The Plurk microblogging platform has truly taken off in the Philippines. I think it would be safe to assume that Plurk has overtaken Twitter among Filipino netizens. And one who stands out in this population is the man behind remarkable Web 2.0 projects such as the Alleba Filipino Search Engine, Ratified.org and quite a few others: Andrew dela Serna.
[read on]
In honor of jazz musician, John Coltrane, WordPress version 2.7 is named “Coltrane” and is out in the world today. One of the features of the newest release of this fantastic content management platform is its auto-upgrading function. Thank goodness!
Read more about the latest here.
At the risk of offending fans of the movie Twilight, I’m afraid I must give it two thumbs down. I went in with no expectations (I haven’t read the book), and with no intention at all of comparing it with Anne Rice’s Vampire Chronicles, but I was still sorely disappointed.
Acting-wise, Robert Pattinson and Kristen Stewart didn’t do so badly. However, Pattinson was just way too sullen. I blame that on the director, Catherine Hardwicke. She failed to develop the Edward Cullen character. He had no depth, only misery. He had no hopes, only an unexplained compassion for the human, Bella Swan. (Makes me wonder now what all the fanaticism over Pattinson is all about. He looks good. Period.) [read on]
Site Referrer Info
I’ve finally gotten around to implementing a blog function that I’ve long wanted to incorporate into my blogs: a greet box to personalize my readers’ experience. You can see this in popular blogs such as Weblog Tools Collection. The reason for needing this is, I’ve decided to consolidate all my online contact forms into one site — Blogie.me — to lessen the load on my server somehow. (Even though I run a dedicated server, it’s never a bad idea to constantly find ways to optimize server performance.)
So, I was looking for a way to capture site referrer information (i.e., where are my visitors coming from?) so that I could properly inform my visitors that they weren’t lost when they landed on the Blogie.me contact form. So, let’s say you were in AngDabawenyo.com and you clicked on the “Contact” link — you’d be brought to a different site where I now host a centralized contact form. I realize that, for many people, this might be a rather jolting experience (because blogie.me looks very different from my other blogs). That’s why I think it’s important to be able to tell people something like: “You clicked on the ‘Contact’ link from AngDabawenyo.com…”. [read on]
This how-to is important for blogs that have multiple authors, but works for single-author blogs as well. If your WordPress blog doesn’t have the author.php template, then this might just be for you. It’s a good way to promote your blog by providing your readers with juicier information about yourself (and your co-authors). This works for WordPress versions 2.5 and above.
Step #1
Upload a blank file named author.php to your theme directory [wp-content/themes/template-name/]. You must use that exact filename, otherwise, WordPress won't recognize it. Once that's done, you'll see this template file appear in your Theme Editor screen inside your WordPress admin backend. Best way to make sure that the Author page comes out looking like the rest of your blog is by copying the contents of Page Template (page.php) into author.php. [read on]
[UPDATED]
After two successful Mindanao Bloggers Summits, the MindanaoBloggers.com site has now undergone a complete redesign. The community blog debuted with the Darn Slick Gadgets WordPress theme by Andrew dela Serna, plus Jojie Alcantara’s awesome photos for the header.
For posterity, here’s that brilliant header that we’ve all enjoyed seeing on the MindanaoBloggers.com blog for about one and a half years.
[read on]
Warning: geeky content!
When WordPress 2.6.5 was released yesterday, that ‘Oh no, not again!’ sinking feeling was quite overwhelming this time. You see, I have 20-something WordPress installations already — imagine the time and effort it would take to upgrade all of them. Even if there was the WordPress Automatic Upgrade plugin, that would still mean having to access each WP dashboard and perform the semi-automatic upgrade (not fully automatic because you still have to manually click on stuff to begin and continue the process).
WPAU takes about 5 minutes to complete, a bit longer if you actually do download the backup files it generates for you. So, 20 x 5 = 100 minutes, or almost two hours! That is, if you don’t multitask and perform simultaneous upgrading — but I don’t like having sooo many browser tabs open. [read on]
There was a blissful time when I truly appreciated this Filipino domain registration company, Cheaper Than Cheap Domains (or CTCD). I’ve always believed that we should patronize our own, because doing so would help our economy somehow. But boy, I made a mistake with this one!
When I started using them a year ago for some .com domains and a couple of .ph ones, they were OK. Their customer service was a notch above tolerable, which made up for their lack of value-added domain services (of which Godaddy.com has an abundace). Anyway, all I needed was for them to have my domains resolve to my nameservers (which sometimes took awhile for newly registered domains).
Then, about a few months ago, they lost their credit card payment facility. Renewals had to be done over the counter at a bank! 
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I began this site in February 2008, but delayed blogging about DavaoTechJobs.com because I wasn’t quite sure yet how I’d go about presenting it to the world. The objective, however, was clear from the start: to provide a venue for both job seekers and employment providers.
At first, I just used the blog system to post job openings. These were sent in by companies through an online form created with one of my favorite WordPress plugins, called cforms. Potential applicants, as well, could send their résumés via another form. [read on]
