I’m extending the free hosting contest I started last week. I was supposed to end it today but I totally forgot about it, LOL. And since only a few people have joined so far, I’m extending it for three more days. I’ll be drawing the winner on Wednesday. Stay tuned 
Do you want your own domain? Are you blogging on a free blog-hosting platforms like Blogger, WordPress.com, Tabulas, LiveJournal, Multiply, Friendster, etc? Would you like to have a blog that would let you earn more?
Then blogging on your own domain, with a paid hosting account just might be right for you. Getting your own domain is pretty easy but a hosting account can be pretty expensive, with maybe $4 per month = $48 per year. Last year, I bought a 2-year hosting account that could host as many domains as I want. I use only a small portion of the disk space and the bandwidth considering that I only have 3 blogs in it.
So here’s the deal… I’m offering hosting for 1-year, FREE! What do you need to do to get it? Simple:
I’ll be doing a raffle of the names of those who joined next Saturday, May 17, 2008 at 10:00 am so all comments and posts should be in by then. The winner should have his or her own domain. Winner could easily buy his or her preferred domain. I will be hosting that domain for free for a year. I will only use wordpress though because I don’t know other free blog platforms, hehe!
I think this would be ideal for those who are only just starting to explore the idea of blogging on their own domain and yet do not want to spend too much for it. Or for those who simply have too much ideas for a blog and would like to start another one. Or for those who would like to transfer their existing blogs to their own domain. So what are you waiting for? Write that post now! 
Ever since I started blogging on my own domain last year, I didn’t upgrade my wordpress install. Last week though, something crazy happened… my blog got hacked.
My initial reaction was, why? Is my blog worth hacking? I found out that the wordpress version I was running (2.2, yep that old!) had many security issues and that it’s not unheard of for blogs still running this version to get hacked. The first thing I did was to back up my databases and then decided to just do a fresh install of the new version of wordpress. Here’s where I found myself with a big hurdle. Updating my databases was easy enough. Wiping my hosting account clean of all files was also hassle-free. I didn’t realize though that it’s not as easy as installing a new wordpress version and uploading my old databases. I had to install the original old version and then upgrade the whole thing since my databases need to be upgraded too.
After hours of installing, uploading, and upgrading, which I had to do several times by the way, my blog and Ramil’s blog are finally back online. I have yet to fix my photoblog though and I still want to install new templates on this one. After the whole ordeal though, I’ve realized that I have a huge amount of disk space and bandwidth just sitting there and not being utilized. So I’ve thought of cooking up something and offering FREE hosting for a year. To those who want to have additional blogs hosted on their own domain, I’ll be posting the details on Saturday.
This is how I would want hackers and viruses to be. So I guess I need a good computer security software like ESET smart security. With the amount of time we spend hooked up to the internet, having strong internet security is a must. Not to mention the security that we need whenever we connect our laptop to a network. There have been times when after using our laptop to connect to the school’s network, we have had to clean up some files because of viruses. Also, while connected to the school network, we wouldn’t want just about anyone to have access to our files. Nowadays, it’s better to be safe than sorry and prevention is always better than cure.
Ramil and I have been thinking of buying another laptop for quite some time now. With me doing part-time work and some blog opportunities, he hasn’t been able to bring our laptop to school. It really pays to have your own laptop if you’re a teacher. Ramil would usually have a lot of powerpoint presentations to show to his students. Not to mention that our laptop has been having some problems.
It would take us some time and a lot of money though to be able to buy a new one. So right now, we’ve resorted to backing up our files every now and then. We’re also exploring some file sharing so that he can access files even when he is in school. There are also times when we stay in my parents’ house in Novaliches and it helps to have access to our files even without our laptop. Good thing we discovered Driveway. What’s really good about this new online file sharing service is that it is free! Also, we can upload as many files as we want because it offers unlimited total storage and it has no download limits. Which means we can upload files for our students for download. Since one of our school’s thrust is caring for the environment, we’ve been pushing for a paperless mode of instruction and this just might be a good option. I guess Ramil and I will try it for ourselves for a few days and see what happens.
Blogging has definitely reached a different status.
If you feel that your blog deserves the kudos, visit the site. Nomination is until February 28 only. You may nominate your own blog or one of your favorite blogs. There will be winners for different categories. Hmm, it's time for a lot of bloghopping!
On another note, our baby has been very active the past few days. I’ve been noticing more and stronger movements. Ramil was finally able to feel our baby last night only to realize that he felt those kinds of movements before already. I think he felt good afterwards, thinking that he also felt the movements early. Hehe!
I’ve also started wearing maternity clothes already. My mama was kind enough to buy clothes for me. Hehe! I would tell her before that I don’t want to buy maternity clothes yet because I can still fit in my big clothes and that we don’t need the extra expense right now. Worked well I think Plus, my older cousins who were also recently pregnant have now started giving me several pieces of maternity and baby clothes. It has been so exciting lately, with the baby becoming more real everyday. I had my ob visit last Saturday and my ob scheduled me for an ultrasound on Sept 16, my 20th week. Ramil and I are very excited because they might be able to determine our baby’s gender by that time already. We just hope our baby will be cooperative on that day.
Our thoughts were, nevermind if it’s broken, we’ll replace the drive. But we need our files! We have more than a year’s worth of memories stored in the harddrive, not to mention all the mp3′s we’ve acquired during those time, all the work-related documents. Not to mention that all the trim tests we’ve made for the exams next week (freshly made right before it crashed)and the grades for the first trimester. What a mess! Seeing the look on our faces, the guy in the shop told us there are some people who can retrieve data even from broken harddrives. He told us to buy a buy and sell magazine and look for ads there. We tried calling the numbers in the ads and we got outrageous quotations for our 40GB hdd. The prices we got were around 4k but one person who said that the data are sure to be retrieved, gave us a whopping 8k quotation!Just for retrieving files from a broken hdd. Crap.
So I am making a shout for HELP! Anybody know anybody who can help us? We’ve already bought a new 60GB hdd (instant upgrade) so we’re not really after fixing the damn drive but just to salvage whatever files we can. So please, pretty please, any ideas?
Moving to wordpress, that is.