Wordpress Blogging Mastery Malaysia

This is part of the series of Submit Your Questions About Wordpress or Blogging.

One of the questions I received is How to install PayPal payment gateway on a WordPress blog to receive online payments into PayPal merchant account that one has.

Unless you are selling or promoting a product or service, you would not normally have PayPal installed on your Wordpress blog.

However, there were exceptional cases where a prominent blogger like Raja Petra of Malaysia-Today would use PayPal to collect Donations to fund Bloggers Defence. I heard so far they have collect over RM40,000+ in aid of this donation from all over the world.

Here is what Raja Petra’s PayPal logo and icon looked like on his news portal.

Bloggers Defence Fund Donate logo

And after you click on the above logo, the next page looks like this. This is the page where you will enter in the Amount you wish to donate to the fund.

So let me share with you how can you can install the PayPal payment gateway logo on to your Wordpress blog.

Just sign up with PayPal and open up an account with them.

PayPal may request you to pay a small amount by charging into your valid credit card. This is to verify that the PayPal account is linked to a valid credit card holder. You may received your Verification Code from your credit card statement. Also all Malaysians can now withdraw from PayPal into your Malaysian bank account.

In PayPal, just go under Merchant Services and get a Buy Now button. You will be asked to create your own Buy Now button by filling in all the required information on the page. Thereafter, copy the encrypted HTML code for your websites.

You can add and insert the PayPal Buy Now button anywhere on your website or blog with the generated HTML code.

Do you have a PayPal account yet?

Why wait now. Just sign up with PayPal here or click below.

I have been asked the following questions from the submission of questions to me last week, by a Wordpress Blogging Seminar attendee last week. This is part of the series of Submit in your Questions about Wordpress or Blogging.

What is the capacity in terms of space and bandwidth that we should look at, for a regular blogger?

For HostGator, how frequent have they revised their subscription rates when such revisions had also been imposed on their existing subscribers?

For HostGator’s Baby Package, does the “unlimited Addon or Parked Domains” mean that we can put up several different blogs on different topics (so we don’t have to pay to subscribe to different hosting for each blog)

To answer the first question about the required bandwidth and space, Hostgator provides more than adequate bandwidth and space for a new blogger, to start with.

The basic package for a new Blogger would be Hatchling. They provide 350Gb of the disk space and 3,000Gb of bandwidth.

Now, for a new blogger, you would usually use text to write your blog posts and perhaps include image as well as videos. These would generally not take up alot of space nor bandwidth.

Bandwidth will affect you if you are expecting to launch a new product or service of your own, and expects a huge surge of online traffic within the new launch period.

Hostgator does not revise their Subscription rates annually, as far as I have observed. They revise their subscription rates only now and then. And usually the revision subscription rate would be about a dollar or two more, on the monthly subscription.

Lastly, to answer the last question here. Under the Baby package in Hostgator, what they meant by Unlimited Domains Allowed is you can Host as many number of your own Domains into one Account. These Domains can be in different types of niches.

You are the owner of your own registered Domains and they can be about any types of niches you choose. And you can Host all of your Domain names in one Hostgator account for the price of US$7.95 per month (RM25.00 monthly @ Exchange rate of 3.1), at 600Gb of disk space and 6,000Gb of bandwidth and UNLIMITED Domain names, with cPanel and Fantastico.

A plus point here is, this is a USA based web hosting provider. If you are a Malaysian, this is an added advantage if you are blogging about “sensitive” issues, I have been told.

Let me know if I am wrong on some of the facts here.

Do you have any of your own views here that you can add on?

Here is the first question posted by a blog reader to me. The question is What other essential or useful features should be included, apart from cPanel and Fantastico that was highlighted in Wordpress Blogging Seminar, last week. This is part of the series of Submit in your Questions about Wordpress or Blogging.

In my seminar talk last week, I recommended my seminar attendees to pick Hostgator, as their choice hosting provider. I did not have much time to elaborate on the finer details of what Hostgator have to offer due to limitation of time.

I will try to elaborate further in this blog post, as to why Hostgator is my preferred hosting provider for my Wordpress blogging needs and as a blogger.

Hostgator web hosting provides cPanel, which is a control panel that is Linux based server. In other words, cPanel is the administrative area where you log in with your Username and Password.

On cPanel, you can create your own:

* personalized Email address attached to your Domain name

* create your own MySQL Database

* create SubDomains

* install Bulletin Boards

* install Blog platforms like Wordpress

* install Content Management like Joomla, Drupal, phpWebsite

* install Customer Relationship like PHP Support Tickets or Help Center Live

* install Discussion Boards like phpBB or SMF

* install E-Commerce like OS Commerce, Zen Cart

* install Image Galleries

* install Wikis

Now, I am not a web programmer nor have I studied PHp programming, but I have learned to use the functions in cPanel effectively to install my Wordpress blogs. If you learn to use cPanel effectively, you are in effectively called a Webmaster, because you controls your own cPanel.

On Monday this week, I sent out an email to all my Wordpress Blogging Seminar attendees from July 2007 till now, to inform them to submit in their Wordpress or Blogging questions to this blog.

I have only received a handful of replies from some of the seminar attendees. I have mentioned in my email that I would require their permission to publish out their questions and answer these questions in my blog posts, so anyone can read and benefit from the answers.

I also mentioned that I would protect the Identity of anyone who submits in their Wordpress or Blogging questions to me.

From my experience with Malaysian who attends seminars, whenever I send out an email, most of them would not have opened up their emails to check for updates. I even have emails that have been returned saying their Inbox has been full.

How often do you check in to your email box and delete all those Spam messages?

How often have you ever check into your own Personal email box to read any of your own emails?

How may people actually make use of their personal Email account, come to think of it?

Anyway, since I have only received very few questions, I will still write about those submitted questions and answer them in my next blog posts.

Thank you to those who had the ‘guts’ to submit in their questions to be answered.

If you haven’t submit in your questions, you can still do so.

I am organizing another Wordpress Blogging Seminar this May again in Petaling Jaya, Selangor upon popular request. I though of taking a long break from this, but it seemed that I will not be able to.

Here is a newspaper ads clip in The Star Metro section published on 5 May 2008.

If you keen to attend this Wordpress Blogging Seminar, please follow the instructions given to register your seats, as it is usually quickly taken up.

Clickbank has finally arrived in Malaysia. Why is this an issue? Previously, Malaysians amongst many other Asian countries are not permitted to register at Clickbank with our residence address.

Now, your opportunity to make more money online being an affiliate is finally in Malaysia. Just go to Clickbank and sign up for a Clickbank account now.

You can also become a Clickbank Affiliate at no cost to you.

There are a few Wordpress 2.5 - 3 column Themes you might find useful, after you have upgraded since March 2008.

Andreas09 Wordpress Theme 2.5

Features

• 14 colour options selectable from your WordPress admin.
• Horizontal menu with unlimited sub-page support.
• Built in Widgets support.
• Fully prepared for localisation - only one file to translate to any language.
• Comments enabled on pages.
• 3 column theme
• Fluid central column
• Full width
• 14 different colors

Download Andreas09 Theme

Ayumi - Wordpress Theme 2.5

Features

• Green and Red and a little bit blue color
• 2 Right Sidebar
• Widget Ready
• Change About text via Admin Profile
• Tested on WordPress 2.1.x, 2.2.x, 2.3.x and 2.5.x

Download AYUMI Theme

Cutline 3-Column-Right 11 Wordpress 2.5 Theme

Features

• Squeky clean, feature-rich theme
• 3-column
• Fixed width
• Left sidebar
• Right sidebar
• Widget ready

Download Cutline 3-Column Right 11

Genki Wordpress 2.5 Theme

Features

• 3 columns: Fluid-Fixed-Fixed
• Sliding tabmenu on the left. Static when javascript is disabled.
• Widget support
• XHTML & CSS compliance

Download Genki Theme

Xplosive Theme

Features

• Full XHTML compliant
• Web 2.0 theme
• 3-column with two right-side bars
• Blue-Orange color scheme

Download Xplosive Theme

Xplosive Reloaded Theme

Features

• Available in four flavors – Satin, Autumn, Aqua, Prairie
• Style Switcher
• Widget ready
• XHTML validated

Download Xplosive-Reloaded Theme

Zyred Theme

Features

• Widget ready
• Flexible width
• 3-column
• Content column min. width of 468 pix
• wordpress 2.5 tested
• widget ready
• valid XHTML 1.0
• templates for special pages included: archive, links and pages with comments
• multilanguage; english and german language included

Download ZyRed Theme

Since March 2008, Wordpress upgraded their version of 2.3 to 2.5. I was caught by surprised when I logged in to my cPanel to find that I need to upgrade to Wordpress WP version 2.5. The next surprise I found was many versions of the older Wordpress templates 2.0+ does NOT work well with upgraded Wordpress version 2.5. So if you have upgraded your Wordpress to 2.5, please go and download compatible Wordpress 2.5 Themes.

The following are Wordpress Themes that are compatible to upgraded WP version 2.5.

Download these 2-column Wordpress 2.5 Theme:-

RedBusiness3C

Features

• 2 Columns - Fixed Width
• 3 Columns - Fixed Width also available
• Widgets Ready
• XHTML & CSS compliance

Download RedBusiness3C

Wicked Lemon

Features

• Docking sidebar – click and drag different sidebar items and dock them anywhere
• CSS Style Switcher inbuilt
• Four color themes

Download Wicked Lemon Theme

Winter Plain

Features

• Siple and soft styled
• Widget-ready
• 2-column Cool theme

Download Winter Plain Theme

Artificial Intelligence

Features

• 2 Columns - Fixed Width
• Widgets Ready
• XHTML & CSS compliance

Download Artificial Intelligence Theme

Today I am going to show you several methods that can help you find ideas for your posts on your blogs, that are relevant to what your readers are looking for.

All it takes is a few minutes to come up with your own 10 or more ideas for your posts, by reviewing search terms.

The first tool we go and look into is 103bees. It is an search traffic analysis online service for bloggers, webmasters and internet marketers who focuses on natural search engine traffic analytics. Real-time statistics and in-depth information on search terms that targeted traffic to your websites are provided. This is not a 100% free site. You get a 30 day trial period upon sign up. They offer low traffic sites a one time fee of $19 and for higher traffic sites (more than 100,000 hits per month), the fee is $9 monthly.

The second tool you can use is Sitemeter. Their real time website tracking and counter tools give you instant access to vital information and data about your sites audience. Sign up for Site Meter Basic which is free, or got for the Premium starting at $6.95.These statistics here can show you some great ideas for blog posts. Go under Referral section and look for those that has Google.

The third tool is HitTail.com. HitTail Basic is free for lower traffic sites. It shows you the keyword search results as well as longtail keywords or phrases that people used to find your site and gives you suggestions on what you should post about for new content in blog posts or Pay Per Click campaigns. They have a “Plus” service for $9.95 per month with more statistics.

Other Ideas From Bloggers

* The other Free resources that you can look into are Google Analytics and FeedBurner.

* Shoot photos of ordinary things, and ask yourself what have these got to do with your blog. You may get a number of ideas generated from this trick.

* Comments from your own readers are actually the best signal of potential topics. Look for comments that get several replies.

* Subscribe to newsletters. You can usually come up with a few good topics from these.

* Frequented search terms are a great starting point for building a new article, as well.

* Bounce off topical issues, stories and events around original content “stale” topics creates fresh ideas which is interesting and easy to read.

*Search for articles about topics relevant to your blog categories. Look for any of those article small tips of stuff that you can write a full post about.

* Read books and printed newspapers and blog about it if it is interesting. Also check out the table of contents in books. If you have a special niche you want to write about, just get a book on the subject and look at the contents listings.

* Try out http://wiki.chainofthoughts.com/dt/en/. This is another source of brainstorming ideas. Just type in any word and it comes up with a long list of popular related topics.