Thoughts of a Rambler

Had been to the doctor today. There were many people already queued up. So, i decided to catch up on some pending work and took my laptop inside the doc’s office. I was going to work on some local documents and wasn’t interested in the popup which said that there were some wirless networks in range. Out of curiosity, i decided to check out the available networks and guess what the name of the network was….

written by Rajaram S

written by Rajaram S

written by Rajaram S

PollMummy is a new website created just for taking web polls. There is a PollMummy Blog where all the latest polls would be uploaded. There is also a Poll Directory where you can choose to take polls based on the topics you like.

If you have ever wanted to put a poll on your website or blog and didn’t know which tool to use and how to use a particular tool, check out the page on all the tools to create web polls. Last, but never the least, click here to subscribe to PollMummy Polls.

Technorati Tags: blog poll web poll polls create polls pollmummy

written by Rajaram S

written by Rajaram S

• Bird Flu mania gripped the world, especially Asia in early 2006 and that was probably the best time to make the movie “One flew over the bird’s nest“.
• If you ever visit Cyprus as a tourist, one of the main tourist attractions on your itinerary should be a visit to a Cypriot Doctor (No, i don’t wish you to be unwell, just go there as a tourist). If you want to be prepared in advance on what to expect, read “Quack Quack, Is the Doctor in?“.
• Rules in Cyprus are different for locals than for outsiders. You should know the tricks of the trade if you want things to happen your way in Cyprus. Some theories just don’t work in Cyprus – Failure of queuing Theory in Cyprus.
• Everyone, for whatever reason they may have, likes to make fun of American Politicians. So, why should i be different? God Bless America! and If America wants more oil
• How soon or late do you adapt to the modern technology surrounding you? Sometimes, even basic things like operating an ATM can become a nightmare. Read about The mystery of ATMs to find out.
• If you are from India or from the UK or from the US and have happened to attend any Indian party, you might be able to associate with my observations about Punjabi songs titles “What is it with Punjabi Songs“.
• If you have had a conversation with an Indian and there was no mention of cricket for more than 5 minutes, consider yourself to be very very lucky. Why are Indians so crazy about cricket. Cricket is after-all a stupid game, a waste of time!
• The history of the Mallu Nairs. Don’t read this if you are not from India, you wouldn’t understand a thing!
• What i have learned from my wife. This was part of a Group Writing Project at Middle Zone Musings. Well, after Vidhya (my wife) read this post, i learnt many more lessons.
• My first ever music concert and it rocked! Photos from the Bryan Adams Concert here in Cyprus.

written by Rajaram S

• 13 sites on Friday the thirteenth by Mercury
• 13 ways to lose a guy in 13 days by Ravi – I wonder how many from his list are from personal experiences.
• Few facts about Friday the 13th – My half-entry.
• 10 Money Superstitions for Friday the 13th by Rich (This was not submitted to the Group writing project, but i found this link through random surfing and found it interesting enough to be added to this list)

Once again, thanks to Ravi and Mercury for participating. Until the next, Enjoy!

Technorati Tags: Group Writing project Blog Friday the 13th

written by Rajaram S

If you are reading this, there is a good probability that you already have a blog up and running. There is a high probability that it is either on blogger.com or wordpress.com. If you are really interested in blogging and not started a blog just because the guy in the next cubicle did, it is time you thought about moving out of blogger and wordpress to your own domain and hosting it with any hosting provider. Following are excerpts from a fictional book “Blog Hosting for Dummies” which was written fictionally by me sometime in the past. Click on the picture to the right to see a bigger picture of the cover of the book.

• You have an identity of your own on the internet. http://www.srajaram.com/ definitely sounds better than srajaram.blogger.com
• You can have your own email ids on your domain. I don’t use this option, though
• Search engines rank (SEOs say so) content on domains higher than that on free hosts. So, your writing might receive a bigger audience.
• If you intend to make money through your blog, having your domain is a better option as blogs on own domains are preferred over blogs on free hosts by many ad networks.
• Buying a domain costs just under 10 USD a year and this small investment or rather the lack of could prove very costly in the future in case you end up becoming really famous!

Of course, moving to your own domain has its share of worries

• Where do you host it ? There are hundreds of companies offering hosting and which one do i choose?
• Hosting a site costs $$$. Currently, i host it on blogger and it doesn’t cost me a cent.
• Blogger/Wordpress never goes down. What if my host goes down and my site if offline for a long time?’
• I don’t know HTML !! How do i “write” pages then ?

I hope that this post would cover most of your apprehensions about hosting your blog on a platform other than blogger or wordpress. The easiest way is to buy a domain name and redirect it to your blogger blog.

I buy my domains at GoDaddy. Their interface is clean and clear. They also offer a free hosting package where you can host up to 5 pages. Of course, the godaddy ads appear on these pages. One thing about buying hosting plans with free domain names. Avoid buying the domain name through the hosting company. You never know whether the domain is really yours or registered under the hosting company’s name. Domains are cheap, buy them yourselves.

I am assuming that you are planning to “buy” your hosting package. Firstly, these are things you need not worry about when looking for a hosting package i.e not look at what the company says on its pages

• Support providing by the company. Almost all companies say that they provide 24/7 support. Don’t trust them. Search around on google for “ support” and you might find comments by people who have had first-hand experience with the support from the company.
• Uptime reliability. I have never seen a hosting company give a figure less than 99.5% uptime. Do a similar search on google to find out the reality.
• Type of hosting. 99% of the blogs go for Shared Hosting which is the default. If your blog is really popular or you expect it to have hits in the range of a few million a month, then you should go for a dedicated server i.e. dedicated hosting. Dedicated hosting costs bigtime $$$.

Things you should be concerned about

• Space provided. Actually this is not much of a concern as most hosting plans give at least a GB of space which is too much in my opinion for an ordinary blog. Of course, if your blog primarily contains photos or videos, then you might run out of space fast. What i do to avoid this situation is that i upload all my photos to Google Picasa Web and then link to it. I don’t know whether this is perfectly legal, as i know that it is not with flickr. If you have videos too, why not put them on youtube or the numerous other clones and just link to them?
• Bandwidth. If your blog becomes super-popular, then you need to worry about it. If any site says “unlimited bandwidth”, then be assured that they are lying. Any bandwidth in the range of 100 GB a month is more than enough. I never thought that i would reach this limit, but it happened with this post on Aishwarya Rai’s wedding pictures. Also check with the company about their exact policy on this. My hosting company told me that, for my plan, the bandwidth shouldn’t exceed 1MB a minute.
• Number of domains, sub-domains, number of email boxes. These aren’t really a concern for the novice blogger. But bigger the better. I am yet to create a sub-domain on my domain, but i know that i get x sub-domains free.
• Databases. If you are planning to install wordpress as your blogging platform on your domain, then this should concern you. Make sure that the hosting company doesn’t charge you extra for mysql databases. Most packages offer them free. I haven’t used any database until now for my website. Of course, if you are geeky, go ahead and try!

If you don’t want to get into the hassle of writing HTML or installing wordpress, just create your blog in blogger and post the pages onto your domain, which is what i do. I hope that this small article helps you a bit in establishing your blog on your own domain. At the end of it, if you want to “Win a year’s worth of hosting at BloggingTips.com” , just enter the competition at BloggingTips and hope that you win. If i ‘Win a year’s worth of hosting at BloggingTips.com’ , then i shall probably introduce the Cyprus Blog. In fact, I am planning to make the switch for my Hindu crossword blog to its own domain soon, by hopefully winning the competition on Blogging Dosh.

If you want to blog daily, but don’t find the time for this on a regular basis, Ms.Danielle’s blog site has an interesting tip for busy bloggers (applies to wordpress users).

If you like this article, digg it by clicking this button

Technorati Tags: blog+hosting hosting+plans free+hosting cheap+hosting hosting+website blogging+tips

written by Rajaram S

If you have not heard about the Group Writing Project at Problogger, then there is a good chance that you started blogging yesterday . Everyone who’s anyone is contributing to this project and since i am one of them, i too wanted to write a top 5 list. I thought about the top 5 list i could write on, for a while and then seeing the massive number of top 5 lists being created, i decided to write a top 5 list of things that could be done with all these top 5 lists. So, here goes…

• Link to all the lists. I have already done so by creating a list of all lists. This will not only help me keep a track of all the links i have been to, in a central place (my blog), but also provide loads of surfing opportunities to the readers of my blog. Also, nothing is lost in linking to others. “Linking” is the foundation upon which the blogging world exists and as it is often said “Always share the link love”!
• Read each and every Top 5 list. Yes, you must be thinking that i must be crazy to read through 500 such lists, but believe me, at the end of it, you will realise its worth. It doesn’t matter whether you are a geek, a wanderlust, a music lover, a sports lover or whatever, there is a list for you in here. Read them, get to know the people who wrote them and who knows, you might make new friends in the blogosphere. There is a good chance that you have never visited many of the blogs in this list. You may like the writing styles of some of these bloggers and end up adding them to your regular feeds.
• Some of the lists might fascinate you to the extent that you could start a Blog Meme on the same topic on your blog. A Blog Meme is “an idea that is shared and passed from blog to blog, like a question posted in one blog and answered in many other blogs”. For example, you might like the list “Top 5 reasons boys are better than girls” and decide to start a blog meme on the same topic on your blog and tag others. But be careful, you might end up being the one responsible for the online war of the sexes!
• Comment on the lists you like. Don’t spam the blogs in the hope that they link back to you, but leave comments on the lists you felt a connection with or ones you felt you could contribute more to. For example, geeks (anyone who uses Mac must be a geek!) might want to contribute lot more items to the list “5 Mac Apps for Bloggers“.
• Promote the lists on your blog. This doesn’t end with just linking to the lists, but also providing your input on the ones you like and recommending them to you readers. Some of you out there might be high-profile bloggers and if you recommend any of the lists, it will result in that blogger getting more exposure. Surely, if their writing is good, they deserve that exposure, don’t they?

So, if you haven’t yet participated in this project, do go over to problogger and participate.

Technorati Tags: problogger top 5 list writing project Darren Rowse

written by Rajaram S

• How to make money through blogging
• How to increase search rankings of your blog/site (yes, indirectly to reach people, you have to do this)
• How to implement SEO techniques on your blog
• How to increase your site’s google Page rank

If you are interested in any of the above, search on google and you will find hundreds of sites. This is a guide to increase readership for your blog, in all the legal, ethical ways possible. So here goes:

• Original Content: Readers need content. So, the foremost thing to do is to have good content on your blog. The definition of “good” varies. We are not looking at writing content just to bring in readers. So, what is good content? Content about which, you are passionate to write about, content which interests you enough to write about. I once started a blog on reviews of the latest mobile devices, but it didn’t go anywhere, as i realised that i was just doing copy-paste work and not really interested in writing about it. You can write about technology, politics, entertainment, sports or anything else you like, but write original content. Copy-paste content might get you some initial traffic, but rest assured that they won’t come back. Original opinions, be it controversial or neutral are appreciated by the blogging world.
• Frequency of posts: Posting entries on your blog shouldn’t happen once in a blue moon. Neither should it happen dozens of times in a day. Don’t neglect your blog. If a visitor comes two or three times to your blog over a span of a week and doesn’t find any updates, he will most likely de-favourite it. Don’t get over-enthusiastic and spend your entire day on the blog. Readers should not get lost amongst too many things you write. Write often, write original content and you should steadily, but surely see your readership base grow.
• Submit to search engines: Go to google, yahoo or major search engines and blog directories and submit your blog. This doesn’t guarantee inclusion, but there is nothing in doing it if there is such an option in the search engines. The link for submitting your blog to google is this and to yahoo is this.
• Implement technorati Tags: This is probably the best thing i have done. Register your site with technorati and for each of your posts, add a section with the related technorati tags. Many readers prefer to read content of their liking ( a particular topic or a news item) by searching on technorati and then going to the returned links. I use the Technorati Tag generator at Fintan’s, which is simple and easy to use. The advantage of this technique is that the same tags are used by many other sites like icerocket which can get you more readers.
• Talk about your blog to friends: I do this shamelessly, of course to the closer circle of friends. If we attend a party, i put the pictures up on my blog and share the link with my friends. I do this rather than sharing photos on my PC.
• Add your blog link in your email signature: I don’t do this, because i use my official email id for practically all my communication and it wouldn’t be right to do this on my official id. If you have a gmail id or any other, put the link in your signature. But, a word of caution. I have seen people writing to huge mailing groups with their blog links prominently in a bigger font. Yes, if you are genuinely writing to the group on a related topic, this is fine, otherwise don’t do this and get classified as a spammer.
• Visit other blogs and leave your comments: No, not comments like “Nice blog, visit mine” or “Do find time to visit my blog”. Yes, if you do that on a very popular blog, you might get at least a few clicks to your blog, provided that the blog owner doesn’t remove your comment. Visit blogs, leave meaningful, related comments to topics which you have an opinion about. Don’t flood anyone’s blog with your comments. That is an obvious sign of a spammer.
• Implement a counter on your site. I use sitemeter and statcounter. Doing this will give you an indication of your most popular posts. It also will give you the “search strings” using which people land up on your site.
• Customise your blog template such that the page title of the individual post pages have the title of the post in them and not just your blog’s name. Also, make your post title link to this page.
• Link to other people whose blog belongs to the same domain as yours. If your blog is good enough, some of them might link back to you, thus getting you some visitors.
• If you write on something specific, look for wikipedia pages on the same topic and add your blog to the external links section. If your blog is not good enough, the link will be removed by the moderators. I maintain a page which has lot of quizzing links and i get lot of visitors from the page for Quizzing in India.

This is not an exhaustive list, but a few things which i felt might make the difference to a blog. Hope this helps. Feel free to add more.

Technorati Tags: Increase traffic to blog new to blogging blogging basics How to start a blog

written by Rajaram S