Go41 Sample Restaurant Site

Do you want to have your own restaurant website in few minutes like the sample above, even if:

1. You don’t have computer technical knowledge?

2. No design skills?

Yes, you can create your stunning restaurant website in minutes by simply following the 4 steps provided by GOA41.com on their site:

1. Choose a template and colors – Currently goa41.com has 3 templates but of course you are free to change the colors and fonts.

2. Insert Pictures – You can upload your own images.

3. Write few sentences – just write and edit all the contents of your site by using GOA 41 designer like the menus of your restaurant and all other necessary  information. You can also preview your site anytime.

4. Publish your site – and if you are ready, publish your site and announce to the world your new restaurant website.

Impress your customers and friends, go to GOA 41 and create your stylish restaurant site.

Bon appétit everyone!

Don’t settle for a long domain name — register a .CO!

.CO domain name is the biggest new domain since .COM and most major Internet domain registrars began selling .co domain names on Tuesday including GoDaddy.com.

.CO is practically the same as .COM but it seemed like a better extension simply because it’s one letter less.  I think few years from now .CO could easily be the preferred domain extension.

According to GoDaddy.com website, .CO is understood around the world as an abbreviation for “COmpany,” “COrporation” and “COmmerce,” .CO is easy to recognize, simple to remember and flexible to use.

One of the early adopters of the .co domain name is Twitter which the company is using for its URL shortening service similar to Bit.ly.

Why Choose .CO?

• .CO is meaningful, memorable and intuitive for people around the world
• .CO is relevant to individuals, businesses, and organizations
• .CO gives businesses and brands the chance to create a worldwide footprint
• .CO appeals to today’s socially-networked individuals and entrepreneurs
• With the .COM inventory nearly exhausted, .CO is a perfect, short alternative for branding your business.
• It’s new! No need to compromise – find your ideal domain.

According to some news sources, Online retailer Overstock.com  paid $350,000 for O.co and “related URLs.”

I just started looking at the .co domains to possibly register one. All the good ones are gone already. I wonder who snatched Pepsi.co and Cis.co?

Let me rant a little bit with my post today.

What will you do if you woke up one morning and you can’t access your blog?

You’ve tried other browser, still your site is inaccessible…

You’ve tried other internet connection, same problem…

You’ve asked your colleagues, same result as yours…

You’ve tried to change the DNS of your modem, still no reply…

You ping, and the reply is “unknown host”…

Multiply this with 4 blogs and what do you think are you gonna feel?

I’m sure most of you will get mad already.

This was exactly what I’d experienced last Thursday. 4 0f the numerous blogs and websites that I’m managing went into oblivion.

I sent an email to the technical support of the web host provider where these 4 blogs are hosted and guess what?…

They replied after 11 hours! Wow, that was  too fast wasn’t? Do you think that’s a reasonable time to reply to an urgent and critical technical support?

I thought that they are monitoring their servers 24×7? Why is it that I need to ask them what happened before  telling me the real issues? Isn’t they supposed to be more active in reporting this kind of incidence to their clients?

I’m working as an I.T. consultant managing webhost servers too and we have a policy in our company that we need to send an incident report to all our clients whenever there’s a critical network outages.  Aside from this, we are also required to send a report every 30 minutes to lessen the anxiety of our clients.

I’m not expecting the same treatment from this webhost provider but I hope that they’ll be more pro-active in dealing with their clients.

The  Worst is Yet to Come

Not only that  their technical support is horrible but also on how they managed their web host servers. When I received their email, I was expecting that perhaps the problem is just a simple DNS problem but I was alarmed when they told me that there was a hard disk failure.

Hard disk failure??? How could it be? I know that webhost hardware are using server grade hard disk, meaning they are configured to recover itself from this kind of failure. This kind of hardware are supposed to be using multiple hard disks. The minimum hard disk for this kind of setup is 2. If one of the two drives should fail, the other will still be available to run applications or recover files.

I’m giving them the benefit of the doubt but their excuse is really lame.  This is really unbelievable.

Additionally, they told me their weekly backup was corrupted and they can’t put back all the files,  although they gave an assurance that they’re doing their best to restore all files as much as they could.

The Resolution

They’ve sent my account information but telling me nothing on what should I do with this information.  After sending them numerous support tickets, finally they replied that I need to setup all my domains again and start from scratch because their previous backup for the month of June were all gone! I have to setup domains on WHM, make Packages, upload all files, install wordpress, themes, plugins etc..

Can you believe that? Remember, they’ve mentioned on their first email that only a week time of backup was corrupted? Now here it is, they’re saying  the whole previous month is corrupted too.

The only consolation that they gave me is they won’t bill me for one month. Thanks but no thanks. Don’t know they that my clients lost more than the cost of the free one month they are offering? The lost of traffic, lost of income opportunities such as payperpost, adsense, affiliates and more.

Sadly, one of my clients whom I have been working with since 2007 transferred to another host.

Signs You Have a Bad Webhost

Based on my experienced, here are the signs you have a bad webhost and you’ve better think twice to RUN or stay with them if you see these hints.

1. No 24×7 customer support. Your online presence is not only limited within your time zone, and if something goes wrong, you need to get it back up no matter what time day or night it is.

2. Poor or lack of  support. You pay them good money and it’s just appropriate that they will treat you like an important customer but if you’ve noticed that only 1 person is answering your support tickets then it means that they are understaffed.

3. Hard to get in touch with their customer support service. This is almost synonymous with no.2, but if the webhost provider isn’t returning your phone calls or emails then be careful and stay away from them.

4. Your site or blog is down on a frequent basis. As I’ve mentioned on no.1, your site or blog must be running  not only on a 24×7 basis but it should be up also for at least 99% all the time. This is what the webhost providers are offering. You need to find a provider that can guarantee you a 99% uptime or more.

I had almost one week of sleepless night trying to recover all  4 blogs of my clients. Some have backups on their local PC but not updated. It’s been a week also the live chat support of this webhost provider that I’m using is offline. How can it be “live” when it’s off?

Sorry for this post but I hope you will learn a lesson or two on my experienced. It has a big impact on my clients (financially – lost of income opportunities, etc.) and to me  as well.  I lost one big client, and it affected my emotional  and physical health too.   I was not able to ride my bike and play badminton for almost a week since I’ve spent  sleepless nights to make the 4 blogs work again.

I hope dear readers this won’t happen to you. I tell you, it’s costly. So go, find the best and most reliable webhost provider you can afford.

Whew! Time flies so fast! I had a great time in Hong Kong with my family and my in-laws.  There were 14 of us in all. My kids really enjoyed the vacation so much that they don’t want to go home anymore. My 4-year old son even wants to stay in Ocean Park and live there forever!

The vacation was a blast. Every minute I spent with my wife and kids was unforgettable. I will forever cherish the bonding time and activities we shared together. My wife told me that I was even more “childlike” than my kids specially when we were in Hong Kong Disneyland.  I was even singing the song “It’s a small world” when we were inside the pink  castle on Fantasy Land.

My sister-in-law also noticed that I can’t control myself in grabbing those virtual goodies while we were watching Donald Duck and friends on Mickey’s Phillar Magic 3-D show.

Oh well, I admit that I was! I enjoyed everything inside the Disneyland including the parade of Disney’s character and was even more gamely in getting wet.

Too bad our 4 days of vacation had to end but the memories of course will stay in my hear forever.

Sorry for this too personal post of mine. I’m still in euphoric mood. I totally shut-off myself from the “online world”  during our vacation. I did not check my emails nor log on to the internet. I even switched off my mobile phone.

So no technical blog post for me today or maybe  just an update because I received two great emails this morning which I want to share with you.

First is the FREE DOMAIN Name Registration of 1and1 Internet is extended until the end of this month of June 2010. You may want to check my previous post about it or you can go directly to 1and1 internet website and grab your new domain.

The second email was about the new FREE ebook from the ever famous  mogul  blogger JohnChow.  The Book isn’t going to cost you anything because  he’s giving it away for free. You may download The Ultimate Blog Profit Model here.  I actually read it in just one sitting  this afternoon and it’s awesome. It details the business model that John used to enable his blog to make over $500,000 last year. I think you will really enjoying read it as well.

That’s all for today. I still have a lot of pictures to upload on my Facebook

that's me , wearing a red anime shirt with my new hairdo!

Do not delete SPAM…yet.

What I’m talking about?

This may sound stupid but you’ve got to submit the spam to the web before hitting the “delete” or “delete all” button on your WordPress Comment Page dashboard.

Well, this post of mine applies only to all who are using Akismet on their site, either a blog or a corporate site.

I believe Akismet is the most useful plug-in/API ever developed for a blog. This is also the reason why it’s a default plug-in of WordPress, aside from the well known fact that the man behind Akismet is also the main developer of WordPress.

If you are a big fan of WordPress, you are using your Askimet, are you?  If not, then you are missing the most important tool for your blogging battle.

What is Akismet?

In a very straight and simple definition – Akismet was developed to kill Spam.

That’s it. No more no less.

Some people call it ” The Silence of the Spams“. It kills spam in the background automatically without intruding your blog life.

So why did I tell you not to delete Spam? Because you have to inform Akismet that you’ve got a spam on your Comment Pending Page. Akismet cannot kill it unless you or other Akismet users had already submitted the ‘specimen’ of the spam.

This is how Akismet works. When a new comment comes to your site it is submitted to the Akismet web service which will test the comment if its a friendly comment or just a plain spam. This includes  trackback, or pingback too.

Look at BlogDeManila Comment Page. Some comments look genuine but if you check the sites of those submitted URL, you will know that they are just purely Stupid-Pathetic-Annoying-Message or SPAM.

BlogDeManila Comment Page

If you see this really annoying comments or pingbacks, just mark them as “SPAM” to inform Akismet web service. Do not click on trash …yet.

Once you marked them as negative comment, they will be transferred to your Comment Spam Page. From here you can delete them permanently or let Akismet do it automatically.  Make sure that you’ve chosen the option to automatically discard (or delete) spam comments on posts older than a month.

Akismet Option to Delete Spam Automatically

Akismet becomes more effective and intelligent the more you use it. So use it freely!

Is Akismet FREE?

Yes and No. Akismet is free for personal use and non-profit organization and educational institution. BUT, yes there’s a big but here, according to Automaticc ( the maker of Akismet), if your blog is earning more than $500 a month, then are you are encouraged to get a $5/mo pro-blogger Akismet API key.

If you are running a commercial venture in your blog or corporate site, then you must get an enterprise subscription  for your company starting at $50/mo. The last thing that you want to see in your corporate  blog  are good old-fashioned pill, porn and Viagra ad comments, right?

You have a lot of better things to do than fight dozen and dozens of  ever-changing, high-tech spam aliens.

Don’t forget your best, automatic laser gun is already in your arsenal. All you have to do is  is activate, configure and use it. Forget that spam was ever a problem again. Hasta la vista, spam baby!

If you noticed the title of my post ” Hosting your OWN Blog”, I capitalized the word “OWN”.

Let me clarify this, the word “OWN” doesn’t mean buying your own hardware and setup your own web hosting in your house.  What I mean is, if you seriously want to be a blogger (read: make money online) forget about using free hosting service such as blogspot or wordpress. I’m not against bloggers using free blog hosting, I’m also using blogspot in one of my internet marketing.

While free hosting services are great, it doesn’t give you a professional image if you can’t even spend a few pennies. Some pay-per-post providers will not even allow blogs on subdomains. So it pays to have your domain hosted on a paid and reliable web hosting provider.

To be honest, there are a lot of cheap but reliable hosting nowadays there really is no excuse anymore of not hosting your own blog.  I have written a lot of  reviews on various web host provider already. Check them out.

As I’ve recommended before, if you don’t like my personal reviews, you can always check some independent  reviews of the best services out there. Or if you prefer, just “ask Mr. G”-  search google- on what company is providing the best service, but I warn you that not every replies of Mr. G are the most reliable.  Ask for a second opinion, search forums, ask your fellow blogger. If you’re a non-techie, person,  ask your younger siblings or friends who are more adept to new technologies.

There are hundreds of web hosting providers waiting for you out there. Seek them and they will be found

FREE Domain Name Registration

Want to register a new domain for free?

Yup, I’m not kidding. If GoDaddy is offering $0.99 ( or $1.17 including ICANN fees), 1&1 Internet on the other hand is offering  a free one-year .com domain registration.

hmmm…sounds like a good deal isn’t? After all, free is free, right?

If you are looking to start a blog right now, this offer is really for a grab!

Here is what written on the special terms and conditions:Special Offers Extended until June 2010

Note: Offer limited to one .com domain per customer for the first year. For each additional domain that you order, you will be billed at the regular price of $8 .99/year per domain. After the first free year you will be billed at the regular price of $ 8.99/year.

You may be asking these questions to yourself right now:

• What’s the catch?
• Do I need to pay something in advance?

Well, to answer those questions and kill the curiosity, I actually registered a new domain on them before writing this post. See the order cart screen shot below.

This is the actual shot of my payment receipt.  As you can see, I did not pay anything, nada, zip, zero. I even got a Free Private domain name registration (worth $8.99 at Godaddy).Don’t forget to check this when ordering!

By the way, after I ordered and paid (free or course), I opened my Paypal again to check if I was billed and I was surprised that I did not see any advance payment for 1&1 Internet. It means the deal is real. No string attached or whatsoever.

Hurry, this offer is good until May 31 only.

If you visit 1&1 Internet, you can see on their webhosting page that they also offers 3 months FREE for all their packages. They also have one of the cheapest package that starts at $3.99/month ( with 3 free months).

Grab this opportunity and make your presence known.

Yup it’s true, you can get a domain on Godaddy for $0.99 ( or $1.17 including ICANN fees) but here’s the deal – This promotion willl end by 6 June 2010 and only valid for the first 7500 users. So hurry and grab the domain name that you are looking for.

By the way, you will need a credit card for this offer. I did not see the Paypal among the options on the checkout page.

Opps, I almost forgot use 99INDY as the promotion code. Godaddy is using this promotional code because they are the primary sponsor  for the live race broadcast of Indy 500 which will be held on May 30, 2010. They are also sponsoring IndyCar star Danica Patrick.

Another reminder: 99INDY works for new domains only, for ONE domain, and once per account.

And for those who are looking for unlimited hosting, Godaddy is offering an extra 15% OFF on their Web Hosting plans.

Use the promo code fbfhost15 to get your extra savings when you order online at GoDaddy.com. This  offer expires 5/28/2010.  So hurry and enjoy the cheapest domain available in the market and the unlimited hosting as well.

Let me first state this, “page speed is important factor up to a certain point”.  This is to clear up some issues that I’ve written on my previous post. Still, just to reiterate, Google started to incorporate the loading of your site on as one of the basis in search ranking. So I encourage you to start looking at your blog or website’s loading speeding.

Why Page Speed is Important?

Quick loading site can make your online  presence better than the competition’s.  Who wants a website that is lagging behind anyway? Most websites are losing bucket loads of visitors because they can’t see the information they are looking right away. People want fast access to data. Between two similar pages with almost the same content, I assure you that an internet user will flock to the pages that load faster.

To be honest, I personally feel irritated when blog sites are slow loading.

So I think,  page speed is important not only it’s now one of Google’s signal in search ranking system but it boils down to making your visitors happy. Yes, it’s simple as that. Page speed improves how users perceive your site.

I already gave 7 tips on how to optimize your blog/site speed on my previous post. Go on, read my previous post if you haven’t done it.

Availability of  your Site

Availability affect the speed of your  blog/site pages . This is where choosing and using the right web hosting provider is a factor to consider.  Looking for the best web host is not an easy task. There are many things you have to consider even for something that looks simple. There are so many web hosts out there who will promise you earth shattering hosting packages such as giving you the cheapest price. But remember, choosing the expensive one is by no means the best either.

Choosing the best web hosting provider available to serve your needs is  a tiresome and grueling process. My ultimate recommendations are:

1. Ask your colleagues. Ask your fellow bloggers and/or webmaster who are in the industry for some time already. They are the best resources on where to find the best web hosting provider.
2. Check  out web hosting directory sites and read  the reviews.  You can read the recommendation and testimonials of different clients that are using their services already.

Note that there are web hosting rating sites that are biased on their reviews but there are neutral review sites that do exist as well.

When looking for a host make sure to look for the dependability, sound customer support systems in place and the one that can provide the speed.

It’s Official.We all need Speed…for our blogs in order to rank high on Google’s search page.

Google announced on April 09,2010 that they incorporated site speed as one of the over 200 signals in determining the position of a website in the search results.

According to Google Webmaster Central blog, they launched this change a few weeks back after rigorous testing and not too many people noticed it.

Google’s Matt Cutts says that the change will affect only a few percentage of websites:

“Fewer than 1% of search queries will change as a result of incorporating site speed into our ranking. That means that even fewer search results are affected, since the average search query is returning 10 or so search results on each page.

So please don’t worry that the effect of this change will be huge. In fact, I believe the official blog post mentioned that ‘We launched this change a few weeks back after rigorous testing.’

The fact that not too many people noticed the change is another reason not to stress out disproportionately over this change.”

7 Tips to better optimize your blog and keep it listed in Google search results.

There are a number of articles on the internet on best practices for improving your website’s load and response times. Below are just some of the proven tips that you can easily apply to improve the speed of your blog.

1. Use Google Page Speed tool to speed up your site. You can use Page Speed to evaluate the performance of your blog pages and to get suggestions on how to improve them.
2. Choose a fast and reliable web host with a good connection to the Internet. Slow servers can cause problems.
3. Use as few images and videos as possible on your blog .
4. Make sure that all images have height and width tags.  The tags will make sure that the browser knows the size of the image before loading it.
5. Use media content provider such as Flicker and YouTube to host your media images and videos instead of loading them on your webhost.
6. Use only the plugins you really need, and delete the rest.
7. Delete unnecessary PHP tags and database access.  Convert some PHP commands to HTML.

Blog reader wants immediate results. Most Internet users will just skip a site altogether if it fails to load within a couple of seconds. Even if, they are just dropping your EC button or clicking on your Adgitize widget. The faster your  blog pages load, the more readers of your blog will be.

If you need more explanation on how to apply these tips, I’ll be happy to elaborate them one by one. Just make sure to wear your seat belt when applying these tips