Free tools and services such as XAMPP and DynDNS are an absolute blessing for me particularly when I need to develop my web apps and test them under development mode. Last year, I successfully set my home web server running on XAMPPLite to be accessible via DynDNS so that I could demo a website I developed. Recently, I assisted a friend of mine in setting up another server, but it wasn’t quite as smooth sailing.

I remembered that I only succeeded in setting up my server previously after much scouring in the Web. God knows how many times I tried and re-tried the instructions at DynDNS, even resetting my modem router and network settings of my computer just to be sure.

After combining what I’ve read in the Interwebs and testing the setting out, did I finally manage to get everything up and working. Port forwarding is one of the important things to do, but the way I do it is so much unlike most instructions I read on the web sites.

Using my new HTC Desire HD smartphone (yeah, I FINALLY have an Android phone, yippee!), I made a few screenshots of my web server port forward settings.  If your Internet connection uses dynamic IP, and you use DHCP to assign IP addresses in your local area network, then I hope you find this useful.

Here’s how they look like on my D-Link modem router:-

DynDNS web server port forward + XAMPP VIEW SLIDE SHOW DOWNLOAD ALL

(okay, am I the only one who thinks this Windows Live Writer is fricking funny AND cool?! … oh, alright… here’s the screenshots one by one…)

On my DHCP server setting, I made sure that the computer running XAMPP is using a static local network IP. You can also manually set this up in the Network Settings of the computer you’re using as your web server.

I also configured my dynamic DNS to my account at DynDNS. This way, I won’t need to download the DynDNS update client whenever my Internet connection changes its IP address.

For Filters, I set all inbound Internet access to port 80 (the default web server port) to be forwarded to any port on my web server. I made sure to enable this setting, too. This is where the Virtual Server setting is suppose to help (notice the Virtual Server button on the navigation?), but for the life of me I couldn’t get the port forwarding to work using Virtual Server.

I set my web server local IP address in the DMZ (Demilitarized Zone). Okay, don’t ask my why I do this because I don’t know how quite to explain this to you other than the fact that… my gut feeling tells me to. DMZ is something that I learned while working with the system and network people back while I was in an IT company. In any case, you might just want to skip this one.

Last, but definitely not least, I changed my modem router’s WebPort from the default 80 to 8080. This MUST be done so that your modem router’s login page does not clash with your web server. From now onwards, whenever I want to access my modem router, I will have to type http://192.168.1.1:8080 before I am logged into the webadmin of my router.

Now that those settings are done, you just need to save the settings of your router and restart. You might want to restart your web server, too, just in case. Then, to confirm whether you can truly access your web server online, YOU MUST USE A DIFFERENT INTERNET CONNECTION THAN THE ONE USED BY YOUR WEB SERVER. Otherwise, you’ll get a false positive on the access (meaning, you tried and you find you can access it, when in fact other people outside of your network can’t).

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I’m guilty of doing vanity searches of myself on occasion, purely out of curiosity. So far none of the results returned anything dramatic.

A few other people I personally know aren’t so fortunate. One person who’s close to me had a court order information in the top 3 results for the person’s name in Google. For Sabahans, you should be wary of any news coming out of The New Sabah Times (one of the most read dailies this side of Borneo). This paper is notorious for putting people’s bankruptcy notices and home foreclosures online. Imagine your long lost friend or your former schoolmate trying to find you on the Internet and then ended up seeing those type of info about you. Embarrassing, to say the least.

So what do you do if you want to hide those incriminating evidence out of the search engines? You do SEO. The easiest way to go by this is to register yourself using your full name in as many social networking sites as possible, and the more popular those social networks are, the better. That should help bury those little secrets way into the nether regions of your search result (gosh this sounds so dirty).

But the best way, really, to keep searches about you clean, is to not do any real life mistake as you possibly can. I’m not telling you to be Jesus or anything. I’m just saying that whatever that you wish to type online, make sure that it wouldn’t haunt you back or make a fool out of yourself (unless that’s what you’re aiming for, looking like a fool).

Seriousness aside, check out my first ever smartphone, the HTC HD7. I accidentally got this, because my better half couldn’t use it to run Meta Trader (I told him to get an Android phone, like Samsung Galaxy… in case I “accidentally” inherit that if MT doesn’t work on that as well). Loving the HTC phone, hating the Windows 7 Phone OS. At least let me use a customized MP3 song of my choice for my ringtone, for crap’s sake!

I’m jailbreaking this thing.

Posted from WordPress for Windows Phone

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I know that the original challenge is intended for WordPress.com users, but, hey, it doesn’t hurt to join in the fun.

I’ve done a 30-day blog challenge before, so I know how difficult it can be for some of us to keep up. It’s not so much because we’re out of ideas, but rather the fact that we’re pretty much swarmed with so many other commitments in our life that they force you to put your blogging efforts in the back burner.

WebGrrrl.net is a perfect example of that. 2010 has been almost non-existent in terms of posts in this blog. As a comparison:

• 2006: 9 posts
• 2007: 88 posts
• 2008: 114 posts
• 2009: 37 posts
• 2010: 11 posts

Pathetic, isn’t it? As a result, my blog traffic suffered.

OK, so maybe I lied, a little — the traffic wasn’t that bad up until a month or two ago (proof of my SEO prowess *snorts*).

But that’s not the point.

The point is, I need to get my behind off the ground and actually blog again, if I were to live up to my lame tagline (no offence to Asimov).

Therefore, I’m taking the WordPress PostADay challenge, albeit in a slightly modified form. You do notice in that challenge that there’s a weekly version of it called PostAWeek? That’s the one I’m taking. Instead of one post a day, I’ll do a weekly post, type each one in 250 words or more, then tag each post as “postaweek2011″.

You should join me. It’s good for your blog’s SEO, and for sharpening your writing/typing skills.

Or how about this — let me give you an incentive. If you decide to join the WordPress weekly challenge with me, do what I do (post weekly, tag it, write in 250 words or more). Then, comment in my latest weekly post, add your latest weekly post URL in the comment form, and I’ll link back to your article in my next post. Instant PR3 backlink for you!

Deal? Then start typing!

Oh, and have a great 2011!

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Remember to subscribe to giuk.net’s RSS feed for the latest from our fellow Sabahan bloggers!

A couple of days ago, giuk.net registered its 100th member into its aggregator database of personal blogs made by Sabahans. Congratulations, Vincent a.k.a. Ekimkee! (nah, ngam-ngam you got your link back like what you requested )

Since its re-inception in April 2009, it has modestly re-grown slowly and steadily. I’m not sure what the numbers were before, when it first went live to its temporary closure; mrBadak would know more about that, as he is the original owner and think-tank of this unique crawler.

Giuk.net is a service that’s close to my heart, because just with one RSS feed, I was able to keep in touch with all Sabahans in the virtual world. It helped me discover other great Sabahans in the blogosphere that I am proud to have met in real life. Many of their posts are amazing, humourous, and mind-opening. It makes you realize that Sabahans are a cool bunch of people

So when it went down for a while, I felt as if a part of my online life was empty. So weird. And when mrBadak needed someone to take over the management, I was estatic and immediately took the chance! And, yeah, it took me only hours to set it up, actually. The hard part was figuring out what plugins and themes, among the thousands freely available in WordPress.org, I should use to build it back, which explains the 2-day delay. If you want to learn how to make your very own blog aggregator, head on to Blogging Fu and read the tutorial on how you can set one up.

Aesthetically and functionally, giuk.net 2.0 is different from giuk.net 1.0 in a number of ways. One obvious difference is that there is no Popular Posts section in the site. I noticed that this service is easily gamed (i.e. manipulated) with a certain type of posts often being highlighted, so I decided to make do without it for now. I’m also a bit more strict on the content that I choose to add in the blog, to ensure that the aggregator content upholds the spirit of giuk.net (oh so spiritual).

Nevertheless, I hope giuk.net has served what it was originally intended to do — showcasing Sabahans’ talent in blogging. I humbly hope that the functions I’ve put up in this revamped version can live up to the reputation it first garnered when it was under mrBadak.

By the way, yeah mrBadak still owns the domain name and the whole idea of giuk.net; I just help host it and manage it. Monetizing-wise, there are exactly three spots — one in the header, and two on the sidebar. And, no, it doesn’t convert well (I saved the header space for mrBadak, I hope that one does better, though, or at least enough to cover his domain name costs). Me? I haven’t earned a cent since I got it up and running.

But I don’t mind, really. WP Webhost, a subsidiary of Exabytes, was kind enough to host this for me, free of charge (weehee! jealous???). Therefore, no investment whatsoever apart from my time, which I gladly offer.

So, to you giuk-ers out there, thank you for your support all this time, and I hope you’ll continue to blog with us in many years to come. Remember to subscribe to giuk.net’s RSS feed for the latest from our fellow Sabahan bloggers!

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This blog has been quiet, but it doesn’t mean that my life as a geek has been put on hold.

Far from it, as you can guess from the title of this post.

First off, I’ve scheduled a release of the latest version of the Top Commentators Widget sometime in November. A couple of bugs were mentioned by users like you, which I hope can be addressed by v.1.4. So, thanks for taking the time to report the errors. Please continue to do so by going to WP.org’s Support Forum if you can find anything else that’s in the widget in need of improvement. Information like these help make TCW useful and usable.

Secondly, I’m cooking up a project that I started three months ago (infact, it was two weeks after I gave birth to my son with designer genes). And it wasn’t until recently that I found out it has a name, thanks to my recent endeavor into Drupal.

My project is called the WordPress Installation Profiles. It might not work the way the Drupal community does it, but the idea is more or less there. This idea has also been discussed before, but as the post mentioned, the closest one out there was done by WordPress QI, and that’s still not quite like what I was hoping.

This idea came about after I saw a couple of Internet marketers out there monetizing a “software” that supposedly improves your WordPress site’s SEO. Upon further investigation, it turned out that it was merely a collection of already well-known (and free!) WordPress plugins, packaged into a single zipped file, and can be installed with a few clicks through a customized install.php file. I realized that, hey, I can do this too!

I was thinking of building one, then selling them off. But then I thought, in the spirit of open-source and WordPress, why not make them free as well? So, yeah, it’ll be available for you to download, FREE!

My first WordPress installation profile will be created around the concept of affiliate marketing blogs, with the following plugin options built into it:

• autoresponders
• opt-in subscriptions
• affiliate products auto-detection
• ad rotator / manager
• those SEO plugins for sure

This profile should also include a suitable theme, which I’m still trying to decide which to use. Then once this is done, I’ll be leveraging my Blogging Fu web site, where it will serve as a repository for all the installation profiles which I will be building later.

I’ll figure out my monetizing strategy later, but one thing’s for sure, those readily-available installation profiles will remain free once they are up there for downloading.

Any comments? Suggestions? Feel free to vent in the comments section below.

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After almost a year lying dormant, my namesake web site is finally revived. I guess. A few explanations on why I chose Tumblr instead of WordPress are as follows:

1. Tumblr is perfect for microblogging, which is what I do most of the time. I’m more active on Twitter now than in Facebook, but it doesn’t mean that I’ll stop twittering. Tumblr will auto-fetch those tweets periodically.
2. I decided to use that site for personal rants after all (just like what most of you recommended), instead of going for a specific niche. I’m focusing on enough niche sites which are taking its toll on my energy and time.
3. I love how those templates differentiate between video, audio, image, link, chat and normal posts. The theme I currently used for the site highlights those differences by colors.
   
4. I’m freeing up some space on my web hosting account, and will only use WordPress for some serious blogging and niche building. The latest releases of WordPress have made it easier for all to upgrade (both the platform and the plugins), but not easy enough once you own 10 or more of those blogs with all those deemed-as-necessary-for-SEO plugins. 10 blogs x 10 plugins per blog = ?
5. I’ve always wanted to use Tumblr for fun.

I almost went for Posterous, if not for the fact that the blog design is so bland.

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I’ve tried to quit paid postings for quite some time now. However, I realized that paid-to-posts are a blogger’s answer to quick money, and the temptation to fund my sudden shopping splurges get the best of me at times. So, I succumbed to several paid posts, which I would receive by the end of the week and nicely be more enough for me to have my lunches at fancy restaurants for a week or two.

After going through my other online income sources for last month, I finally decided to put my foot down and stop paid posting programs for good. It’s a liberating decision, because finally I don’t have to work so hard to earn money online. My sudden repulsion to go online while I’m pregnant certainly wouldn’t help if I rely solely on paid posts.

Of all my online earnings, paid to post programs are the only online revenue streams that constantly need my effort and time. The rest are all passive income. I’m so glad that AdSense, Chitika and TextLinkAds are working out for me; these programs have really spoilt me. I love passive income!

I’m glad I’m so good at organizing my posts with paid links, so cleaning out those pages were easy peasy. So, don’t expect to see anymore of my paid posts here.

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Honestly, I have no idea what to do with Twitter Lists as of this moment, but it’s nice to see that the option is made available for me to use once I figure it out. A post in Marketing Pilgrim suggested that it could be treated like a blogroll, i.e. collection of favourite Tweeters based on a theme. The trouble is, as pointed in another of their posts, having such lists will probably attract a bunch of whiners. For example, if you create a list of WordPress Experts and I don’t see my Twitter handle in that list, then doggone it I’m swearing you and your Twitter followers off to Twitter hell! It’s kind of in the same lines as people who whine that I’m not following you anymore coz you don’t follow me even though I’ve followed you and read your boring tweets for days and you still don’t care, nyeh nyeh boo hoo.

Yeah, whiners.

I created a list called Blogging Fu, just for the sake of it, although I have a feeling that I might be deleting that one soon. Since Twitter did say that I shouldn’t tweet about it yet, why bother having one?

I wonder if anyone of you reading this blog are seeing this option? Are you planning on using it, and how?

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Have you ever looked back at your old blog posts and think, dang, I am good! Those were not the words I would use when I did exactly that these past couple of hours, but it’s close enough.

It’s now a little past 4 years since the inception of WebGrrrl.net in September 2006 (I bought the domain name a little later, though, around November 2006, I think). She’s grown up quite nicely since then. One thing I like about this blog is that the content is more focused. Still, I’m a little disappointed that I lessened my ranting that would have included anything non-WordPress, non-blogging, non-Internet, non-Web related. No regrets, though.

Except that there are a few posts that I wished I hadn’t posted. Namely ALL those posts concerning the Malaysian reality show sensation Akademi Fantasia. Blech.

The rest of my posts, I like. The few impressions I get when I read back on my blog posts were:

• I can be damn funny… some times.
• Wow, those sites/links/plugins/whachamacallits really are cool… I wonder how I found them in the first place?
• I can be SO good at monologue-ing.
• WebGrrrl.net has personality.
• WebGrrrl.net rocks!
• I am so full of myself.

I hope you love your blog as much as I do mine.

Update: So 2009-2006 = 3 years. So I didn’t exactly get an A in math. So sue me.

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I’m not making this up. At least on my blogs (WebGrrrl.net and my other niche sites), this seems to be the trend.

Take a look at WebGrrrl.net’s Google Analytics one-year comparison for the month of September. My blogging activities were considerably more last year than this year, yet I’ve noticed a marked improvement on the bounce rate. In Google terms, “a high bounce rate generally indicates that site entrance pages aren’t relevant to your visitors. The more compelling your landing pages, the more visitors will stay on your site and convert.” Looking at the stats, this means that once a visitor reads one post from my blog, there is a 99% chance that the visitor will stay in my blog and go read the next post, instead of going to other sites.

I’m surprised that WebGrrrl.net was able to achieve a low bounce rate, due to the fact that the blog content isn’t well-focused. I take bounce rates seriously especially on my niche sites, because this means that my visitors are digging deep into my blog content, hence the chances of them clicking on my ads are higher.

One stats you don’t see in the screenshot above is my traffic sources. Visits from search engines to WebGrrrl.net have increased by almost 20%, and I’m seeing a similar improvement with my currently-idle niche sites. Everyone who’s into monetizing their web sites know that search engine visits are like hearing your shop’s doorbell ring every time a paying customer comes in.

I’ve yet to really sit down and study all these data I’m getting, but if it’s anything like the advice Grizzly gave, saying that you make more money by not updating, then there should be a big fat nose-inflating grin slapped squarely on my face.

Oh, wait. Yeah, there is

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