Kongtechnology.com » Blogging

A plain English explanation of what are blogs

Kitkat — Thu, 03 Jul 2008 08:04:45 +0000

If you’ve been surfing the web for a few hours, you’ve most likely heard of “blogs” or weblogs. But, what are blogs?

A blog is a diary or journal on the Internet where the writer or more known as the “blogger” will write his/her views on a wide variety of subjects such as politics, news, pop culture, computers, food and drinks, and even observations on the world or simply provide links to useful websites. These mostly personal journals on the Internet have taken the web by storm. They are usually frequently updated and written in a personal tone. Different bloggers adopt different themes, sort of like a newspaper columnist but with no specialized training.

If the above quick explanation is still too difficult to digest, what about a very plain English explanation of what are blogs in video format?

Thanks to the folks from CommonCraft, the video is really nicely done. It explains the blog concept in easy to understand drawings. The drawings are cute. Even if you are a problogger you will still enjoy the cute drawings in the video.

Enjoy.

How to integrate WordPress into an existing site

Kitkat — Tue, 10 Jun 2008 16:37:52 +0000

WordPress is a very powerful content management system, which is specifically designed as a blogging platform. You can use WordPress as what it’s designed for, a blog, or customize it into a full fledge CMS website with the help of nothing but freely available plugins.

However what’s more common is perhaps you are installing WordPress in a sub-folder of an existing website, and after blogging for a while, you are thinking “Hey, how can I list my blog posts on my homepage?”

It’s really easy actually because WordPress has made life so much easier for us. In order to use any functions in WordPress (such as display latest blog posts, display latest comments, etc), you simply need to include the file “wp-blog-header.php”. For example, to display my latest 10 blog posts in my Flash Games page, I simply put the following few lines of code:

define(’WP_USE_THEMES’, false);
require(’../wp-blog-header.php’);
query_posts(’showposts=10′);
?>

” rel=”bookmark”>

Apart from display the latest 10 posts, it also displays the number of comments each post has.

OK, the codes above may look a little gibberish, but the important thing is by including the file “wp-blog-header.php”, you will have access to all the WordPress functions in an instant!

Wonderful isn’t it? With this you can easily integrate WordPress into your existing website and make the website easier to update by making use of WordPress CMS capability.

Project Petaling Street is being spammed by adult video downloader site

Kitkat — Tue, 13 May 2008 04:10:38 +0000

Free porn! no software or plugins needed - download free videos! Please don’t tell me you are not attracted by this catchy headline… if you are not perhaps you need to go see a doctor straight away!

Haha, no there is no free porn videos to download here, but I was surprised to see a lot of entries with the above catchy headline on Project Petaling Street (PPS) since a couple of days ago… and this went on until today! Clearly, this is a job done by some spammers on Malaysia’s most popular and most visited blog portal. Come on, PPS is undeniably one of Malaysia’s most visited website, why there is no moderator removing such spam entries and block them from happening again?

Glance through the latest entries and you will see the same spam entry was submitted every couple of hours. Looking at the time they were submitted, I guess it’s done through a cron job, i.e. automated submission. Now, I am a little impressed by this job. If this went on and nobody moderate this, I guess I want to do something similar too… haha… submit my blog entries to PPS every other hour to get more visitors!

PPS moderators, where are you?

Get one way backlinks from my Top Commentators list

Kitkat — Fri, 09 May 2008 05:24:20 +0000

If you have been blogging long enough or have accessed the Internet for a few hours and know a little bit about SEO, then you should have came across the term “backlink” at least once. However if are still clueless what a backlink is, and why they are important, especially “one way backlinks” then for your benefits I will explain it very briefly.

Backlinks are links that are pointing towards your website. They are also knows as inbound links or incoming links. The number of backlinks is an indication of the popularity or importance of the website. Logically, the more backlinks you have to your website, the better is your website, and search engines will tend to give you better rankings.

Now, in order to encourage comments, I have decided to give you backlinks in my Top Commentators list. Very easy, just read my blog posts and put down your comments or whatever thoughts you might have. Not only these backlinks are one way and do-follow, but they are placed strategically where most readers will notice and thus you will get more visitors too.

Thank you for reading this post and do keep the comments coming in. I appreciate each and every comments/feedbacks. See you in the Top Commentators list.

Huge list of FREE RSS directories and RSS search engines

Kitkat — Mon, 05 May 2008 10:44:43 +0000

I believe most website owners and bloggers have RSS feeds to distribute their content to a wider audience. We have all heard of web directories for regular link submission, but do you know that there are many directories specifically developed for promoting your RSS feeds? And the good news is that almost all of them accept free submissions, and the even good news is that I have painfully went through the 100 plus RSS directories and search engines and stripped out the inactive, slow, poor quality ones.

The following are active directories and search engines that receive visitors and FREE submissions. Yes, they are all FREE and requires no payment and no reciprocal links. You do not need to register first also. Go to these sites and submit your feeds now to get more visitors and readers!

Take a break.

The following RSS sites requires you to register first. But worry not, it’s completely FREE and takes a minute to register only!

OMG, how long did you take to submit all the above? But trust me, it’s well worth the effort spent. Do let me know if I missed out any good RSS directories or RSS search engines.

Four points to make a blog tick and have more readers

Arun — Tue, 29 Apr 2008 03:43:34 +0000

Starting a blog and publishing new posts are super easy that these days even a primary school kid can do it without much problem. The difference is to make the blog reach out to a sizable readers and maintain them. So what are the factors that make a blog tick so your readers will come and stay?

Sarah Austin from Search Engine Journal has explained the essence of how to make a blog appealing to an audience. You don’t want to read the long article, but it can be summarized into four points:

Write Strong: Be passionate and have thorough knowledge on what you write.
Write Tight: Choose few words to make the greatest impact.
Write Right: Grammar matters. Always.
Write Easy: Make your content interactive and easy to comprehend.

These points are great to maintain a blog but to get it off the ground you nevertheless need to leverage on the social media sites and use every channel of communication for actively or passively marketing your blog. After all its your product and as will every product, it needs to be marketed. One technique that I always found useful in getting new people to visit your site is to include the blog address in the signature of your e-mail. It not only spreads the message to the near and dear ones, but also to your new contacts as well.

Another point to note is to write about something tangible and that makes an immediate impact on people who read it. It is one reason why blogs on making money online are so popular. I know this does not fit well with everyone but you should try to convey the benefit of reading your blog to your reader.

And last but not least, your site should aesthetically fit in with all the ads and be easy on the eyes. Ads are the primary sources of revenue but cramming every nook and corner with banners does not look good. If possible choose unique layouts that make your site stand out from the rest.

Please do chime in and share your blogging experience with us.

Online File Sharing Reloaded

Jackson Chung — Fri, 11 Apr 2008 11:56:31 +0000

Online file sharing is undoubtedly one of the most convenient ways to get large files across to your friends and the people who need them. Email attachments have a 20MB limit (Gmail) and that’s surely not enough, unless you split the files up and send them one at a time, but what a hassle! I rely on online file sharing to share lecture notes, slideshows and photos with my friends and family. Here are some services which I use the most:

Dropbox was created by 2 MIT students back in 2007. Although they are now a three-man team. Its aim is to simplify file sharing, but it also has a lot of cool features besides the ol ‘upload-and-share’. It is still in private beta but you can get an invitation to join from getdropbox.com

Upon registering for Dropbox, you will have to download its desktop application. This is necessary in order to utilize all of Dropbox’s features. I’ll explain later on. Once the application is installed, a little dedicated folder will be set up, and it will be linked to your Dropbox account. So everything that you put in the folder will be uploaded. This ‘drop’ folder will have 2 sub-folders to arrange your files: Photo and Public. Everything that you dump into the Public folder will have an external link assigned to it, so you can instantly share those files with anyone.

What pleases me most about Dropbox is the fact that I only have to drag-and-drop my files into this folder in order to upload and share them online. Another amazing thing about Dropbox is that it has a roll-back feature. Anything you delete or edit will be cached. So in case you delete something and would like to retrieve them again, it’s as easy as clicking ‘Show deleted items’ and restore them. It can also track changes made to files, so the original file will always be available, even though you overwrote it with a never one.

Other features of Dropbox:

2GB storage (5GB for earlier beta testers)
No upload limit (or none that I’m aware of)
Mac and Windows compatible
Folder syncing
Shared folders across users

I’ve been using Driveway for a while, and for me it’s been the most reliable. With a new account, you’ll get 2GB of storage. I know, that’s not much. However, if you send an email to your friend telling them about Driveway, you’ll get another 2GB automatically. So essentially, if you sent 10 emails, you’ll get 22GB of storage!

Driveway uses a web interface which is pretty simple to navigate. Click on ‘Upload’ and choose your files/folder to upload and you’re set. There is a 500MB limit on each file, though. Uploading is pretty straightforward and you have the option to automatically send an email to the person you’re sharing your file with. So set the file to upload and leave it running. Nothing to worry about.

One cool feature about Driveway is that you get to see the IP of the person who downloaded your file and the number of times the file was downloaded so you’re able to track where your files are going.

Classic and simple file-sharing but reliable.

DivShare is a tricky little devil. Two years ago when I first started using it, they had no limit to their storage. That’s not the case anymore. They’ve set the limit at 5GB; with 50GB of transfers monthly. I have to admit that I’m pretty disappointed with DivShare. Their 200MB file limit is also nothing to be impressed about. Nevertheless, DivShare is one of the big guns in terms of online file sharing and it would be impartial for me not to cover their service.

Like all web interfaces, it gets a little hard to manage your files if you have a lot of them. It’s difficult to see all of your files at once, and you have to keep pressing ‘Next’ to move on. That’s the case with my DivShare. I uploaded everything there when I thought that it was still unlimited storage. Now, it’s pretty cluttered.

DivShare does have its strengths. They have an embedded video player, photo & document viewer. So you can actually preview the files before you download them. Any video you upload will have the option to be converted to FLV so that you can use their player. The original file will still be available for download, of course.

One last thing about DivShare, it’s upload has been a little flaky lately. I’m not sure if it’s just me, but the conventional upload method isn’t very reliable. I resort to using their Java uploader and things get a little better.

Lastly, the new kid on the block. Not many have heard of Podmailing. I’ve written an in-depth article about it, check it out if you want to learn more.

Podmailing is ‘file sharing bit-torrent style’ to put it simply. In order to send files to your friends, you’ll have to use its desktop application. Choose the file to send, enter your email along with the recipient’s and click ‘Send’. Right here, two things happen. Firstly, the file starts uploading to Podmailing’s server. Secondly, an email is sent to your recipient, and if the recipient opens the email he/she has the option to either wait for the file to finish uploading to the server OR download the desktop application to retrieve the file instantly. But how, you may ask, is the recipient able to download the file before it is completely uploaded to the server? The answer is: P2P. Embedded within the desktop application is a P2P protocol. A direct connection is set up automatically between you and your recipient.

The recipient also has the option of downloading the .torrent of the file which you are uploading. Open that with any Bit Torrent application, and they can start downloading the pieces which has already been uploaded to the server and establish a connection to the seeder (you!). If you have multiple recipients, even better as they can help to seed once their downloads are complete, speeding up the process of spreading your files across to friends.

What is Digg and how does it affect me?

Jackson Chung — Thu, 03 Apr 2008 21:09:29 +0000

In a nutshell, Digg is a social bookmarking website, with a twist. It’s a place to share stuff which you have found online with others, and to discover what other’s have Dugg. Everything and anything can be Dugg (except those which are NFSW) so long as it is submitted. So how does this affect us?

Well, as readers, you can see the interaction between Digg users. For a social bookmarking website, it’s pretty uncommon. Digging an article makes it more popular, and hence more people will notice it. They will tend to start to write comments about that article which may or may not agree with everyone, creating a little bit of controversy. And since there’s no such thing as bad publicity, that article will probably reach the front page of Digg.com, and handing that site what is called the ‘Digg effect’ - which essentially means that it is so heavily Dugg until the server crashes.

If you like reading your routine webpages, that’s fine. But if you want to explore the Web and its content, it’s difficult to do it alone. Digg helps you in that way by just browsing through the sites which other people find deserves a submission.

To the webmaster, this means several things. Firstly and rightly the most important, is popularity. The more traffic you bring to your site, the higher the chances of getting more frequent returning visitors, which in turn increases the chances of the articles to get Dugg. And the cycle repeats itself. Revenue also increases by means of advertisements. If advertisers know that a site gets a lot of traffic, they would want to invest in an ad spot, providing the webmaster the means to generate a higher income. That means he can now spend more money to pay writers for higher quality content and probably make some enhancements to the site e.g. transfer to a faster, more reliable server, hiring web-designers to brush up the place etc.

As a writer, I can tell you that Digg does a lot of my ego. It feels nice to have my articles Dugg. I even appreciate the occasional bad comments because those are the ones which create controversy. Not only that, it motivates me to write articles which are actually worthy to submit to Digg.com. And most websites do pay their writers a bonus if their articles are heavily Dugg, so that’s another motivation! However, that’s not the point.

Digg provides reader-webmaster interaction. It allows the webmaster to know which are the sort of articles the readers like on the site, so that we can focus on writing about those subjects. We wouldn’t want to waste our time and yours by writing something which you don’t want to read.

So please, dear readers, gather the Digg spirit and start digging here at Kongtechnology. Creating an account over at Digg.com isn’t difficult and only takes a minute. But in return, you will see that it’s much more fun to have some interaction on this site.

How to create a WordPress theme fast and easy using WP Themer Kit

Kitkat — Fri, 14 Mar 2008 05:06:29 +0000

I am sure most of you want to design and create your very own WordPress theme, but believe me it isn’t easy and fast to create one, especially from scratch. It would be easier if you just wanted to modify from an existing theme which you think looks close to what you want, but this could still take hours and even days to make it perfect. Now, I have tried creating WordPress themes completely from scratch and also hacked a few from existing themes, I began to wonder if there is an easier and faster way. Then I found WP Themer Kit.

WP Themer Kit is certainly wonderful in making the whole process of creating a new WordPress theme easy and fast! Although preferably you do need to have some knowledge in WordPress styling and theme creation, the process is pretty easy. Basically, you pick a style you want to use from the predefined styles:-

A - 800 Pixels Wide and No Sidebars
B - 800 Pixels Wide with Right Sidebar
C - 1000 Pixels Wide with 2 Right Sidebars
D - 1000 Pixels Wide with 1 Right and 1 Left Sidebar
E - 800 Pixels Wide with Left Sidebar
F - 1000 Pixels Wide with 2 Left Sidebars

After that, you open up the style’s CSS file and start modifying them… and yes, you can do that right inside Macromedia Dreamweaver. Or if you prefer, you can just use your favorite programmer’s editor.

Once that’s done, just copy the CSS file and the corresponding images to the provided WordPress blanks folder. That is if you have selected style B, you copy the CSS file and images to the WordPress blanks B folder and you are all done. Fast and easy!

To help you get started faster, WP Themer Kit has prepared some videos for you, start with Introduction to WP Themer Kit. For beginners, you may need a few more hours to familiarize with the whole concept and how it works, but once you get some hands on, I believe you will need less than 2 hours to release a completely new WordPress theme!

One day, you can have 10 new WordPress themes on the Internet!

Why LiewCF is a successful problogger in Malaysia?

Kitkat — Tue, 11 Mar 2008 12:02:22 +0000

If I’m not mistaken, LiewCF began his entrepreneurial Malaysia problogger journey back in 2005. He celebrated his first anniversary as a Malaysia problogger back in September 2006. But, before becoming a problogger in Malaysia many actually doubted someone of his achievements would make it.

I didn’t personally meet LiewCF but have been reading his blog last time. I’m not one to say my English is good but me and LiewCF were about the same. His English not so good but now has improved. I’m also improving, right? Anyway, while everyone thought this I gave him the benefit of the doubt and true enough, he’s now a successful problogger in Malaysia.

(Comparing Alexa ranking for Liewcf.com and Kongtechnology.com)

Ever since then, he’s become my inspiration then on with the aim to become a problogger in Malaysia too. He made me believe all talk is nothing without starting. And I too celebrated my anniversary not too long ago. But I’m not a Malaysia problogger just yet…

Anyway, nothing is rewarded without working smart. Including what have been said before by some other Malaysia probloggers. I personally think LiewCF is a successful problogger in Malaysia because he:

Walked the walk and not only talk
Many of us know how to talk the talk but when put the test, never walk the walk. LiewCF, on the other hand walked the walk after he resigned from his full time position. Which I find truly brave and adventurous.

Rode the Malaysia technology blog wave
When LiewCF first started his blog, there were little to no technology blogs in Malaysia. I remember when he started, there were others who tried copying him by doing the same. But many didn’t survive the campaign against the copy-and-paste bloggers.

Exchanged links with plenty of related blogs and website
Before daddy Google came down hard on the link farms, link exchanges were very active and it was one of the key methods to help your blogs climb the search engines. By taking advantage of this ‘flaw’, his empire became stronger with this method.

Took the effort to market himself
When he claimed he was the first problogger in Malaysia, the whole blogosphere reacted to the statement. Even the blog celebrities (some weren’t yet) made comments on it. Slowly this became a more than effective viral marketing campaign which ran on its own. Now, why didn’t I think of that!

Never thinks he knows everything
He understood technology keeps evolving, so must he. The only way to do this was to read up on other probloggers like; Darren Rowse, and other international full time bloggers.

Carefully selects his news sources
Even as a content aggregator, nobody will read what they have read or is potentially uninteresting. Therefore, he selects his news sources in a smart manner, that’s do his research.

Filters content his audience wants to read
I think part of a Malaysia problogger’s duty or ’sixth’ sense is to identify what content your audience wants to read. Technology is advancing almost every hour (or even minute). So I’m also trying my best now to filter my content before sharing with my readers also.

Maintains a low profile like any other Malaysia problogger
I’m very surprised not everyone knows LiewCF like Kenny Sia or others. Although he’s one of the more famous tech blogs in South East Asia, not everyone knows about LiewCF being a Malaysia problogger. But I think that’s cool. Because when you meet blogebirty in person, then you feel ’syiok’.

Continues to expand his reach
Last and not least, he had foresight and noticed communities were going to become a large part of the Internet. Thus, he created a forum for Malaysia Bloggers. His blog also served as a much needed forum for his readers (many of whom shared common interests).

An increasingly important part of LiewCF.com is the Online Store and Job Board. When you Google a job in Malaysia, his website often comes up in the first page. Very clever SEO and traffic strategy indeed.

Well, above are some of the reasons why I think LiewCF is a successful problogger in Malaysia. Hopefully, some day I’ll be able to pay my bills with just this blog too when I become on par with him!

In the meantime, if I get the chance I’d look forward to interviewing LiewCF personally to ask about some of the secrets he could share with bloggers like me - aiming to be a Malaysia problogger. You all also certainly want to know how he earns so much money right? Hahahaha…