My Blogger Blog Level Today: Low

Today, I'm kinda low in terms of motivation and ideas. This is my second post on my Blogger Blog. As I don't have ideas yet for a new article for Moralde.com, I decided to write it here. Cool, isn't it. With this blog, 'Blogger Blog: Chronicles of My Blogging Experience', I could write something even when I don't have ideas at all. Having no idea, after all, is still an experience.

I'm still continuing my tweakings for my Moralde.com blog. I'm using MoWeS Portable to make all changes locally (in my Flash disk) prior to doing the real thing on the site. Yesterday, I bumped into this cool plugin, the WP Postviews plugin, which counts the views for every post in your blog and use the data to rank your posts for the most popular or the least viewed. Of course, having just a few visitors for now, I think it wouldn't be very good to show them a post view of 1 or 3, so I sort of tweaked the plugin template to not show the numbers at this time. Later on, probably after a couple of months, I'd change that and display the post views numbers.

I still haven't decided when to make the final facelift for Moralde.com. I still am on the lookout for essential plugins that will contribute for both SEO and functionality. Another important reason why I cannot yet do the facelift is my need to find free downloadables, e.g. ebooks, software, etc. You see, the facelifted version sports a 'page peel' feature which promises readers some free downloadables when they click it. I could always disable it for the time being, but looking at it now, I think it's so cool that without it my blog would look incomplete. Besides, the downloadables will require membership to my list, and should I launch the facelift, I also want to kick off my list building.

I have a subdomain blog: Binaural-Isochronic which deals with brainwave entrainment, meditation, self help, etc.

Yesterday, I also wrote an article about tweaking wordpress so that I could add something cool to my sidebar, a new widget container below the existing container in my sidebar. I was about to publish it in Moralde.com when I realized that the tweaks I did were done only in the local (flash disk) version of Moralde.com. Since I plan to effect everything on the grand facelift, I may have to hold that article's publication for the time being.

I'm also still in limbo with regard to the niche I need to focus on. I love wordpress tweaking, but I have no hope of besting the veterans in this niche in the google search pages. So, my hunt for probable google-winning key phrases continues.

Be happy and have fun changing the world!

Drawing First Blog

The First Blog

No, this is not my first blog. My first blog is...(drum roll, please,) Moralde.com! The domain moralde.com took some time to get and I almost did not get it. The first time I searched for it about 6 months ago, it was not available. Obviously another entity, presumably also a Moralde, has taken possession of it for sometime. Having known this, I have started to consider alternative domain names for the first blog that I'll be calling my very own. Of course, I could use 'noelmoralde.com' because it is available, but I somehow feel like I am exposing myself body and soul if I use that. So I listed other alternatives like moraldebris.com, moraldecree.com, moraldelirium.com, moraldemeanor.com, moraldesign.com, moraldesiderata.com...and so on.

Some of the possible domain names I listed were available, while some are priced in the thousands! I did this preliminary search while I was preparing my credit card and paypal accounts so I could make online payments for my domain name and hosting. And I had a bit of a hard time with the credit card and paypal verification thing, which I believe was a blessing in disguise because by the time it was done, I found that moralde.com is already available. Had the paypal verification process been quick and easy, I may have not gotten moralde.com.

Domain Registrar

I purchased the moralde.com domain from godaddy. And this was after I did quite an exhaustive research on which domain registrar to buy from. Looks like every domain registrar has yeah and nay sayers. I however stayed away from domain registrars without both yeah and nay sayers.

Hosting

Having purchased my domain name, I did not opt to have it hosted at godaddy but at Lunarpages. I have had some experience with lunarpages cpanel which I find easy and comfortable when I setup my friend and boss' website. Besides, Lunarpages was offering a really cheap promo hosting at the time. And they had this no limit offering on both space and bandwidth.

So, long story short, moralde.com saw the light of day on May 30, 2009.

Henceforth, I shall be chronicling my progress with moralde.com. Beginners may just find some nuggets of wisdom here and there from which to base their next moves and decisions. Moralde.dot com, btw, is a wordpress blog. I had earlier been torn between using drupal or wordpress. On testing however, wordpress flowed like a breeze, while drupal presented me with a headache the first time I tried it. From thence, I grew to love wordpress the way an american loves America (Note: I am not american).

Till the next post dudes. Feel Good Always!