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.

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.

How does this work?

I'm going to update this page to link to the post of bloggers who write about Christmas. Check out the links below to see a sample of how I do it.

You can help me by giving a short paragraph about your Christmas with a link to your post. If you do this by the mean of commenting, please don't forget to put your website URL so that I can properly link to it.

If you participate in discussion on BlogCatalog, please kindly leave your

1. blog name,
2. blog URL,
3. post title and
4. post URL.

Myself on Christmas 2007

I went out with my girlfriend, her mother, and 2 friends. I'm still in China and I will be here for couple of months more. I found out Chinese don't actually celebrate Christmas, they only decorate for commercial purpose.

Here in Zhuhai, shopping centers decorate with Christmas signs, but homes don't. As normal, I took a lot of photos, and it's time to start sharing even though my flickr account is still intact. Time is limited, so again I can only say, photos are on the way.

Bloggers and Christmas 2007

The links start from here.

From blogs I read, comments on this page, and the BlogCatalog discussion:

1. Today’s the Big Day by Simon from Yeepage Journal. He and I kept thinking about writing great posts and forget to enjoy the holiday for ourselves. Unfortunately I crashed my site and couldn't write anything.
2. Happy Holidays by Collin LaHay from Increase Website Traffic. Collin LaHay wish everyone happy holidays whether it's Christmas, New Years, Hanukkah, Ramadan, Kwanzaa, or anything.
3. Christmas Greeting from a Student by Haan from Labyrinth after receiving a Christmas e-card from her ex-student at USQ Australia. This reminded me of tutoring at USQ Sydney for Advanced Java Programming. I still keep in touch with my collage and ex-student Sayem, now he teaches Java in Sydney. We did have some small chat few days ago.
4. Christmas Eve with the cats by Gusland from Gusland.com to share the story of what he and his cats were doing on Christmas eve. This reminded me of my dogs in Vietnam. I love them so much but I couldn't bring them with me while I travel.
5. The "My Christmas Charity Lesson" Offensive by Offendedblogger from The Offended Blogger about how donating to charity this Christmas changed her life. I read her post and found she did some charity and she is very proud of it. Her blog post have a lot of illustrative photos.
6. Merry Christmas: Here's My Gift - The Santa Girls by Jmarzo from Side Bits showing many sexy Christmas babes. This make me wonder how my much more beautiful my girlfriend will look like when dress like these.
7. A Day In The Life of A Snowman In Louisiana by Sarcasticwhiteboar from The Sarcastic Whiteboard Chronicles about a fall-out with two family members and contemplating the real meaning of Christmas (in relation to the way she was treated by so-called Christians
8. Merry Christmas by fossfor from Fossforous is a christmas card for cats. There are plentiful of illustrations on Fossforous. May fossfor tell us if she drawn those pictures by herself.
9. A Christmas Message! by MeghnaK from Delve into the Mind of A Budding Blogger about the message she wants to give: "Make this a cherished Christmas for yourself and another unfortunate soul!". MeghanaK is only 12 year old and her writing skill is really impressive.
10. Merry Christmas by Tania from Whole Living Today tells why Christmas is celebrated. For those who love songs, there is a music video and a lyric for "Have I told you Lately (1989) up on her post.
11. The True Meaning of Christmas by Fortunalee from Fortuna's Favor Rites wirtten for Answering Inane Question #437. "Are you ready for Christmas?". Fortunalee said "Bah! It *is* possible to find true meaning in the season without religion or commercialism".
12. Christmas Day 2007 Peace On Earth Goodwill To Men by gbronner from Glenns Garden about his thoughts on Christmas and what it truly should be.
13. Oh, won't this be quaint? by aroomofonesown from A Room of One's Own wrote about her truly heinous and humiliating Christmas with my family as the undatable wonder... I'm sorry about your bad time on Christmas, and I hope the following ones will be wonderful for you.
14. Six More Days by maoey from The Chronicles of Maoey about what she feels and thinks about the season. I'm sorry to hear another sad story and hope Maoey will have merry Christmas times the following years.
15. Santa Claus vs. Los Reyes Magos by voicesenespanol from Voices en Español about "Santa vs los Reyes Magos: Santa meets his match in Spain". Although this post isn't about the blogger himself, but it's interesting enough for me to link to.
16. Christmas Eve In Our Corner Of The World by Stine (mumshome) from
    Mother’s Got A Dot Com about "a family Christmas, with in-laws, aunt & uncle, us and our 6 kids - 12 in all". You can read her comment for more details. I would like to thank Stine for linking back to me by writing A Christmas Post Link…
17. There is something wrong with gifts this Christmas by towr from
    The Walking Tower about his observation about the 2007 Christmas.
18. Christmas Post by lynyrdschuyler from
    PUFF MATTY: The Notorious P.I.G. about Yoko Ono singing background on "Merry Christmas (the war is over)" music.
19. And to all a good night by yhc from Your Humble Cartoonist. This post is a synopsis of YHC's comic and blog related Christmas activites, including a Secret Santa Exchange he participated in.
20. KoRn's Untitled A Pleasant Surprise by trlrtrash13 from The Axis of Stevil. This post give a quick review of a great xmas gift from his girlfriend.
21. Christmas Posts Dec 24-30 by Brix from Brix Picks. I must say Brix Picks is the most uniquely designed WordPress I ever seen. Artitistic.
22. Merry Christmas Long Beach by LaurieManny from Long Beach Real Estate. A lighthearted Merry Christmas to Laurie's hometown, with some local photos of Christmas lights on the Naples Island Canals and some fun Christmas videos from YouTube.
23. Christmas Ornaments by Cromely . The post is a reflection on the Christmas ornaments Cromely made as a kid and how comforting it is to see them on the tree today. It's also a chance to tell his favorite bad Christmas joke.

While at it I would like to mention After Christmas Contest Giveaway by dudeinwrens from Poetic Money. this is not a personal Christmas experience but instead an interesting event for anyone who want to earn $50 Google Adwords credit. I myself is not ready to advertise anything because this is not a commercial website. Congrats to anyone who win the contest.

Introduction

Here is an overview of what happened.

8 months ago I wrote 2 articles and submitted it to EzineArticles.com. Then I forgot about them. 2 months ago I revised the articles and... 1 got rejected, 1 got re-published. I didn't really care. Until... today

The point here is that recently I receive around 20+ page view from this page: Guide - How To Install IIS on Windows XP SP2 Without CD to the page on my site. I was so surprise about it. I abandoned the article a while ago. I renamed it once to Guide: Install IIS on Windows XP SP2 without CD and renamed it's URL also.
The ignorance thing is that previously I renamed the URL and didn't care much. When I realized I got 404 error hits everyday to this page, I started questioning myself.

The investigation

Today I visit EzineArticles.com to investigate the incident. I suspected my article is listed somewhere in a popular section. And really it was. It is listed in this section: "Most Viewed EzineArticles in the Computers-and-Technology:Software Category (90 Days)"

At the time I check, it got this status:

This article has been viewed 2540 time(s).
Article Submitted On: September 15, 2007

The lesson learned

We should write more quality articles and submit to the popular article directory. Blog is good but it's won't be as good as that.

The only caution is that, being on an article directory mean you have lost that article forever. Why?

• Visitors are going to EzineArticles.com to read my article instead of going directly to my website. Out of this, only a small portion take the time to quickly look at the original page than leave. They found nothing interesting.
• The article directory definitely have higher page rank than you. So your article being published on your site will be in the Google supplementary result and never... or barely get clicked through from Google search result page.

How to do it the right way? Remember that you are allowed to have 3 active links in your source box.

• Write an abstract version of your article, which meet the word count, and submit it instead of your original article.
• Write highly crafted author bio, which will attract the reader attention, but not a spammy type.
• Keep a link to your homepage (this definitely is most stable address)
• Keep a link to your article hosted on your website, a perfect URL that stays for life.
• If possible keep the 3rd link point to your other site, which you want to promote.
• THE ULTIMATE (This should be a secret, but i'm sharing with you): Promote your article on the directory as well as the one on your site. This way will make that article become popular and stay in the list spreading through-out the category and give you an overwhelming traffic as well as a share of Google PageRank.

What's next?

Go along with me for the learning journey. I will share with you whatever I learn, even the most secret techniques. Subscribe to my RSS feed and stay tune for updates. I will follow up on the "Major Issue with Common Blog Layout". For now I need some relaxation, playing mahjong with the family.

Update 15/03/2008: I just realized I you may want to learn some Article Tips and Writing Tips from Open Tips.

1. What does Binh dot Name offer?

Binh dot Name gives you:

• latest news about blogging and web development;
• tips and advices for bloggers and webmasters;
• technical help for your Windows, programming, and website related issues;
• reviews of blogs, websites, and products;
• opinions on hot topics;
• free resources for website/blog.

2. Who is it written for?

The content on this blog is written for:

• webmasters
• bloggers
• designers
• programmers
• anyone who is interested in web development
• those who are interested in improving their website and blogs

3. What are the benefits?

You gain the following benefits by reading Binh dot Name:

• getting helpful tips to improve your website/blog;
• getting free resources to use on your own website/blog
• getting personal help for solving your programming, Windows and software problems;
• being informed about what is importance in the blogosphere;
• giving your own opinions about hot ideas
• getting technical advices.

About Binh Nguyen

1. What qualifies me to write on the topics here?

I'm a qualified web developer. I hold a Bachelor of Information Technology (Net technologies) from University of Southern Queensland (USQ) since April 2007. This qualification was then certified by the Australian Computer Society (ACS) in September 2007.

I'm a qualified programmer. I hold the above bachelor plus a Diploma of Information Technology (Computer Software Development) from Canterbury Business College back in 2002.

In the area of web money, I'm only a beginner. I took one online course to learn some basic knowledge about making money online. I will share what I learned from the course in my own way of writing for other newbies.

2. Other claims to fame

I've written one article How To Install IIS on Windows XP SP2 Without CD on EzineArticles.com which became on of the most viewed article in Computers-and-Technology:Software category.

Since then due to many reasons I stopped publishing my articles. I still have them in my inventory waiting to be revised and posted.

I'm good at helping others. Back at schools, I used to give advices and help fellow students. In fact I spent most of the time trying to help others. That's what made me popular and well respected. Helping other is the best way to gain deep knowledge and become an expert. So now, when blogging I'm thrilled to help other bloggers.

I was a very famous student being known for my talents in computing and programming during all my years of study. Did you meet anyone who would strike for the highest available mark for any programming course? It was me, one of the top student in class. It will take too much time and effort to brag about this, so I will let the blog explain the rest.

Back in 2004 I was selected to be a tutor for Advanced Java Programming, while I was still doing my Bachelor. One of my student now become a certified Java programmer, and he teaches Java in Sydney.

3. Who am I?

My name is Binh Nguyen. You can call me Binh.

I inherited a pair of nearsighted eyes from my mother. The same eyes become special when powered by a pair of glasses. So the result is a bit dramatic:

• Debugging code is my talent,
• Taking photo is my hobby,
• Writing review is my expression,
• Googling is my daily life,
• Surfing the web a lot is my doing,
• Writing a lot is I can do,
• Criticism is my bad,
• Staying late night is my unavoidable.

You've come this far to learn more about me? I'm very keen in showing off, but a single about me page is no way to show myself. Here is where you can read more:

• Brief About Me
• My Name is Binh
• I Studied in Australia
• I am From Vietnam
• After all, Who is Binh?
• My Interests
• What I do at Binh dot Name

Still not satisfied? Then here is the ultimate resource for you to read more about me: Binh Nguyen