Whats’ with Black Friday?  A lot of company are into “giving” mood. Is it because of the Thanksgiving day? Well, let’s hope everyday is Thanksgiving day.

I have received tons of emails about big sales on different products including services, software, WordPress themes, cheap airline tickets, domain name, vitamins and web hosting from ever reliable HostGator. This is where Blog De Manila is currently hosted for the past two years already.

The 50% OFF includes shared hosting, reseller hosting, VPS hosting, Dedicated servers and Windows hosting!

If you are paying $4.95 this will translate to $2.48/month (pre-paid) if you will get a new account. That’s it, if you are an existing client of HostGator you are still qualified for the 50% OFF as long as you  keep your original, existing account open and in good standing.

For this promotion, you can get a  hosting packages for as low as:

• Shared hosting: As low as $4.95 Now only: $2.48/month (pre-paid)
• Reseller Hosting: As low as $24.95 Now Only: $12.48/month (pre-paid)
• VPS Hosting: As low as $19.95 Now Only: $9.98/month (First Month)
• Dedicated Servers: As low as $174 Now Only $87/month (First Month)

This is very cheap hosting packages already and here’s the catch – it will only run for 1 DAY!

How can you avail of the 50% OFF?

Just SIGN UP for a new account, and you do NOT need to insert a coupon code to receive the promo. The correct coupon code will automatically be inserted on all orders placed on Black Friday.

The promotion will begin just after midnight, Friday, November 25^th, 2011 Central Standard Time (-6 GMT). The special offer will run until 11:59PM CST Friday, November 25^th, 2011.

Hurry grab your domain name  GoDaddy’s “$5 .COM Black Friday Sale!” and host in on “HostGator’s 50% OFF” promo.

I received an email yesterday regarding this 25% off everything at StudioPress. If you are looking for some great WordPress themes out there, here’s your chance to grab them from StudioPress for a lesser price.

When you buy from StudioPress, you’re not only getting amazing designs of WordPress themes but you get unlimited access to their support forum, as well as unlimited updates.

And, you may use your themes on any blog or website, and as many as you wish.

Using the code THANKS  at checkout (don’t forget that), you can save 25% off of anything you’d like at WordPress design shop, StudioPress.

1. Get the Genesis Framework for only $45.

2. Snag most Genesis / design combos for a song and save close to $20.

3. Wipe the entire shop clean and get the StudioPress Pro Plus All-Theme Package. Get Genesis plus every design they’ve made, plus every design they make in the future, and save more than $74 off the regular price and over $875 off the retail price — and that’s just the existing 43 designs!

All you need to do is use the code THANKS when you check out and you’ll save 25% on anything and everything at StudioPress.com.

This deal ends promptly at 7:00 pm Pacific time on Monday, November 28, 2011.

Hurry up download and claim your new WordPress theme before the code expires!

I admit it. I sucked, and I failed big.

It’s hard to accept the fact that someone like me who is a preacher of backing up data lost  collectively more than a hundred posts. It’s one of the niche site where I am the administrator. The owner of the site just shook his head in an unbelief. I explained to him what happened and I’m not blaming anybody but me. We cannot sue the web host provider because it’s on their terms and conditions that they are not obligated to backup the data. We cannot request even just a partial backup from them because they too lost everything.

Let’s me state the hard fact, it is our responsibility as an admin or blogger to backup our own blog! Don’t rely on our web host provider.

But, just like what the title of my post today, I was able to recover everything (fyi: I’m still recovering more) even though I don’t have an online backup nor a full backup. I have a WordPress XML backup but it’s more than 1-year old already. It’s stale backup, not updated. I even looked on my other hard disks, but my search resulted to nothing.

I’ve tried using Google’s “cache:url” but it did not yield to a good result. It only cached the previous month. By the way, this Google tool of “cache:ur” is a one way to make sure that Google is really crawling and indexing your site. Try it, and see how Google takes a snapshot of your blog and pages. Here’s an example on how to use: simply type “cache:www.yourdomainname.com“ on Google search page (without the quote and replace the yourdomainname.com with your own domain name).

Since it didn’t quite work well with Google, the magic tool that showed up the missing post is Wayback Machine or www.archive.org. It’s a virtual time machine where you can browse your site –your missing site that is. Unlike Google, Wayback Machine includes most images in their archive!  This internet archiving machine started in 1996 and was opened to the public in 2001. Currently, it includes more than a 100 terabytes of date and has an archived of more than 150 billion pages.  You can check any web pages from 1996 up to yesterday. Try it, and see how does your site or blog looks like yesterday or a year ago. If you are lucky, you can even see your old theme.  Just type in the web site that you are looking for and make sure that you know the exact URL to be able to see the archive.

I’m forever grateful to this unsung modern hero – Wayback Machine – for  recovering not only the  missing blog  but rescuing  myself as well from humiliation. The owner of the niche site is already smiling when he saw his site has been recovered. He was mesmerized and have no idea how I did it.

Have you lost your posts in the past, not knowing where to get your backup? Now you know where to find it, even if you don’t have a physical backup in your hard drive.

Do you really want to have more interaction in your blog? Then don’t push or shove your readers away from your site! All you need is just a simple change of settings in your blog.

What do I mean pushing away?

One of the ways to engage your reader to your post is by enabling the comment box, right? Unfortunately, I’ve seen some blogs specially those who are using Blogspot, who are putting too much restriction on their comment box. I see this restriction also to some of those who are using third party comment plugin such as Disqus.

What do I mean too much restriction?

Well, it’s actually very obvious. It’s those blogs that doesn’t have “Name/URL”, “Anonymous”  as one of the choices for Blogspot and “Guest” for Disqus. Personally, whenever a blog that  doesn’t have one these choices in their comment box, I tend to shy away from them.

Let’s face the reality. There are readers out there who are loyal to their personal email account,  perhaps Yahoo  and doesn’t have one from Gmail. How about those readers who doesn’t even have an OpenID account. What if they want to leave a message in your blog but doesn’t want to open anymore an account on either GMail or OpenID . Will you force them to open an account first before letting them in?  What will you do?

Check the image above and see what I mean.

If you really want to engage your readers to be more interactive to your site, then give them more choices. If you are worrying about spam, then just enable the Captcha or word verification.

Speaking of word verification, I also suggest that you enable the word verification on the same page where your comment box is and not on another page. Looking again on our sample image, you can’t see the word verification on the same page or window, unlike the sample below where it’s already showing.

The reason you need to put them on the same page is because there are readers who doesn’t check anymore if there is a word verification after publishing their comment. You will loose a comment if the reader didn’t see the second window. Make it easy for your readers, show the word verification right away.

Below is the perfect (at least for me) comment box with complete choices and word verification on the same page.

For those who doesn’t have the choices above, I encourage you to change your settings…now! Don’t push your readers away from  the post where you’ve spent blood and sweat already in writing it. All you need is just a simple switch on your settings.

I was not able to remind all bloggers yesterday about our Backup Day (1st day of the month) because I was  busy troubleshooting a client from Europe regarding their  Windows 2003 problem. When I get home, I tutored my youngest son so I don’t have the time anymore to write a post about backing up blogs.

Today, I want to share to you two FREE Backup software that you can use for your files. I’ve been using these two apps for the past two months already and I’ve found them very reliable and of course they are free.

SugarSync and DropBox applications are  using “cloud computing”. They were actually designed to synchronize your data. In short, your data will be available online and offline.While writing this post here at home, I’m actually uploading  my source code on DropBox which is  in our office through remote desktop. In few minutes, this source code will be available here on my laptop and my other PC where I installed Dropbox.

There is a lot in common between DropBox and SugarSync features. I  won’t list them here anymore because I want you to try them both and choose which is best for your needs.

In summary:

• Free storage – SugarSync: 5 GB, DropBox: 2 GB. If you want more, get their business plan.
• Free version of SugarSync has a 25 MB limit for public file sharing while DropBox has none.
• SugarSync lets you sync to any folder while Dropbox restricts you to one folder and it’s subfolders only.
• DropBox works with Windows, Mac, Linux, iPad, iPhone, Android and BlackBerry while SugarSync works with  iPhone, iPad, Android, BlackBerry, Windows Mobile, and Symbian devices

If you want to backup your  whole WordPress blog including widgets, themes, plugins, and SQL database, you may use Backup Buddy which has full integration with DropBox.

Detour
noun

1. a roundabout way; deviation from a direct way
2. a route used when the direct or regular route is closed to traffic
3. departure from an established ideology or party line

Yes, my dear readers, BlogDeManila is deviating from it’s mission.

BlogDeManila was established on September 2008. After 3 long years of” blogging for bloggers,” I decided to deviate from it’s original mission of “helping other people blog smartly”. It has been a journey of ups and downs, full of adventure quests.

I personally  believe (unless you will disagree with me), that I’ve been successful in the mission that I’d planned to accomplish 3 year ago. I shared my knowledge to my loyal readers and in return I’ve learned a lot from them as well.

I’ve told my wife that I want to put a personal blog. A different one from the way I’m presenting my posts here at BlogDeManila. Unfortunately, she did not agree  on my plan. She told me that I’m already managing different niches of blogs and I don’t have the time anymore to put up a personal blog. Instead, she told me to turn BlogDeManila into a personal blog. I don’t want to argue with her so I agreed on her plan. I think she’s right. All I have to do is to write more personal post here instead of putting another blog.

And so, I decided (no, my wife decided for me) to inject  more post with personal touch  here. Note that BlogDeManil is only on a detour and not a complete turn around. I’m still going to write post blog for bloggers like SEO, make money online, web hosting, affiliate marketing, adsense, wordpress and more. I also decided to put additional monetizing methods here, perhaps pay per post or Adsense. I hope you don’t mind me earning from my post,do you?

Please continue to support me in this adventure. Give me a big clap if you agree on my new route or frown if you don’t agree.

This is just gonna be a very, very quick post.

I received a special coupon code today from WPWebhost which I want to share.

How to Avail the Coupon Code:

Sign up at http://www.wpwebhost.com/signup/ with the special coupon code “INDEPENDENCE” to get 47% off  the normal pricing.

What you will get?

• Free domain registration
• Free WordPress Migration
• Free WordPress Installation
• Free Premium Themes from Themefusse
• Free Bundled CDN

WPWebHost is an optimized WordPress hosting server, and if you are using WordPress you will have no other reason not to host your WordPress with WPWebHost.

This wpwebhost special coupon is applicable to all hosting plans and payment terms, and is available from July 4-6 only.

By the way, you will also enjoy FREE lifetime domain when you sign up! (except Rookie Plan which is free for only 1 year).

Happy Independence to all our American friends!

For those who are into SEO, webmasters and bloggers who simply want to know the latest Google page rank of their blog, here’s a good news for all of you. Google rolled out a major Page Rank update yesterday, 27th June 2011. I’m not expecting a major update for this month not even for the next two months because of Google’s late roll out in their previous update. So this latest Page Rank update is unexpected.

Bad news is, blogdemanila was demoted by 1 PR.  The good news is almost all my niche sites were  upgraded! I’m aware that I haven’t promoted BlogDeManila for the past few months because I’m busy in promoting my other blogs and I know this is the only reason why it was demoted. No hurt feelings, this is still a good news for me, considering the fact that I don’t earn much here (based Ad networks).  4 of my niche sites were upgraded and 2 remain the same. So, for overall performance, the latest Google PageRank update is still favorable and I’m glad my sites were not affected by Google Panda.

What about you? Have you checked the latest Google PageRank of your site? Let me  know the results.

And for those who did not benefit from the Google Page Rank, don’t lose hope. PageRank is important in the eyes of Google but it’s not the end of everything. I have one niche site with Page Rank of 0 but I’m earning more on it than my other 3 sites combined.

You may want to read some tips on how to make your Google PageRank increase:

1. Build high quality sites using Google standards.
2. Make Your Site Visible To Google And Other Search Engines
3. 3 Tips For Creating a Google-Friendly Site
4. Improve PageRank by Linking Automatically
5. SEO Here, SEO There, SEO Everywhere: The Secret – Revealed!
6. WordPress SEO Secrets
7. Use Drag and Drop WordPress Theme – a Super Optimized wordpress theme.

When I first installed WordPress more than 4 years ago on my 2nd blog, I admit that I fell in love with it.  It’s what you call “love at first sight”. Since then, there’s no turning back for me.

Being an I.T. consultant for more than a decade already, I’ve used various tools in developing website from Notepad (do you believe it?), HTML editors, Dreamweaver, Mambo, Joomla and more. But nothing beats WordPress in features that I’m looking for. All my clients websites are based on WordPress engine, whether they are blogs, corporate sites or just a simple mom and pop front store page.

Here Are My 7 Top (Personal) Reasons Why I’m Using WordPress

1. Great Price @Free – Who wouldn’t want free lunch? Yup, you don’t have to pay anything when you install except of course your domain and hosting. Compared it to other tools such as Dreamweaver which, as of this writing, will cost you almost US$400. Thanks to open source community, WordPress is  provided for FREE!

2. Very, very Easy to Install – Based on my experience, the hardest part of installing WordPress is setting up the database but, only if you want to install it manually. If not, it’s just one-click if your hosting is using Fantastico installer.

3. Very, very Easy to Upgrade – Specially with version 3 and up, upgrading themes, plugins and WordPress core itself is almost all in one-click already. No need to download anything if you are upgrading from the Admin dashboard.

4. Optimized for Search Engines – in short SEO. By default, WordPress is already set to be SEO friendly from page titles, summaries, permalinks, categories, blogrolls, feed submissions (pinging), meta tags  and sitemaps. There are also a number of third party plugins that will further improve WordPress SEO.

5. CMS is Pretty Damn Easy – I have clients where I developed their websites using WordPress and nothing else. These client of mine are not into blogging but they are my corporate clients. By tweaking some codes and changing the look-and-feel of the Admin dashboard, my clients doesn’t notice that their corporate website  is running in WordPress framework. In fact, WordPress has been awarded in 2010 as Open Source CMS Hall of Fame.

6. Themes and Plugins – I call these additional tools as magic tricks of WordPress. They are like wizards to me. They can extend WordPress and do almost anything you want to do. Upload a new theme and you can turn your WordPress to your eyes desire. Plugins on the other hand are “little but smart wizards”  that were designed to modify, customize, optimize and add functionality. There’s no WordPress site out there that is not using a theme or a plugin. Do you agree?

7. Vibrant and Wide support of the Community - Just try to throw in a question in Google and you will surely see an answer already. You will always find the solutions for any questions, and the community is always willing to help when you are stuck with a problem. There’s always the lifeline that you can depend on. WordPress is an open source software and is being developed, maintained and improved by hundreds of people. These group of silent brains are all working hard to make every version of WordPress surpass the previous one.

You can do a lot with WordPress. You have the power to control almost every thing on it. The limits are really only set by your own imagination and abilities. If you are just starting, try get web host provider that has WordPress on their Control Panel already such as BlueHost and Hostgator. WordPress is a secured platform but sometimes the web host is not, so don’t take chances.

So why am I using WordPress? My short answer is… WordPress is FUN!

Now tell me, why are you using WordPress? If not, then Why Not?

Blogging has become a social force and this is what the World Bloggers Day 2011 is all about.  Blogosphere has grown so large that even the main stream media are turning to bloggers to disseminate information not only in real time but  looking at it as a medium with powerful force.

Indeed a lot of fascinating news  whether good or bad  such as scandals, expose, or a simple announcing of an event where mostly ignited by a lot of bloggers.

Most, if not all media entities have “blog” in their sites as well aside from their main news.

No doubt the role of bloggers have proven vital in data dissemination exponentially. So let’s all celebrate the World Bloggers Day 2011. Find out the various activities within or near your communities by registering your blog at http://www.worldbloggersday.org/.

I’m Celebrating World Bloggers’ Day 2011

Theme: The Roles of Bloggers

Initiated by Cebu Bloggers Society, Inc.

I would like also  to remind every body about the Blog Backup Day on every 1st day of the month. Since May 1 will be on Sunday, I encourage you to do your backup before the weekend comes, which is today