Wow…time flies so fast! I’ve been out of town for almost a month…travelling in all directions with my whole family.  Tiring, but a lot of memorable moments were bonded.

My last post was more than a month old already. I’m very sorry for that, but let me tell you that I did not procrastinate nor I’m a  Blogcrastinator.     A  Blogcrastination – the deferment of writing a blog post to a later time; often a mechanism for coping with anxiety.

In fact, all the blogs that I own and most of the sites that I’m maintaining ( I’m not the blog owner) were all updated even if I was on a vacation except for blogdemanila.com. This is of course due to WordPress scheduling techniques. All the articles were set to be posted on a scheduled date.

So how did I earn while traveling? Simple, by just letting my blogs run on their own. To tell you the truth,  my earnings for this past four weeks  where I was mostly offline are more than what I’ve earned  on my first year of blogging.

And here’s the other truth;  I don’t really do ALL the work. It’s all outsourced or automated.

It’s simple really when you already have set-up your “blog empire” and let the soldiers do most of the work. All you have to think about is the strategy you will use in conquering your next loots.

Just like the old English idiom, “Don’t put all your eggs in one basket”, there’s also there’s WAY more to blogs than running a few clunky ads.

Spilling the secret box

My secret box is composed of a mix of revenue streams including:

• Services (setting-up sites and blogs)
• Affiliate products and services
• Ads (such as Adsense and Bidvertiser)

I know that some of you are earning a lot doing product reviews and/or using pay per post networks. Honestly, I’m not good on this. I’m not a good writer and so I shy away from this task as much as possible.

Since I’m not good in writing,there’s another SECRET that I’m going to reveal on my next post.  I just have to schedule the articles that are needed to be posted on all the blogs that I’m maintaining. Don’t worry it won’t take long.

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.

Mye,  a blogger friend of mine informed me about the WordPress scheduled post problem and asked for my help.  She experienced it when she installed the latest WordPresss 2.9 version. The installation was successful except that, her setup of scheduled post were not publishing.

I know how important scheduled posts are specially for those who are into Project 365 (it’s a project wherein you post about your daily activities or take a pictures of what you are doing) , and don’t forget the members of Adgitize who are trying to post every day in order to get more points ( and more earnings).

For those who haven’t experienced a missed WordPress post schedule, here’s how it looks like:

The normal status of a post are published, scheduled, pending review and draft . As you can see from the captured screen the status of the post is “Missed Schedule”.

How To Fix The WordPress Scheduled Post Problem

1. Good news! WordPress developers were alerted of this bug as soon as they uploaded the 2.9. If you installed this version, all you have to do is install the WordPress 2.9.1. It fixed this missed schedule problem and more.
2. If you are not using WP 2.9 and yet you are experiencing this problem, I recommend that you use a plugin.

2.1 Scheduled MIA – a WordPress plugin that looks for posts with a date in the past and that still have post_status=future.
2.2. Missed Schedule – It runs automatically every 15 minutes and will publish “future” posts in database.

I just want to tell you my dear readers, that not all bugs can be seen by the developers of WordPress.  Remember that WordPress is an open source application written by hundreds of contributors. The least we can do is be patient  and report the bugs encountered. WordPress needs your help too!

Best WordPress Theme

If you rely on your blog for the food in your table, I highly recommend that “never upgrade without doing a local test”. Setting up a local test is very easy, but this is not our topic for today. I might just blog about that in the future.

Happy Blogging 2010 everyone!

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

There’s a worm on the loose and it’s attacking blogs and websites powered by WordPress.

If you are using WordPress, make sure that you are using the latest version. According to some WordPress developers, this is the only way to secure your site.

Older WordPress verions have security holes that are being actively exploited by hackers to inject spam links. You either Upgrade or Die. Not really, but your site may drop-off the search engine radar.

Matt Mullenweg (main developer of WordPress) , wrote “The only thing that I can promise will keep your blog secure today and in the future is upgrading.”

Clues That Your Site Has Been Attacked :

1. Strange additions to the pretty permalink such as /category/post-title/%&(%7B$%7Beval(base64_decode($_SERVER%5BHTTP_REFERER%5D))%7D%7D|.+)&%/. Check Journeyetc.com on how to fix this.
2. A new “admin” user has been added.  Try to check your site users for “Administrator (2)”.This admin uses a javascript to hide itself. You can not even see his “presence” on your dashboard’s users page.

Steps You Need To Do

1. Backup your site. Export your posts to your local drive using WordPress export tool.
2. Upgrade! Upgrade! Upgrade!
3. Change password.
4. If your site had been attacked, read My site was hacked.
5. If you need help in upgrading, just leave a comment here and BDM might be able to help you.
6. If you are running a corporate site/blog and you need help right away, you may want to get  in touch with WordPress Help Center.

For Advance Users

If you want to make sure that there are no extra administrators registered and hiding in your blog, you can either run this SQL query directly on your MySQL client or do it from phpMyAdmin by selecting your WordPress database as suggested by Dougal Campbell.

This is not to scare you but the threat is real. I’m not here like a prophet of doom, but to warn and perhaps be able to help you in any possible way I can.

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

If you are looking for a “Must-Attend University for Bloggers” or if you feel that you are trying to learn a foreign language whenever you see the words “WordPress, FTP, Filezilla, Webhosting, RSS” and other alien words…

Or, if you just simply want to know the step-by-step process on how to setup a blog from choosing a domain name to using the “FeedBurner”…

Then… look no farther. I’m presenting to you the 10 Easy To Follow Videos Showing You How To Create Your Blog From Scratch!

These videos are for veteran bloggers too who wants to do some reviews  on their skills (no examinations needed! )

By the way, the course is FREE

Here’s the Menu and Outline of Each Free Video:

Video 1 – Why You Should Use WordPress

Discover why it is so important to use WordPress for your blog and how you can learn, for FREE, how to set up your very own blog.

Video 2 – How To Get Your Own Domain Name

Discover how easy and fast it is to get your very own domain name for your new blog or website

Video 3 – How To Get A Web Host

Discover how easy and fast it is to set up your own hosting account for your new blog or website. And you’ll also be surprised at how very affordable it is to host your own blog.

Video 4 – How To Install WordPress

Discover how you can install the WordPress platform for your new blog! It’s free and it’s very easy to use once you’ve installed it.

Video 5 – How To Upload Files To Your Webhost Using FTP

Discover how to upload files to your own website or blog using FTP. Don’t worry, FTP is just like sending an email with attachment to your friend.

Video 6 – Choosing A WordPress Theme For Your New Blog

Discover how easy and painless it is to get your own free theme for your new WordPress blog.

WordPress 2.8 Ready Theme

Video 7 – How To Install And Use WordPress Plugins

Find out how you can easily install and use WordPress plugins for your new WordPress blog. Plugins are extra tools for WordPress.

Video 8 – How To Create Your First Blog Post And Blog Page

Discover how easy, simple and fast it is to create your first blog post and blog page. If you know how to type, you’ll find this video very easy to follow indeed

Video 9 – What RSS Is And Why You Need It

Discover what the mysterious letters “rss” means and learn how it can make you super effective on the information highway

Video 10 – How To Use Feedburner For Supercharging Your RSS Capabilities

Learn about “feedburner”, and how you can use it to help you boost your rss capabilities.

If you have any comments or questions on setting-up your blog please send me a personal email or feel free to add some comments on this post. Enjoy!

“Baker” is the codename for WordPress 2.8. It’s named after the great jazz trumpeter Chet Baker. As stated on the previous post “WordPress 2.8 Features“, if there’s one factor that you want to update to the latest WordPress is because of the SPEED – it’s way faster to use.

Galwin of OrginalBlogger, upgraded his blog to WordPress 2.8 this morning and he find it “BETTER” than the previous version.

You can find the download page for WordPress 2.8 here.

If you don’t have time to read my previous post, you can just watch the quick video here that walks you through the latest additions.

If you need the step-by-step on how to upgrade your current WordPress, check the 3 Step Upgrade Guide directly from WordPress.org. Make sure that your themes and plugins are WordPress 2.8 compatible already. I suggest that you take a visit on where you downloaded your themes and plugins.

WordPress 2.8 Theme Ready

Let’s see how slowly I write a post

As I start to write this post, WordPress 2.7 has been downloaded 5,949,994 times. Let’s see how many more users will download WP 2.7 before I end my post.

Milestone of WordPress 2.8

Alright, the date has been written in the stone. WordPress 2.8 will be released on June 10, 2009. Mark it on your calendar!. 2.8 is the one with the most tickets opened and closed. According to the developer’s tracker, it is the first time a milestone passes the 800 line.  What does it mean? It simply means that WordPress solved/fixed 800 bugs and/or added/improved/optimized features! I know that most user’s are not aware of these. Heck, we doesn’t even care on what’s going on behind the engine of WordPress.

Let’s just be thankful for all the developers, reviewers, testers and all the people involved in this magnanimous project that is giving benefits to all of us.

Highlights and New Features of WordPress 2.8

New Theme Browser and Installer

You may now be able to install your favorite themes in a single click, quick and easy just like installing a plugin.  Searching and browsing for a theme is now much easier because of the new options to choose like colors, column width, features and more. Additionally, you can use keywords to search for a theme.

Plugin Management

I thought installing plugins in WP 2.7 is the best already, but WP 2.8 provides filtering plugins by state such as Active, Recently Active, Inactive and Upgrade Available. You can also search for a plugin by name, author and tag, or simply click on popular tag.

Customize Headers

WordPress 2.8 Ready Theme

It is now possible to change the header menu text  without touching the code or manually editing the theme. This feature will work will only work if the theme author has configured the theme to allow this capability.

New Drag and Drop Widgets Interface

Widgets can now be  arranged in up to four columns in the administration dashboard.

Faster Loading of Admin Pages

This very important to most of us since we are accessing this page everyday. This was made possible via script compression and concatenation.

Automatic Timezone and Day Light Savings Time (DST)

No need for manual update anymore!. Just enter your location/city and let it roll on its own.

There are actually hundreds more new features like; Don’t ask for confirmation when marking a comment as spam, helping people when entering wrong email addresses during the installation, etc. I leave  to you to find out the other features. And by the way, smilies are now loading much faster than ever

What do you think of these new features in WordPress 2.8? If you think I left out some important features (maybe you have favorites), please leave a comment to say so.

My question is, I’m already in love with version 2.7, so why did you create something as great as 2.8?

Note: I’m now about to publish my post and the latest WordPress 2.7 download is at 5,954,791. That is almost 5,000 downloads while I was writing! Let’s see how WordPress 2.8 downloads stats in the following weeks.

WordPress 2.8 Ready Theme

Oh boy, I was busy for the past three days and time flies so fast. It was only 3 days ago when I wrote my last post and now, weekend is almost here. A friend of mine is launching a business next week so she asked for my hand to helped her in preparing some business materials.

Anyway, today I will give you the 2nd part of our topic “SEO Here, SEO There, SEO Everywhere“. Remember the WordPress SEO Secrets that I mentioned on my previous post? Well, it’s timing because I received some additional secrets from WordPress SEO author Michael Martine that he wants to share to us.

Basic Education in SEO according to Michael Martine (WordPress SEO Secrets)

For SEO point of view, the parts of the blog the matters most are: Titles, post slug names, headings, and text content. Let’s discuss each one.

• Titles: Keywords (search terms) in titles are very important to search engines. Titles appear at the top of a browser window or in a browser window tab. The problem with blogs is that your headline automatically becomes the title unless you have a plugin that allows them to differ.

• Post slug names: The post slug is the virtual file name of a blog post. This is very important to search engines. It becomes part of the permalink for a blog post. You need to set up what are known as “pretty permalinks” in WordPress, and you need to edit the slug for SEO reasons. You want to use important keywords in the slug, just you do for the title.

• Headings: In your WordPress blog, you can use various heading levels when writing posts to break up the content into sections. Search engines pay attention to keywords in headings. Many people don’t know how to see the controls for headings in WordPress. You have to click on the “Kitchen Sink” button on your WordPress toolbar (barring special buttons added by certain WordPress plugins, it should the last button on toolbar above the write box). Once the second row of toolbar buttons is revealed, use the “Format” drop-down to set headings.

• Text content: Of course the content of the post must be relevant to a searcher’s needs. Use the same words in the post the searcher would use in a search (keywords). Use them as frequently as you can while still sounding natural (read it out loud to test). Think of it this way: if your searcher has a question, you want your post to be the answer.

If you want to more on how to make your wordpress blog visible to Google and other search, I suggest you check WorPress SEO Secrets. It will explain how to do all of this step by step in words, audio, and video.

If you  have questions on what I posted here, just write it on the comment area and I’ll do my best to answer them.

Update! Update!: WordPress Secrets SEO will be taken out of the market in 2 days. Saturday, the 17th is the last day.