Kongtechnology.com » Domain names

Switch from Blogger to WordPress in 6 steps

Howard — Sat, 10 Oct 2009 04:33:31 +0000

If you are an avid blogger, most likely you started off on an amateur basis with free services like Blogger and over time acquired a large number of following and have decided that maybe it’s time for you strike off into your own domain and get www.MYSITE.com instead of MYSITE.blogspot.com. Well, that may be a wonderful dream and all, but consider some glaring problems with doing the switch if you didn’t plan ahead.

First off, your old blog will probably be abandoned. At most, you may insert a new link to point visitors to your new blog. But all the search engines that have linked to your old blogs will continue to link to them and not to your updated blog, and that may be a problem because you will need to rebuild all your ‘reputation’ all over again. In particular, all those Google-generated visitor traffic won’t be able to reach your new blog, which means you’re basically starting over from scratch all over again. AdSense revenue will tank as a result.

Secondly, your RSS feed will die, and readers who have been following your feed will most probably just delete the non-responsive feed and move on. Don’t underestimate the amount of people who use RSS as a way to keep track of their favorite web spaces.

However, fear not as there is a way for your to migrate from Blogger to your own self-hosted WordPress server in 6 simple steps that avoid all the pitfalls described earlier. Digital Inspiration’s Amit Agarwal compiled these useful step-by-step instructions:

Step 1: In case you haven’t done this already – register a new web domain, buy server space from some web hosting company that offers PHP/MySQL hosting and and install WordPress software on your new domain.

Step 2: Go to your WordPress Admin Dashboard > Tools > Import and select the Blogger option. Authorize WordPress to access your Google Account and within minutes, all your old blog posts and comments will be available on the new WordPress site.

Step 3: Copy this file into your WordPress themes directory. This is what you should copy over: blogger.php.txt

Step 4. Open your WordPress Dashboard and go to Pages -> Add New Page. Keep the title and URL of that page as blogger and select “blogger” from the Template drop-down. Save. There’s no need to add any content to this page.

Step 5. Open the template generator, type the full address of your new WordPress blog (including http:// and the trailing slash) and this tool will create a new classic template for your blogspot blog that will look something like this:

<$BlogPageTitle$>

This page has moved to a new address.

<$BlogTitle$>

<$BlogItemTitle$>

Step 6. Open your Blogger Dashboard -> Layout -> Edit HTML and choose “Revert to Classic Blog”. Copy-paste the template generated in Step 5 in the “Edit Template” area and click “Save Template Changes”.

Your are done. Open any page on your old Blogger blog and it should redirect you to the corresponding WordPress page. On the WordPress side, since we are using a permanent 301 redirect with the redirection URLs, all the Google Juice will probably pass to your new WordPress pages with time.

Update your RSS Feed: When you move from Blogger to WordPress, the address of your RSS feed will change as well. Go to Blogger -> Settings -> Site Feed, type the address of your new WordPress RSS feed here and Google Reader, Bloglines, etc. will automatically move to your new feed.

There you go, a complete and pain-free (for the most part) process that allows you to continue blogging without diminishing the user traffic that you have so painstakingly built over the years. Happy blogging!

ICANN to allow new top-level domain names

Kitkat — Tue, 01 Jul 2008 19:19:37 +0000

Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), a non-profit organization that oversees the naming scheme for domain names, has decided to allow new top-level domain names ending in whatever the registrants like. Wow, you may not believe this… but you read me right, ICANN has decided to allow this!

Soon, you will be able to register domain names ending in any extensions you want! Some day, you may be able to reach me using Kong.technology or Go.og.le! (Is there a .le country level domain name now?)

This proposal allows applicants for new names to self-select their domain name so that choices are most appropriate for their customers or potentially the most marketable. It is expected that applicants will apply for targeted community strings such as (the existing) .travel for the travel industry and .cat for the Catalan community (as well as generic strings like .brandname or .yournamehere). There are already interested consortiums wanting to establish city-based top level domain, like .nyc (for New York City), .berlin and .paris.

Under the new ruling, companies may add their company name to the end of their domain name instead of being limited to .com, .org or .net as is previously the case. The new naming process will begin in the second quarter of 2009 and as expected it won’t be cheap. It’s estimated to cost anywhere from US$50,000 to US$100,000 or even more for a “customized” domain name.

You may try to register a domain name with the suffix .xxx which was rejected by ICANN last year, but approval is not guaranteed. Paul Twomey, CEO of ICANN, has already said that the organization will still try to reject any domain name it deems inappropriate for security or moral reasons.

Domain names trivia, if you are interested to know…

The largest top-level domain is .com, with 71 million addresses, followed by .de, the Germany country-level domains, with 11.2 million and .net, with 10.6 million. The fastest growing is .cn, the China country-level domains, with 10.5 million addresses.

Ping.my

Kitkat — Wed, 26 Mar 2008 08:17:09 +0000

How’s your luck in registering the newest .my domain names? Did you miss out yesterday when the domain name registration was open to the public? Looks like there was such a huge rush to register .my domain names when it was opened, at 10am when I checked most good and short domain names were already taken.

These snapped like hot cake domain names include Ping.my which I actually intended to register. A quick check reveals this might be registered by those folks at Advertlets.com.

Advertlets.com’s logo is there. Perhaps they are planning to come up with a blog ping service or search engine. Sounds relevant to their core business right now which is blogs advertising.

One thing I have questions is. Is it worthwhile to spend the money to reserve those domain names if you do not have plan to develop them into a website? Two.my is already grabbed by someone, which Two.com.my is still available for registration. How come?

Let’s take a look at a list of the most expensive domain names. Sorry no .com.my and .my yet.

Sex.com
$11 – $14 million (disputed reports), January 19th 2006

Fund.com
$10 million, March 11 2008

Porn.com
$9.5 million, 2007

Business.com
$7.5 million, 1999

Diamond.com
$7.5 million

Beer.com
$7 million

AsSeenOnTv.com
$5.1 million, January 2000

Seo.com
$5 million

Shop.com
$3.5 million

Altavista.com
$3.3 million

Creditcheck.com
$3 million

Anyway, I also didn’t give up after learning that most good names were already taken up. I fast fast registered a couple of .my domain names… right now, still planning and will soon develop those sites. Stay tuned.

Josh Lim, how much do you wanna sell Ping.my to me?

How to transfer a domain name out of GoDaddy and into DirectI

Kitkat — Fri, 21 Mar 2008 16:34:08 +0000

Let me show you the steps involved if you need to transfer a domain name out of GoDaddy. Admit this, GoDaddy is one of the largest domain name registrars in the world, but it isn’t the cheapest when you come to pricing. For example, it doesn’t offer private whois information feature for free, you will need to pay up to about US$9 for this feature. So, there are situations when you might want to just transfer your domain name out of GoDaddy.

First, of course login to GoDaddy’s account and go to the Domain Manager.

Select on the domain name which you wish to transfer out. Then, click on the “Locked (Change)” link to unlock the domain name, if it’s locked. Locking prevents unauthorized changes to a domain. It also prevents the domain from being transfered to another registrar.

Once the unlock request is submitted, it will usually take 1 or 2 minutes to process. After this is done, you will need to turn off the private whois feature. Click on the link “Privacy : On (Manage)” link to do this. On GoDaddy, the private whois feature is managed by DomainsByProxy.com and so you will be redirected to this website.

Simply follow the on screen instructions to turn off this feature for the domain which you wish to transfer out of GoDaddy. This should only take a few minutes, after it’s done… don’t expect the system to return you to GoDaddy. Weird, it just didn’t redirect back, perhaps the two systems’ integration has still got some holes to patch up.

Go back to GoDaddy and login again. You should see that the domain is now unlocked and not private whois protected. Good, now click on the link “Authorization Code: Send by Email” to request GoDaddy to email you the authorization code (aka Transfer Secret).

Wait for a few moments for you authorization code to arrive, but in the meantime, you can go to the incoming registrar (aka gaining registrar) to initiate a transfer request. In this case I will use DirectI.

A new screen comes up. Enter the domain name you wish to transfer. Of course, enter also the authorization code which you should have received in your email now. Transfer secret is a domain transfer code (password) granted by all the domain name registrars and is used as a protection mechanism, to ensure that only the rightful domain owner can control the transfer of the domain registration.

Shortly after this step is executed, you will get an email from DirectI, requesting you as the rightful owner of the domain name to approve the transfer request. If you wish to proceed, click on the approve transfer link.

Think twice before you click on the approve link. Once you have clicked on that… the transfer will be carried out and it will take up to 5 days to complete. Once the domain is transfered to DirectI, its expiry period will be extended by one year.

Hope today everyone learned something new.

Public registration for .my domain names opens on 25 March 2008

Kitkat — Wed, 19 Mar 2008 10:36:42 +0000

Have you registered your favorite .my second level domain name (2LD)? If you haven’t, you better do this quickly, as now priorities are still given to the registrants of existing domain names. In this case, current registrants of the .com.my domain names will get priorities to register corresponding .my domain names.

This cannot be said after 25 March 2008, because by then registration will be open to the public. I guess by then everyone will rush to register short and prime domain names such as two.my, sex.my, porn.my…

Too bad, one.my is already registered and is not available for registration.

If you are unsure if you want to spend some RM100 to register a new domain name or not. Think again. Fund.com was earlier this month sold for a world record US$10,000,000… yes, there are so many zeros, a whooping 10 million dollars! And the deal was in cash!

Clek Media Inc. (“Clek”) today announced that it has brokered the world-record sale of the domain FUND.COM for US$9,999,950 in an all-cash transaction. Clek, a media consulting firm, represented the seller of the domain, assisting in both the negotiation and closing of the transaction. The buyer is Fund.com Inc. (OTCBB: FNDM), a New York firm previously named Meade Technologies Inc. To date the buyer has revealed their plans for the domain mostly in filings with the US Securities and Exchange Commission.

Anyway, below is an excerpt of the announcement from Mynic.

DID YOU MISS THE PRIORITY ENTRY PERIOD LAST YEAR?

NO WORRIES! PUBLIC REGISTRATION OPENS ON TUESDAY, 25TH MARCH 2008.

NOW YOU CAN REGISTER FOR OUR NEW SHORTER INTERNET ADDRESS COMPANYNAME.MY

Why get a shorter address? Shorter Internet address will offer you the following :

You will gain an impactful identification mark within the global Internet community as it is easier to remember
You can span across any industry (as the name will no longer need any categorization of type of entity) to promote your products and services
You are protecting your intellectual property & brand name. Failure to register your name using shorter suffix companyname.my leaves it open for other entities/parties to take up the name, that may result in trademark issues later
It is faster and quicker for foreign Internet communities to recognize you as a Malaysian brand selling to the global market

MYNIC website and whois down on 1st March 2008

Kitkat — Fri, 22 Feb 2008 03:36:22 +0000

Just want to share with you that you will not be able to do Malaysia country level domain name whois queries on 1st March 2008 because Mynic will be conducting planned maintenance works on that day.

Received the following email a few moments ago:

Please be informed that MYNIC will be conducting planned maintenance works as below:

Date: 1st March 2007
Time: 08:00 AM to 6:00 PM

Please note that the MYNIC website and Whois service will be not available during the maintenance time. However, please note that all domain names registered with MYNIC will not be affected by this maintenance work.

Please do not hesitate to e-mail domreg@mynic.net.my or call us at
03-89917272 if you have any query at all.

Did you notice the date? 2007! What a mistake to make here… But a check on Mynic’s website on this scheduled maintenance confirms it’s a mistake because on their website they have corrected it to 1st March 2008.

Not sure if you can still submit domain name registrations on that day?

I am registering Maybank2u.my and Sex.my

Kitkat — Thu, 01 Nov 2007 05:53:34 +0000

I was so excited to learn that Mynic has opened Malaysia’s 2nd level domain name registrations. This may sound weird but what it basically means is now we can register domain names such as Maybank2u.my and Sex.my! Yeah, these are the two domain names that popped up in my head straight away which I wanted to register immediately. It costs RM120 max per domain name and hehehe… I might be able to sell it at 10 or 100 times afterwards.

I put the above young, beautiful and sexy chick on my Sex.my, you think can make money or not? I am that wicked. Can or not? Hahaha…

However, as I was about to submit my applications I learned that priorities are given to the registrants of existing domain names. In other words, priorities are given to the current registrants of Maybank2u.org or Maybank2u.com, and if both of them were to submit their applications, the registrant with the earliest registered third level domain name will get the priority! So complicated, just give the domain name to me la!

Perhaps I should consider BrokeBack.my?

Read more details about .my 2nd level domain name priority entry.