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.