogger.com to refer to Categories, or Sections. Category is a standard word in the web development world to referring to group of inter-related web pages.

Firstly, in order to have a website structure you need to create categories. How? When you create a new post, try your best to create/select a proper label for it. A proper label should be 1 to 3 commonly used words. Each label suppose to be grouping many posts together. If you create 1 unique label for each post, you failed.

If your blog haven't already display the categories, follow the following steps:

1. Open the Template tab.
2. On the Template page, locate the Add a Page Element link where you want to place the links to your labels (categories).
3. On a pop up window called "Choose New Page Element", locate the Labels element then click ADD TO BLOG.
4. On the "Configure Labels" page you can change the settings for your liking. I recommend changing Title from "Labels" to "Categories" for common understanding.
5. When you are satisfied with the settings, click SAVE CHANGES button to finalize the process.

Congratulation, now you know how to properly create categories for your blog-based website.

Question: I don't like the way posts work. Can you have pages in a blog?

This question is asked before I explained how to create a website structure on blogger.com blog. Now, is it still a valid question? If not, please read more.

Unfortunately you can't create pages on blogger.com. The blogging platforms like Drupal, WordPress, Joomla and many more do let you create pages though.

Recommendations

If you still not satisfied with how blogger.com work, please consider migrate to WordPress.com. If you go for WordPress.com you have 2 options:

1. Get it for free, but can't monetize.
2. Upgrade to premium account and pay so that you can display ads.

I'm using WordPress self-hosted package and it has much more powerful than blogger system. You can also consider to self host your own blog-based website using WordPress. This option give you a lot of flexibility. However it require you to have at least some technical knowledge in order to install and configure it.

Other than those, I'm having my own project in mind that can benefit you. I intend to to help non-technical knowledge people to set up their online business. I may give free help and supports too.

10 must-read articles

1. Getting Started with StumbleUpon by StumbleUpon

You can learn how to stumble from this article . This perhaps is the simplest and most essential guide to StumbleUpon you can find on the Internet. If you haven't read it (like me) you should start now.

2. 5 essential StumbleUpon power points by Blah Blah Tech

This article tell about 5 important characteristics of StumbleUpon. Included are:

• Community
• Reviews
• Trust and Reputation
• Votes
• Spam

I pay particular attention in the "Spammers beware!" section because that is the first thing blogger should learn.

3. 17 POWER Tips For StumbleUpon Beginners by Niche2

Whatever that 17 tips are, I found it really helpful and I will definitely comeback to read it. The post also include links to dozens of other articles which are helpful.

4. How to Become a Top StumbleUpon User (or Why You Really Shouldn’t Bother) by DoshDosh

I must agree with DoshDosh in that StumbleUpon should not be abused as a traffic generation tool. Especially appreciate him for pointing out that "the law of diminishing returns" apply here.

5. Top Ten Blog Posts that Guarantee Stumbles by DWWebSolutions

What type of blog posts to write for stumblers? You can learn it from this article. This is something a bit humorous, but it does provide serious help in getting a picture of what to write.

6. A Guide to StumbleUpon: Understanding and Beating The System by Lost Arts Of Blogging

As the name describe, in this article you will find:

• Getting Started with Stumble
• That sounds all great and all, but what can Stumble do for me and my blog ?
• Well, how much traffic are we talking about?
• Leveraging the Stumbleupon traffic

7.The Ultimate Guide To Leveraging StumbleUpon by Daily Moolah

You can learn how to leverage StumbleUpon from this article. Here are the topics covered by the article:

• Black Hat Strategies
• Power Stumbler Profile
• Using WordPress
• Mistakes
• Friendship

8. A Comprehensive Guide to StumbleUpon: How to Build Massive Traffic to Your Website by DoshDosh

This article shows what DoshDosh learned when using StumbleUpon. He teaches how to drive traffic to your website, as well as some strategies you can adopt to retain StumbleUpon visitors while monetizing your website.

9. StumbleUpon Networking: How to Easily Share Content and Build Relationships by DoshDosh

This article gives the various ways of using StumbleUpon to share content directly with others, while studying the numerous benefits that arise when one disseminates web pages and shares opinions in this manner.

10. Five Ways to Grow Your StumbleUpon Network: An Ode to Altruistic Stumbling by DoshDosh

This article shows you five main ways you can use to expand your StumbleUpon network of friends. A list of strategies DoshDosh used himself and share with us.

Additional articles

There are many more articles about StumbleUpon and worth reading. However these felt off the top 10. Here they are:

• StumbleUpon - Simple tips to increased traffic by Yeepage.com
• Stumbleupon: My story so far… by Yeepage.com
• StumbleUpon exchange train by Yeepage.com

Conclusion

If you like this post, please kindly bookmark it using StumbleUpon, Digg, or other services to share it with others. If you would like to use it on your site, please kindly links back to this post.

All feedbacks are welcomed. Especially if you come from using Stumble! button, if you don't have time please just say "Stumbled!", thanks.

1. Why migrating?
2. What is WordPress MU?
3. Why WordPress MU?

Why migrating?

Many days have passed since I started thinking about URL structuring, website structuring, and multi-blogging. I've been holding back much because I don't want to write off-topic on my niche blog. "Binh dot Name" is pretty much a broad name, there is no "niche" in the name but I write much more about blogging tips than others, so far.

Now, I decide to slow down on writing to concentrate more on improving the quality of the blog in terms of:

1. Focused topics,
2. SEO practices,
3. Design elements,
4. Readership,
5. Link building, and more.

So today I guess is the day I start migrating before it's too late. I need to change the URL structure, too. Currently it's too ugly and cause some pain in analyzing traffics.

What is WordPress MU?

Here is a tip for anyone who doesn't know about WordPress MU. It's a back-end content management system that allow us to write blog. It's much like WordPress, however it allows registered author to create multiple blogs in the form of:

• http://blogname.binh.name, or
• http://binh.name/blogname

Why WordPress MU?

The control panel of WordPress MU is the same... actually more features than on WordPress.com. If you are blogger user, it's similar to that too.

• The user has a main dashboard, which manage the whole site, including blogs.
• Each blog has its own fully featured control panel.

The management is centralized, so management of multiple blogs is very easy.

What do you think?

Should I migrate? Should I not?

JohnChow.com, the first reviewer for rssHugger did sign up himself for the first spot. He was the first, and so far the only paid member on rssHugger. Undoubtedly he got the number 1 position and... perhaps he may keep it for very long till Shoemoney.com or some other big blogs come into the competition.

I, myself is proud to be one of the very first takers and I recommend you to do the same. It's not an affiliate program so you can take my words for it.

The program is absolutely free and I'm sharing the secret out: be one of the firsts and enjoy the flood of traffics. The last day yesterday it grow from 20 to 83 blogs listed. The number of new RSS feeds are making me worry, everytime I refresh I see the count increase.

What's next?

Don't forget to check out how RSS on rssHugger looks like. I will be reviewing more blog directory as I go along, so don't hesitate to subscribe to my RSS feed for latest posts.

Let's shake hand for my belated 26th birthday. Would you like to participate on my exciting online birthday event and join my friends network?

The event

This is a special birthday event starting from 18/11/2007 till 30/11/2007? In this event we will get to know each other, and possibly become good online friends.

How you participate

It's easy, all you need to do is to visit my blog, say "Hi" and I will visit yours too. Let's get to know each other naturally by doing any or all of the following:

• Visit each other's home (blog);
• Introduce ourself and chat with each other;
• Discuss with each other on our topics of interest;
• Introduce friends to each others;
• Introduce each other to friends;
• etc, you like... some interactions.

I will feel so happy

• The more people know about my birthday and visit me, the merrier I'm.
• The more new friends I have, the merrier I'm.

Tips and hints

Online event is not as straight forward as off-line one. So here are some tips and hints how I may participate. How may you participate is totally up to your liking. Here are my thoughts, I may:

• Include your blog in my friends page, depending much on the level of involvement.
• Review your blog and feature it in my Binh's Reivews (still under construction but got PR3), regardless yours is good or bad.
• Put your site in the blogroll, if it's really high quality
• Refer people to visit your site whenever it's a topic related to yours.
• Write thank you post every week highlighting your blog and your latest post, with all the links Google friendly.
• Consider to use the Dofollow plug-in if you prefer it.

Notes

This even continue till the end of the month (30/11/2007, for now).

The original post was "18 Nov Online Birthday Special" posted on 17 Nov 2007. I Updated on 23 Nov 2007 and would like to say sorry to everyone who read the original version because had very improper wordings.

What's next?

I wish you all happy blogging! Let's all gain some more from this special event and enjoy participating. Cheers!

But hey, here is a big news: Collin LaHay has revamped his rssHugger model after receiving a lot of comment from the review on JohnChow.com. I got a feeling that rssHugger is going to beat up their Competitors with the right model.

It's a similar case as 1CoolFile.com did after receiving negative feedbacks from his ReviewMe post on JohnCow.com. However, Collin made a much better decision and adjust the plan with huge differences.

The good differences

The exceptional change is that, rssHugger now offer 250,000 free blogs within the first year of operation.

What are the requirements for free listing?

• You need to write a blog post to review rssHugger, otherwise you have to pay $20 fee
• Your blog must meet the quality standard and manually approved.

Standout benefits for bloggers:

• Monthly top 100 blogs listing gives more exposure to both viewers and search engine.
• Random listing gives more exposure to viewers (not search engine exposure).
• New RSS Feeds listing gives explores for newly listed blogs.

Some very common benefits:

• Raise awareness of your blog
• Send tons of visitors to your blog
• Share traffic with the community
• Be part of a viral/buzz marketing campaign
• Get new interested RSS subscribers who view your content on a regular basis.

Some limitations

Even the biggest boys of the Internet have their limitations, so does rssHugger.

1. The search feature is still in the browsing form of navigation. This mean... people have to dig for your blog, and less likely it will work.
2. 250,000 blogs is big number, but very small compare to "over 112 million registered blogs, with about 175,000 new ones per day" (Collin LaHay), so if we are late to sign-up we may have to pay that $20.
3. Currently it's totally blogger oriented. Visitors who come to this site will bounce back because they see the home page is promoting some blogger benefits, not for them.
4. The directory is actually located in the "Search" tab. Confusing enough and hard enough to be found or clicked. Worse yet, it's nearly the last tab you can see.

My suggestions

Collin LaHay really needs to consider many more factors invovled in the grow of this unigue model of directory. He may want to look at the following suggestions:

1. Implement the search function as soon as possible. Without a search form it will just drive visitors away. Temporarily use Google site search the programmers are still working on it.
2. It should focus more on the visitors than the bloggers. After all the true purpose should be to benefit the readers, and that's what blogging is about, too.
3. Put the directory right at the homepage, improving the exposure of the blogs. What if visitor type the URL http://www.rsshugger.com and found the promotion for bloggers?
4. The promotion should be done on the "Blogger" page, which explain the benefit of this site to blogger alone. The home page and everything else should be for readers.
5. The about page should be focused on promoting the site to visitors. It's best to avoid mixing bloggers with readers, because not every reader know what is a blog.
6. The registration form need to be more instuitive. Especially to what you will use as the login name. I thought my name will be used but it was the email. It's confusing. And the registration should have email confirmation, for security reason.

Errh, btw, I'm not a lazy bumb sitting at home pointing my finger at somebody just for fun, you can read the about page to find a little more about me, Binh Nguyen.

Generally speaking, a new site always need to learn more. Keep improving is the way to survive as well as to grow.

Just a big of history

My initial comments on JohnChow.com:

I agree with John Chow about the “wrong model”. I suggest the site to start with first blog post for free and additional blog post pay. Everyone love free stuff, especially bloggers.

I’m a blogger too and I hesitate to pay the money knowing it’s just $1/year. The problem of uncertainty always refrain us from taking action.

A lot of blog directory list for free, and they have PR 7+, then why we pay for a lower PR directory some amount of money and then wait for it to grow?

Recently 1CoolFile.com also got a JohnCow review about the same thing. The different is that he got a PR6 site, but lack of series marketing and web-design.

...

RSSHugger should consider about the stronger competitors and lower its hat to new comers.

Then here is what followed up by Collin LaHay:

Due to the overwhelming comments and contributions, I am going to be revamping the business model (much like john recommended), as well as adding a few things I had planned so that everyone with a quality blog has a shot and listing their blog.

Conclusion

Being listed on a paid directory for free is something really fun and should do? Yes, we enjoy the benefit of being a paid member and get tons of traffic from rssHugger.com for free while rssHugger is doing all the hard work promoting it.

But don't worry, it will cause them no harm. Ethically speaking, go for it. Why? Doesn't that make a win-win situation for both blogger and rssHugger? By providing their service for the first 250,000 blogs for free, rssHugger is getting back tons of backlink and PR juice from those 250,000 free blogs would get them to PR 6 in no time. In return they pass back those traffic to us bloggers.

What's next

I'm trying to have my blog be one of the first 100 blogs listed on rssHugger. Be with me there and let's see the grow of a brand new generation of blog directory.

Feel free to feed me back with comments and I will attend to it as soon as I can.

What do I mean?

I want to share my personal thoughts as well as professional thoughts. Those thoughts often come quickly and I may forget it later on. So I would like to post it as fast as I can to keep it and share with others. But then... people hate personal stuff mixed in a professional blog, and I want mine to be professional niche blog.

The decision is not made yet, but I'm having a thought of separating my website into multiple blogs. It's a very complex issue.

I started searching for an answer... well here is some interesting piece of information if you have similar problem.

Some different type of blogs

I stumbled on this interesting Bloggst.com site and found a few nice definitions which I would like to learn and share. Some types of blogs include:

• Personal
  Mostly centered around the author and his or her personal ramblings on everything that crosses their minds.
• Blogging
  Focus on the topic of blogging.
• Technology
  Focus mainly on various aspects of technology, be it the latest and most sexy gadgets from Apple, or just plain old Microsoft stuff.
• Marketing
  Centered around the different aspects of marketing and promotion, such as for instance Search Engine Optimization and more.
• World Wide Web
  From the latest Web 2.0 startups to various Web Development tips and tricks and everything in between.
• Art and Culture
  Music, movies, paintings and everything else that defines our cultures.
• Money
  About everything related to money, which is an important factor in all of our lives, and cause for both joy and concern for most of us.
  
• Self-development
  Focus developing yourself as a person both professionally and personally.
• Writing
  The art of writing is something that is enjoyed by many, and the blogs in this category write about just that.

What's the answer?

I can write enormous personal stuff, amble of web stuff, a lot about technology, many marketing, some art, some money, some self-development, and some writing.

What do you think? What decision should I make? To hold back and write less, or to write more but separate the blogs?

How about yourself as a blogger, what would you do?

Yesterday I checked my blog and was too surprise about something... the actual weight in term of Kilobytes. By saying that I mean, our blogs are not just heavy, they are too heavy.

Shocking Findings

I checked my own blog and here are some shocking results:

• Over 512KB for the home page and
• Over 380KB for single post.

Currently most blogs have too heavy home page, extra heavy category pages, and heavy single post page. A very good example is John Chow dot Com. His home page cost over 1MB of disk-space and bandwidth.

Avatar:

• Each normal avatar is about 2-3KB, some abnormal avatar is 30KB.
• Too many avatars add up too much weight on the page.

Advertisements:

• Curved AdSense and Image ad normally is > 25KB each unit (bad).
• AdSense plain text ad, simplest design < 5KB each unit (good).
• Square image ad or banner image ad also > 25KB each unit (very bad).

Widgets:

• Each widget need to get a request to the server and download JavaScript code
• Each widget have their own theme design elements, especially heavy graphic.

Solutions

After finding out it's too heavy I decided to fix it right away, and here are the steps:

• The widgets from MyBlogLog and BlogCatalog was cleaned out into a single page called "Community".
• Remove all Image Ad
• Remove curved AdSense for Content. Replaced by the most simple one possible
• Replace widget by using tracking code only.

Unfortunately the BlogCatalog doesn't have tracking code, so the use of a widget is a must. However, I tried to reduce it to the minimum.

Outcome

After all the elements are rearranged as mentioned above, here is the outcome:

• Homepage: 213KB
• Single post: 119KB

After implementing the "Christmas Theme" and enabled the Post Teaser plugin, here are the results:

• Homepage: 198KB
• Single post: 123KB

The different is abvious:

• Homepage: from 518KB to 198KB, save 320KB, 2.6 times faster loading time
• Single post: from 380KB to 123KB, save 257KB, 3 times faster loading time

Just one small bias, this mainly concern the first hit. Consequential hits don't have that much saving because the images are not reloaded.

What's next?

This is only the result of analysis and some quick solution. If you would like to know more about how to conduct the testing and the reason behind doing all this, then I will post another entry soon. There is no Poll at the moment, so please leave a comment on this page to let me know you.

I will be open to help anyone in checking their blog against this problem. I'm willing to help you improve your blog too, just send me a request.

I started posting my blog entries with WordPress because I felt that's a necessary initiative. However, I strongly need to consider few things.

Website structure

The biggest issue I'm having is the website structure. I'm still wondering whether

1. putting niche topics on separate subdomains, and so using WordPress MU to power my site,
2. or just a single blog like right now with categories as niches.

Technically speaking, WordPress MU is capable of helping me separate the niches pretty well. SEO point of views, the 2nd option is much better, though require some serious initial design.

As for the niches, I have a few expertises and a few hobbies.

My expertises include:

• Software development
• Web development
• Software reviews
• Website reviews
• Reporting

My hobbies include:

• Photography - armature level, mostly common things and discoveries
• Giving opinions - just about anything I my find interested in having a say
• Learning - that's strange, but yes, I like to learn new things, and write about it.

Theme Design

The design is not finalized, yet. The design is a very important factor in retaining readers and building brand image. Hence, I need some serious time off writing and reading to do redesign the theme I chose, which is JustSimple.

URL structure

As you can see, my URL is still in ugly form. Earlier I wrote about the good URL structure choices, but since then haven't got good replies yet. I may need to visit some forum and invite people over for some feedback. Mean while, I still need to keep it like this.

WordPress Plug-ins

I installed and tested many WordPress plugins. So far I am very pleased with those:

• AdSense Manager
• All in One SEO Pack
• Google Analytics
• Google XML Sitemaps
• Inline Posts
• Permalink Redirect
• Post Teaser
• Subscribe To Comments
• wp-cache

The list for all plug-ins are long. Hence, I will keep it for another post summarizing those plug-ins and tell what worth using. The above plug-ins are nice to use, but new ones come out pretty often so they not yet for my permanent usage. For example recently WP Super Cache comes out and claim to take over 10,000 hits without a trouble.

Blog Directories

Yes, I have found out about those blog communities and was so surprise they existed and they really help. Recently as I go along learning, I stumbled on and signed up for the following:

• MyBlogLog.com
• BlogCatalog.com
• BlogFlux.com
• Technorati.com

I'm looking toward signing up on more directories. I will write review about each of them while I go along.

What's Next?

I planned to post about 10 articles a day. But due to those burdens I am delaying the writing. Struggling to start-up something does give much learning experience. I will be sharing my experience as I go along. Stay tuned for my progress on growing this baby "Binh dot Name" which ought to be a giant.

What about your blog? What do you plan with it? How will you achieve your goals?

I am asking myself "what is the best URL structure?" I want to achieve this URL structure for my "Binh dot Name" and all the following websites I create. The matter is that, I already spent a month or so thinking about this without getting the final decision. Along with the CMS choice, this URL thing delayed me from publishing my blog for too long until I finally fed up of waiting and decide to "Just do it".

What is a Good URL?

My own justification is that a Good URL have the following characteristics:

• Independent of other factors because Cool URIs don't change (SEO and human reason);
• It should be descriptive (we like it, so does SE);
• It should be easy to type (we like it);
• It should be memorable (we definitely like it).

Why we need good URL?

• In SEO point of view, a changed URL is not Google's friendly.
• In SEO point of view, keyword rich URL is good.
• In SEO point of view, short but descriptive URI give more value to selected keywords.
• In SEO point of view, memorable URI doesn't count, but for retaining users, short and memorable URL is best.

Top 10 URL considerations:

1. For website domain, should it be:
   1. http://binh.name, or
   2. http://binh.name ?

2. For the main blog, should it be:
   1. The main domain, or
   2. Sub domain http://blog.binh.name, or
   3. Sub directory http://binh.name/blog ?

3. For category:
   1. http://category.binh.name or
   2. http://binh.name/category ?

4. The URI should be:
   1. Ugly URI with (? And a query, ex: /?p=123), or
   2. Beautified URI /something/something-smaller?

5. The beautified URL should have:
   1. With trailing slash (/), or
   2. Without trailing slash ?

6. Beautified URI options for post:
   1. /%post%, or
   2. /%category%/%post%, or
   3. /archives/%post%, or
   4. /blog/%post%, or
   5. /yyyy/mm/dd/%post% ?

7. With %post%, should it be:
   1. Post name, or
   2. Post id ?

8. Beautified URL for category:
   1. /category/%category%, or
   2. /cat/%category%, or
   3. /type/%category%, or
   4. /group/%category%, or
   5. /%category% ?

9. With %category%, should it be:
   1. Category name, or
   2. Category id ?

10. The prefix first level options:
    1. Singular (ex: category), or
    2. plural (ex: categories)

11. Beautified URL for tag:
    1. /tag/%tag%, or
    2. /tags/%tag%

What's Next?

If you are an expert in blogging, or an expert web designer, or just someone who happen to know the best URL structure, then please have your say here. Currently I haven't put up the follow plugin, so as a reward the best commentator I will put your links inside my post without the rel="nofollow". Thank you in advance for participating.

Oh, as a matter of quality, please give a reason why you think your choice is good too. Thanks.

This is a temporary decision. I'm still choosing between WordPress and Drupal. I have been collecting information on the various most popular Content Management System (CMS) like Joomla, Mambo, Drupal, XOOPS, WordPress and a few more.

Why I chose WordPress?

WordPress may have more limitation than a fully tweaked Drupal site, but for timing reason I have to use it.

The best thing about WordPress that is better than Drupal is that simply work out of the box. I just needed to download a few nice themes and few useful plug-ins and here it goes, running like a pro.

The next best thing about WordPress is that, not because it have so many plug-ins and themes, but the themes are extremely nicer and those expand are easier to find. I especially like the easy-to-view theme snapshots.

I will discuss more about the different CMS choices in another time.

Why not wait for a more stable solution

Basically, I have spent too long as I can recall. It's been about 2 months since I started looking into the first CMS, which was php-Nuke (the thing that tell me what a CMS is like).

Since then, I have been writing my blogs off line in OneNote and keep the files on my computers. I always are waiting to publish those near to a thousand pages I have written. Those written pages are ranging from my life issues to making money and a lot of ideas on self development. I kept on writing while learning the things that I haven't studied at university.

The call to start

The final moment when I started "Oh well! Let's do it instead of day-dreaming about it. Make it live an change it later". I made the decision because I read the Writing Tips on WordPress 's Writing Posts guide. The article suggest that people should 'worry about blog design later':

Blog design matters, but only to an extent. Don’t give up on blogging just because the design isn’t coming up as you’ll like it it to be. Sooner or later, you’ll get around the design problems with ease. But continue writing. Content is what attracts your readers, not just the look of your blog.

(Source http://codex.wordpress.org/Writing_Posts)

But still, I'm seriously considering the Drupal as the final solution. I have seen many high-profile Durpal Powered Sites and I really like it. A few things that don't satisfy me are:

• URL alias management,
• Multiple subdomains / domains duplicated content issue,
• URL redirect to alias,
• Lack of nice themes and theme snapshots.

Since it's a long topic, I will create a post discussing about Drupal later on.

Do you like WordPress? Should I keep it permanently or should I change?