PinayWorkingMom

Blogging 101: Getting Started – Domain and Hosting Explained

Posted in Hobbies, Technology January 27, 2013 Leave a comment

Wow, I’m finally back – after an entire year and a bit! So, let me make myself useful on this comeback post —

I’m assuming you checked this out because you’ve been thinking of doing a blog but you have no idea where, or how, to start. Realistically, you will need a little understanding of a few semi-technical details if you want to know exactly what it is you’re doing. Of course, you can always pay someone to do it (wink), but if you are feeling ‘brave’ enough to try, I will attempt to simplify things here and will do my best to not get too technical (disclaimer to purist geeks!).

Blogger, WordPress, TypePad, Tumblr, Travbuddy, and even a previous work project GoAbroad.net, have all offered options for my very own online space to share stuff. The one thing that I didn’t dig so much about these free blog spaces were that, much as most of them gave options for personalization, they didn’t quite feel.. “mine”. These free sites will always have their branding on your blog address and it will never sound as cool as “www.LegalNomads.com“, or “www.thePioneerWoman.com” or my favorite “www.LaTartineGourmande.com“. So yeah, vanity eventually got the better of me and I decided to look into setting up a real blog.

Not too long afterwards, I found myself setting up blogs for friends and for personal web design and SEO experimentation. Because of my degree and what I do for a living, it did not take much for me to get the hang of dealing with nameserver settings, installing plugins via ftp, adding scripts for ads, analytics and social media buttons, etc.

Did I just sound like an adult from the Peanuts cartoon?? Don’t close this page just yet!!

Now, while all that sounds like serious, hyper-techie stuff, it really isn’t that much hard work. All it takes is a bit of understanding about which is what; the rest, I believe, is nothing more than following instructions. Yes, really.

Let’s begin. Here are the stuff you’ll need to buy, in this order:

1. A hosting account.

2. Your own domain.

Wait.. Wha..? What’s a domain? What’s hosting? And…it’s not free??

The steps I give here are for setting up a blog using your own domain. You DO have free options, but this post isn’t about that. Maybe, I’ll write on that next. But then I do think that getting your own domain is the way to go, so maybe I won’t That said, let’s answer the other questions one at a time:

DOMAIN

Your domain determines your blog’s unique web address. Depending on your preferred TLD (top-level domain, i.e. that ‘extension’ part of the web address that says .com, .ly, .ph, etc.), the first step is picking a registrant.

Think of a domain registrant as the PO Box Rental section of your Post Office.

You go to them and say you want an address.
They check on availability.
You pay for the box.
They give you access, and you do what you want with it.
Then, they make sure you have that address for as long as you pay them to keep it under your name.

A domain registrant is exactly that – you register a domain name with them and you have control of that name for as long as you pay them the fee.

There are many companies that offer this service, the ones I’m familiar with are BlueHost, HostGator, GoDaddy, DreamHost, and there’s dotPH for Philippine TLDs. It is hard to say which one is the ‘best’ – experiences really vary and while I can share mine, it is not fair to say a final word on anybody as services and prices improve (or degrade) over time.

What I would say is check on all providers that you can for any promotions that may be running at the time of your purchase. GoDaddy, where I register most of my .com’s, always has some promotion running; they also have a special bulk rate running all the time, so if you plan on registering a few domains, that may be useful to keep in mind.

Once you’ve picked a registrant, you will need to create an account. After that, is the part where I wish you luck – time to see whether the domain you want is available

TIPS ON PICKING A DOMAIN NAME:

Pick something memorable. Your domain name is what people type in to find you, so make sure the whole thing is easy to remember.
Being witty always helps, so try. If you have several options and can’t decide, conduct a poll among friends to get feedback.
Target keywords. Think of the words that people may use to look for the stuff that you will be blogging about. It is common search engine knowledge that it helps to get you higher on search results when those words are part of your domain name.
Settle, only as the last resort. That, my friend, is a general advice for life… Seriously though, trust me when I say switching domain names is a nightmare for any newbie-techie-wannabe. So, explore your options very well before throwing the towel in and going for any of the suggestions you get when the domain you want isn’t available.
Check that spelling! This seems obvious but better safe than sorry – before checking out, read the domain several times over to make sure you’d not misspelled it. Sure, there’s Tumblr and Flickr and Xero and stuff, but I’m sure Lala Dimaculangan wouldn’t want to accidentally register an eponymous blog as www.laladinaculangan.com; you get me
Oh, and before you buy, check out hosting FIRST. Please read below…

WEB HOSTING

You need a web host to store the files that make up your website – images, your posts, the lines of computer code that make your blog do what it does – all that stuff. These files should be in a storage location (a disk, if you will) that’s accessible via the Internet 24 hours a day / 7 days a week. These hosting companies own big storage media and you pay to rent a little space for your stuff, you know, they host your content.

Strictly speaking, with ample technical know-how, it is possible to not have to pay for this. However, awesome advances in technology have allowed many companies to provide hosting at very reasonable costs.

For as low as Php 200/month (USD 4.95), you can save yourself the technical hassle of keeping your website running 24/7!

Think of a hosting company as a 24-hour convenience store, and your blog as a space on their magazine stand. You pay them a fee to keep your content accessible to anybody who might be looking for it.

Heard of this “cloud” thing? Think of it as a network of convenience stores where you simply dump your magazine copies at the head branch and they take care of sending it to their other branches so that your content is available to your consumer at the location nearest them.

TIPS ON BUYING HOSTING:

Check out hosting before buying a domain. I’ve deliberately listed hosting first on the buying list because previous experience had me wishing I’d bought hosting BEFORE buying a domain. This is because getting hosting with one company and domains with another would need you to be logging in to two separate accounts to manage your site. Most hosting services are also registrants, and they usually have you start the hosting setup process by searching for your desired website address, so I strongly recommend you shop around for a hosting service first.
That said, always check on promotions before buying. Depending on available promos, it might turn out to be better value for money if you get your hosting and domains with different companies. I’ve chosen to go down this route myself, buying most domains from GoDaddy but hosting my sites on BlueHost. It’s admittedly inconvenient (hence the previous tip), but I’ve found ways to manage. Do your homework and don’t be lazy on the Math. Unless you have a deep pocket.. which I’m sure you want to keep deep, so yeah, do your Math.
Caution on promos: Check the regular prices AFTER the promotional rate is over. Promo rates are intentionally made to sound and feel like the greatest deal you’d ever seen in your entire awesome life, but keep in mind that promo rates ALWAYS revert to a regular rate after a certain amount of time. For example, a promo rate may be to get hosting for USD 2.95/month for the first year, but succeeding years are at USD 9.95! Read the fine print as it may be better to go with a company that isn’t running a promotion but gets you to start at their regular rate of USD 5.95. Always think long term.

So I hope that little primer helped. Now, I’ll leave you to shop around. Tomorrow, I’ll write on the actual setup steps.

Cooking for Working Moms – The Basics

Posted in Chowtime August 31, 2011 Leave a comment

It’s the end of the long weekend and back to reality for us working moms. I did the groceries yesterday and had the chance to do for my family what I used to do for me and the kids when we were living in our own apartment. Food storage is probably what inspired me to start the PinayWorkingMom blog. Geeky, I know. But I feel that sharing what effective methods I discover might help some moms out there who wish to serve healthier meals but can’t afford the time to cook from scratch everyday.

While it’s not technically difficult to juggle serving healthy meals and keeping on top of a job, it requires a lot of commitment. If you have a competitive career, living in today’s world of instant concoctions and fast food will make it very tempting for you to go for convenience over nutrition.

Planning meals, cooking and storing food is not rocket science. I know that sounds simplistic, but it’s probably practical to learn it anyway. Here are a few basics:

1. Write a meal plan. This helps you make sure that -

There’s balance in what your family is eating. Writing a meal plan and looking at what your kids might be eating for the entire week helps you visually spot whether they are eating too much red meat, for example, or too much fried food, etc.

Your grocery list is a sensible one. By listing down what you will be needing and how much of it, you save not only on the time spent at the supermarket deciding on the stuff to buy, but also on impulsive purchases.

You are within your budget. An effective meal plan and a practical grocery list helps you stick to your budget better as you have a guide in making sure you buy only what you need.

TIP: Few ideas? Many food magazines come with a monthly meal plan. While you may not follow everything, checking them out gives you a few ideas and some direction.

2. Schedule grocery shopping. Some people get paid once a month, others every 15 days, and a few, weekly – whatever works for schedule and fund availability, set aside a schedule for your food shopping. I’ve personally found that it’s easier to partition and prepare meats for freezing when I buy for a week’s consumption. This is because I know that the proteins are about as fresh or old, and I don’t end up with odd portions as what happens when I buy throughout the week.

Chopping board vendor

TIP: If you want to save right down to the cents, a trip to the good old community market still gives better value versus the convenient and air conditioned mall supermarkets.

A practice that Filipinos have is to shop for food every day at the wet market. While this may be true for fish, or to generally ensure you’re only cooking fresh ingredients, I feel that this is a practice that we have inherited from days before the refrigerator came to make our lives more convenient. This is simply not practical for working moms anymore. While I still cannot get myself to freeze food for months even when I know it is safe to do so, I feel that freezing food for consumption within a week is not bad at all.

3. Pre-cut, pre-season, pre-partition. This is the main reason you need a meal plan actually. Ever had to thaw that 1 kilo of chicken breast that was frozen in the bag it was packed in straight out of the meat shop – when all you need of it are a few chunks for your sauteed string beans? Anyone who’s had to do this knows how frustrating it can be, not to mention the health risk of having raw meat stand at room temperature knowing you’ll have to freeze it all over again.

Guided with a meal plan, you will know exactly what cuts you need your meat need to be, what seasonings they need to be marinated in and exactly how much of the meat you will need for one meal.

Pre-cutting saves you time…

pre-seasoning helps with flavor…

and pre-partitioning saves you from having to thaw large portions and also keeps you from ending up with too much leftover.

You don’t have to pre-season everything, for flexibility, keep a few batches of unseasoned meat handy. This system is also effective when you need your helper to cook for you. When I was living on my own and was on the night shift and would then be sleeping when the kids needed to eat, all my yaya had to do was look at the meal plan on the fridge door, thaw the meat and cook as indicated on the meal plan.

There are other things to keep in mind – how long do the food keep for, is pre-cooking a good idea, etc. – and I’ll write about them in a future post.