I promise.

Oh, I still hope everybody is still checking me out. I have not visited you guys for a while. I do blogging as a part time work right now so I don’t get to update all my blogs and I find myself running out of time to promote my stuff. But I will find another effective way to make up for the lost time.

I miss you guys.

Joops is one regular visitor of this blog. His wife, Chubkulit, is the one actively seeking help in fixing this problem. She had managed to change the domain of her Rose’s Obstacles and Journey, but something had gone wrong with her hubby’s blog.

I have been visiting Iceah, Pastilan, and Berry’s blogs and I noticed Chubkulit’s distress call. Chubkulit followed Iceah’s post mentioning that Pinay Chicken Heart’s new domain by reaching out to me in this previous post on how to set up custom domains in blogger.

Since Chubkulit seemed to be up all week fixing the domain herself. I just contacted her and went into their domain manager account in Google Apps. I also checked their blogger account to see if the settings are right. Fixing that domain thing took me less than 10 minutes.

You can now view Joop’s blog and see their latest family adventure in Korea: Sailor’s Adventures and Opinions

To Joop’s and Chubskulit, thanks for featuring me in your blogs:
Lady Programmer
Goodies… Good Luck… Great Friends… Great People

Got a similar problem? Please contact me through this address gem [at] theladyprogrammer [dot] com

Did you notice my new domain?

photo credit: bigevil600 (SXC)

As some of you had noticed, I’ve changed the URL of this blog to a new domain. For this little blog that has some PR and good Alexa stats, it is not an easy decision. I did not even think that this blog would really make it that far in statistics and put me to a good exposure to various opportunities. For anyone doing paid reviews, PR still remains the most important thing: higher PR means more paid reviews. A PR of N/A or zero means lesser paid review opportunities.

I’ve searched over the World Wide Web for information before I switched to a new address. Purchasing a new domain is not a new thing to me, as I’ve done it already before. This is the third domain purchase: the first two ones were spent on my personal blogs. I’ve lost a PR4 blog due to a new domain.

Throwing Out the Old URL
Over the weekend I decided to throw away my rankings and see what the new domain will lead me; being a lady programmer I had been curious about what will happen to this one. If you are planning to own a new domain (believe me, it feels great to have a custom domain even if you lose all the rankings), then you might want to dig in to more information that I had consulted myself.

photo credit: lusi (SXC)

Blogger help has some resources to setup custom domains.
How do I Use a Custom Domain on my Blog?
How do I create a CNAME record for my custom domain?

You might find Amanda’s information, but she still points out to other bloggers like Blogbloke below on setting up custom domains. She’s great on explaining how to tweak blogger templates, but on the discussion on domain topics, her advice on using meta-refresh pages is not recommended. Still, I’m giving out the link references below.
How to Setup Your Blogger Custom Domain
A Better Way to Setup Your Custom Domain?
How to Setup your Blogger Custom Domain with GoDaddy

Blogbloke does not have a great looking website (in my opinion; well, I messed up my blog and I had missing parts that I haven’t got to fix in my site), but his write up on setting custom domains using 301 redirect is the best one I’ve seen around. This is the one that I’ve followed during the entire setup.
Blogger Custom Domain: Best Setup for Optimizing your Blog Pagerank!
6 Blog Tips Why You Should be using a Custom Domain Name for your Blog
Blogger Custom Domain: Best Setup for Optimizing your Blog Pagerank!

Do you want to understand what 301 redirect is all about? That’s the one that I have used for the new domain. It is the proper way to redirect a site. Don’t ever use 302 redirect and meta-refresh tags.
Transferring a Website to a New Domain
Best Practices When Moving Your Site

I am not an expert so I hope that the resources that I had bookmarked for you will guide you when you decided to have a domain that you can call your own.

Unfortunately I could not provide the answer to the questions above right now. This domain is still less than a week old as I am writing this post.

Before I forget, if you got links using my old URL, I would appreciate changing it to the one that uses this new domain. Thanks again to those who made quick changes to their blogrolls and links before I made this formal announcement. I prefer having the URL using http://www.ladyprogrammer.com (with the WWW). Thanks!

Do you have any joys and pains when you switched to a new domain?

I’ve used both platforms for each of my blogs for several months now. This blog is done using Blogger and my other blog is hosted with WordPress.com. Don’t confuse WordPress blogs because there are two types of WordPress blogs – the first one can be hosted with WordPress.com and the other one can be downloaded free from WordPress.org for self-hosted WordPress platforms.

As a serious blogger, I still go for the hosted one. I wish I had enough money to invest into my own hosting. Spending for the domain is cheaper, but owning a host will require me to spend serious money for a good host and support even for just a year.

photo credit: konr4d (SXC)

Before plunging cash into self-hosted blogs, try out free blogging platforms first. Blogger and WordPress are the most popular ones used, but both have its set of advantages and disadvantages. There are also other blogs that are hosted with Typepad, and those blogs that come with MySpace. I will just focus my sites on two platforms that I’ve used: Blogger and WordPress. I’m trying to spell out the differences below:

Blogger: Advantages

• Allows the use of JavaScript widgets. I love Blogger because of its ability to accept JavaScript codes. Google Adsense, Adbrite, Alexa traffic ranking, sitemeter, Entrecard as well as some BlogCatalog and MyBloglog are some widgets that can be installed easily with Blogger blogs.
• Allows full control over the blogger template. This is also what I like about blogger. I could easily put in Javascripts directly into the XML template of my Blogger blog. I could change the design look of my blog or upload custom designs from other websites.
• Paid posts are accepted. I have no problems putting up paid posts and being penalized by Blogger. Majority of my paid posts have that “nofollow” code, so I was able to get some page rank from Google.

Blogger: Disadvantages

• No “recent posts” and “best posts” widgets. “Recent posts” and “best posts” is a good way to turn first-time visitors into all-time readers and visitors. I do not rely on the list of Blog Archive to keep visitors clicking on my blog.
• No “related posts” widget below the post. Related posts also retain readers so that blog visitors keep clicking more. 
• Comment editing is not enabled. I still like to have better control over comments. I am not able to edit comments in Blogger; some commenters leave out ads in the comment section. Instead of deleting the undesirable comment, sometimes editing is better. 
• Renaming post filenames is not possible. Renaming post filenames contributes to Google search engine results. 

Blogger: Recommendation
I would use Blogger if I want to run Entrecard and Alexa to improve my traffic. If I prefer to earn residual income from Google Adsense and other ad networks, then Blogger is the best route to go. Additional widgets for installing “recent posts”, “best posts” and “related posts” can be provided from third-party bloggers, but I think one needs the technical know-how to install such widgets successfully.

WordPress blog hosted on WordPress.com: Advantages

• Top posts, top clicks and recent posts are readily available. This keeps readers reading more entries in my blog, not just the first post that they had landed on. At least this keep my previous posts very useful and are not left deep into the archives.
• Spam comments are protected by Akismet. WordPress.com hosted blogs are protected by Akismet so that those comments that are flagged as spam by other users are automatically queued to the spam section.
• Access to WordPress.com traffic. I’ve successfully got some traffic from other WordPress.com blogs as long as you put some tags in your posts. WordPress.com bloggers often visit neighborhood blogs with the use of tags, to see what’s being discussed on other blogs. I also get commenters this way.
• Renaming blog posts is possible, so these can be optimized into improving Google search engine results.

WordPress blog hosted on WordPress.com: Disadvantages

• Blog layout cannot easily be changed. I’ve wanted badly to change the blog layout to something that is not included in their default layout. One has to pay a bit more to change the CSS styles.
• Paid posts are not allowed in WordPress.com. It violates their Term of Service.
• JavaScript widgets are not allowed. You cannot use it with Entrecard and Alexa widgets to improve site traffic ranking. Google Adsense, Chitika and Adbrite ads are not also allowed.

WordPress blog hosted on WordPress.com: Recommendation
I think personal blogs fit perfectly into this category because of the Terms of Service that WordPress.com imposes on its users. However, anyone who plans to have a blog without any sponsored posts should find WordPress.com a perfect match at no cost.

Self-hosted WordPress Blog: Advantages

• Full flexibility over change in blog layout. Self-hosted WordPress blogs are a sure way to go for full control in the blog layout. The flexibility is even better than that provided by Blogger blogs.
• Paid posts are allowed. Unlike those that are hosted in WordPress.com paid posts are permitted.
• JavaScript widgets are fully supported. There is no limit to which JavaScript widgets can be placed on the blog.
• Better widgets. Self-hosted WordPress blogs come with the “top posts”, “top clicks” and “related posts” widgets.
• Posts can be renamed. Choosing the right words to name a post is crucial to Google search engine results.

Self-hosted WordPress Blog: Disadvantages

• Self-hosted blogs cost quite a great deal of money to get a hosting package. Self-hosted WordPress blogs always require the technical know-how. Full-time bloggers often go to this route, but they often had to learn the technicalities involved in putting up a blog. If one decides not to bother with the technicalities, the blogger has to pay for someone to do the maintenance for him.
• Prone to spam. Unlike blogs that are hosted with WordPress.com, self-hosted WordPress blogs do not come with spam filtering capabilities such as the one that is provided with Akismet. Installing also requires technical know-how or hiring someone to do the job.

Self-hosted WordPress Blog: Recommendation
These blogs are the true nirvana of blogging. It combines the best of both Blogger and hosted WordPress.com blogs. But this is worth spending so this is a better fit for true-blue professional freelance bloggers.