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.

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?

There’s no official Blog Backup Day.

Ooopps wait, there’s one already at Bloggerdesign.com. They declared it to be every 13th of the month. I don’t know what’s with the 13th. Is it due to “Friday the 13th?” Unfortunately, the day they declared was not spread through out. While searching on Google, they were the only one who declared and stopped it there.

Ooopps wait, there’s another one declared by Stephanie Booth. She chose every 24th of the month. Why the 24th? I can’t find the reasons in her blog but it’s a good read specially the reasons why do you need to backup.

Now, if you may, let’s declare the 1st day of the month to be the Blog Backup Day.

Why the 1st day?

1. This is to give you an exactly 1 month as a milestone to backup your blog. In case something bad happened in your data, it will be easy for you to trace your backup files  since it will be dated  as the 1st day of the previous month.
2. A lot of people are usually aware of the 1st, 15th and 30th day of the month. I guess you know the reasons for this.
3. Email reminders (like rules, statistics) are being sent every 1st day of the month for almost all forums/groups.
4. Affiliate monthly reports are sent also on the 1st day of the month.
5. In Britain and New Zealand, some still practices the traditional “pinch and a punch” every 1st day of the month.  So let’s all try to “pinch and punch” our fellow bloggers by reminding them to backup their blog as well.

How to Backup?

It doesn’t matter what methods you will use,as long you backup everything  that you are using from your files, images, wordpress, themes, plugins, database, passwords and data that is of any value to you. Below are just some of the methods that I’m recommending to backup your blogs.

1. FTP using FileZilla client – by downloading the whole public_html. Make sure you have enough bandwidth.
2. For WordPress -
   • use WordPress Database Backup plugin
   • From Administrator Dashboard >Tools>Export
3. For Blogger/Blogspot -
   • From Blogger Dashboard>Settings>Basic>Export Blog
   • If you want to backup your Design/Template go to Layout>EDIT HTML >click the Download link.
4. For Typepad and Movale Type
   • Both have Import/Export on the Administration dashboard
5. MySQL – use PhpMyAdmin, see the official post here “Backing Up Your Database”
6. You may also want to use online back services such as BlogBackupr (Free) or BackupMyBlog ($19.95 per year for up to 1 gigabyte of storage).

As I’ve mentioned above, it doesn’t matter what methods you will use as long as you have a backup at least an amount of 1 month to rollback. You don’t need to finish reading this post, go…burn writable DVDs, use external hard disk or plugin a USB drive to backup your data before it’s too late.

But wait, the Blog Backup Day will not be successful without your support.  So please, encourage other bloggers to do so by blogging about the importance of backups. Tell them about the methods that you’ve read here. You don’t need to put a back link here if you don’t want to, just copy-paste my methods or simply spread the word and share your techniques.

Let’s raise the awareness. Let’s make Blog Backup Day a successful activity for the whole community.

My wife is so happy to know that her blog’s Google PageRank is finally back. She doesn’t have any idea why she lost it last year. The only reason we assumed is because of the local host provider she was using which was always downtime. It’s good that she transferred it to a better host already.

The rumors of Google PageRank is already all over the place. It’s the buzz among the webmasters. The Unofficial date Google updated the PR was on the 19th of January. Why unofficial? According to some webmasters, there’s still no announcement from Google itself.Google’s engineers are still silent on the update. So as of this time, it still not confirmed.

Confirmed or not, I’m sure a lot of bloggers are already happy to know that their hard labor of building links paid off. It took 9 months this time for Google PageRank update. Unlike in the previous years,  it is being updated almost every 4 months.

How to Increase Your Google PageRank

If you are not satisfied with your Google PageRank or simply wants to improve it, I suggest that you review the following posts. I assure you these tips will make wonders on your blog or site.

1. Secrets and Tips on How to Generate Traffic Like a Pro
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.

A lot of people love spam, specially for their breakfast. Personally, I don’t like spam. I think it’s full of unhealthy cholesterol. But, that’s me. It’s my personal choice.

And, I don’t like spam in the virtual world as well. I even hate deleting them from WordPress dashboard. The only one good thing that Spam that I can think of is that, the more popular your blog is, the more Spam it can get.

When I logged-on to my blogs after my long vacation, my blogs were bombarded with spams. Not only hundreds but in thousands.

wordpress-pending-comments

Sure, Akismet is on it’s feet filtering and faithfully guarding all my blogs. Unfortunately, there were still unscrupulous spammers out there that posed as a legitimate comments and so they end up on the “Pending” stage. Akismet cannot automatically tag them as spam yet unless we already  informed the Akismet servers about these new and really hard to distinguish spam.

Here’s the fastest and quickest way to delete WordPress pending comments in just 5 easy steps.

1. Log on into your CPanel (or Plesk, HSphere or any custom proprietary control panels). No matter what control panels that you are using, make sure it has a link to phpMyAdmin.

cpanel-login

2. Look for the phpMyAdmin and click it. This is the front-end of your database  where you can manage the database of your blog. This tool is very powerful, so take extra careful in using your phpyMyAdmin. Perhaps I can discuss more on this in the future.

3. Choose the right database. This is located in the top left of the screen. If you have multiple blogs in your CPanel, select the database that  you are using for the blog where the comments  that you want to delete are located. Make sure it is a WordPress database.

4. Select the SQL Tab. This will open up a query box.

Type the following command below.

DELETE FROM wp_comments WHERE comment_approved = 0

where:

0= Pending comments
1= Approved already

We’re going to delete pending comments only, so just write the “0″ at the end; that’s Zero and not the letter “o”.

5. And click the Go button. This will delete all pending comments.

If you refresh the WordPress dashboard of your blog you’ll notice all the comments have disappeared in one Go.

Tip

• To prevent spam entering into your WordPress, implement CAPTCHA in your comment form.
• To stop spam from accumulating install the Akismet plugin.

WordCamp Philippines 2010 is just around the corner. Will you be there?

According to the email that I received today, WordCamp Philippines 2010 registration is closing soon with only few slots left. I wonder there’s only a few bloggers who is posting about WordCamp Philippines 2010.

WordCamp Philippines 2010

WordCamp Philippines is the largest gathering of WordPress users in the country. This year marks the third time WordCamp is held in the Philippines, following successful WordCamps in 2008 and 2009.  It is scheduled on October 2, 2010. And it is happening at the College of St. Benilde along Taft Avenue, Manila.

Aside from various experts on WordPress that you will hear,  the organizer is bring back none other than WordPress developer and Automattic founder Matt Mullenweg .

The registration fee is only PhP700. This entitles you to a ticket to the event, a WordCamp Philippines 2010 kit, lunch and coffee, and a campers’ shirt.  But wait, there’s more – the organizer is giving a discount for those who will register and pay on or before August 15, 2010. They are slashing 200 pesos.  So better hurry! You still have 10 days to get that special bonus.

Unfortunately, even if the badge that I’m using says ” I’m going, are you?”, I can’t really attend the event this year because of the church activity that I have to attend in Baguio which was scheduled a year ago even before WordCamp Philippines schedule has been announced.

Help spread the word about WordCamp Philippines 2010.

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!