Perhaps you noticed that I haven’t posted anything about blogging in all my previous posts.  The last topic that I’ve written about blogging was my article on Google PageRank Update which is almost a 2-month old post already.

To tell you frankly, I’m was busy with 3 things.

1. I just accomplished my first ever century bike ride last Sunday. It was a grueling 190 kilometers ride around Laguna De Bay.  It took us 14 hours to cover the whole distance. If you divide 190 kilometers by 14 hours, you will get 13.57. It means we were only traveling at a speed of 13.57 kilometers per hour.

Why so slow? Because we used mountain bikes and not a road bike. The endless uphills and incline roads somewhere in Quezon province and some parts of Laguna tested our strength and endurance.

With My Bike Buddies

To give you some statistics about this ride of mine, if you may:

1. This is my first century ride. A century is any ride that goes beyond 100 kilometers.
2. I drank 1 cup of coffee during our breakfast.
3. I gulped a total of 2 liters of Gatorade.
4. I drank a total of 4 liters of water.
5. I also tried drinking an energy drink and half-liter of soda  for my sugar needs.
6. I have traveled a total of more than 3,000 kilometers on my 1 year of bike riding – mostly trail biking.

Am I going to repeat this craziness? You bet I will! My next goal is to go somewhere either in Batangas or Aurora and perhaps Baguio by early next year.

2. I’m busy with my work. Really toxic.

This is the reason why I’m into biking. To release the stress I’m experiencing right now in my work.

Last week we started to migrate our project into a new system. And, I have one of the biggest responsibility for the migration.

Our company is into processing Short Messaging System or SMS and emails as well. Not only here in the Philippines but all around the world. I’ve developed the module for receiving and sending all of the messages that are passing through our servers. My program is parsing hundred of thousands of messages and if something goes wrong even for just one message, the fault is on me.

I’m actually monitoring our system for almost 24 hours. I’m even peeking in our servers while writing this post. So much for this, I’m actually under a contract  in our company not to disclose any information on what I’m doing. AHA!

3. I’m busy developing a new website with blog.

Mind you this is not a paid project but a free one.  I’m actually will be having a dinner meeting tomorrow with my client.

Building a website can be a daunting task at times specially when your clients doesn’t know what kind of website they really want to setup. Good thing I started this project using WordPress as the foundation. Not only I’m at ease with WP but I’m also using a tool that can magically turn a website or blog into a new look by just clicking and dragging the objects or elements of the site.

If you are curios about this magical tool that I’m talking about, check it HERE. With this new revolutionary tool, you will be able to produce the most amazing sites you can. I promise you can design a new site down to a few steps, POINT, CLICK, DRAG, DROP & SAVE.  And it is truly that simple.

Please bear with me while blogdemanila.com is getting a facelift.  It has been ages already since this blog was given a makeover. It won’t be an extreme makeover but just simple upgrading and tweaking of the layout.

I’ve promised that I will use a custom theme for this blog, but due to unforeseen new projects that came-up, I don’t have the luxury of time to create my own theme anymore.

If you find anything unusual or awkward in this site, like broken links, missing posts and images, please be calm and patient.

If you have noticed that I seldom post here at blogdemanila.com, this is due to some offline projects that I’m doing . It doesn’t mean that I’m going to quit blogging. No, never!  It won’t happen.

In fact, I’ve already lined-up some topics that I’m going to post like basics of blogging, link building, adsense tips, seo techniques and services that blogdemanila will offer.

So, please stay calm while I’m  fine-tuning and adjusting the layout of blogdemanila.com.

I think this is a good news for all WordPress users.

Best WordPress Theme

WordPress has won the Overall Best Open Source CMS Award in the 2009 Open Source CMS Awards.

“From Blog Software to Full-Featured CMS”

Matt Mullenweg, the founding developer of WordPress,  was very excited to learn about the good news because it is the first time that WordPress have won this award.  This is no small feat because WordPress was designed to be a “blog” software and not a CMS ( Content Management System).

Tied for runners up are MODx and SilverStripe.

WordPress receives US$ 4,000 in prize money, while MODx and SilverStripe each receive US$ 2,500.

Aside from winning the  top spot in the Overall Award,  WordPress also made its way into the top five for the first time in Best Open Source PHP CMS Category.

According to the award site, WordPress outranked Drupal (Winner) by a very slight margin. I guess WordPress has the best chance to win this category by next year.

Matt , in his blog, wrote “ Every member of the WordPress community, from core developer to beginning user, should be proud to be part of this momentum: congratulations to us all!”

Best WordPress Theme

As most of you are aware already, I’m making a complete make-over on my site. I thought it’s gonna be easy but it’s not. I could have taken the easy way, that is upload a new theme then bang… everything is done.

The die has been cast. I already made a decision to use a home made theme for BlogDeManila.  It’s been more than a week since I announced that BDM is under renovation and yet until now I’m not done yet. The process is taking so long because I have to install everything (wordpress core files, plugins, theme template) on my local computer. I also installed PHP, MySQL and Apache in order for me to avoid touching my live blog while doing the surgery or else you will see the blood and bones.

I’ve been in the I.T. industry for more than a decade already and studying how WordPress works is not that easy if you are not a programmer. It’s not as easy as plug-and-play. You’ve got to touch the bare metal of the wordpress core files and understand how each modules are related to each other. Alright, I’m stopping now discussing the details. I know this subject is boring.

Anyway while searching for a nice theme features and layout to copy, I admit that I’m getting my inspiration from different themes such as Thesis, Flexibility and the theme that MichaelMartine.com is using, I’ve found a brand new theme that is so cool! Really, it’s freaking awesome!

If you want to check this theme just make your way to HeadWay! Why did I tell you that this is freaking awesome? Have you seen a drag and drop theme? This is it! You will appreciate the ease of the drag and drop feature of the layout editor plus it has a vast amount of options.

HeadWay allows you to change options from behind the scene from adding your favicon, rearranging your blog’s navigation using the drag and drop. No longer you have to fiddle around with WordPress default navigation!

You can also change the color of of virtually any element of your blog such as font and  background colors by using the color picker.

For those who wants their blog to get a high Google PageRank and SERP, HeadWay can help you optimize your site too! It has an SEO options than can edit virtually everything SEO related down to titles, meta tags, noindex-ing, and more.

How I wish I’ve found this fabulous theme before I announced to the world that BDM is under renovation.

Alright, make your HeadWay now!

WordPress 2.8 Compatible Theme