With the different problems with the economy, we should learn how to spend our money wisely and invest it carefully. This is the reason why I like to share some tips on how to have a website that will only cost you $2 to $8.

If you want to have a website with a .COM domain then this steps might cost you an $8 but if you can live with .INFO domain then $2 would be enough.

1. First thing that you need to do is to register a domain. I register my domains at GODADDY and look for a GODADDY promo code (like cjc749fat which will expire this 02/28/10) so that I could register a $7.49 .COM. If you will not use a promo/coupon code, you’ll pay for $10 for a domain name.
2. After that, register an new account on BLOGGER.COM.
   

   Sign Up an Account in Blogger

3. Go to the settings page of the Blogger’s dashboard and click Settings->Publishing->Custom Domain
   

   Settings->Publishing->Custom Domain

4. You’ll see the following screen. Click on the “Switch to Advance Settings”
   

   Advance Settings

5. Type the domain name that you registered on step 1 on the “Your domain” textbox then Click Save Settings.
6. Next, sign-in to your domain registrants account then go to the domain manager of your domain name, as shown below:
   

   Go Daddy's Domain Manager

7. On the domain manager, go to the “Total DNS” window.
8. From the Total DNS Window, click “Add New A Record” and fill-up the host name with your domain name (yourdomainname.com) and type in the “Points to IP Address” the number 216.239.32.21. Repeat this step for IP Addresses > 216.239.34.21, 216.239.36.21 and 216.239.38.21. See the sample configuration below:
   

   Click on the image to enlarge

9. Then add or edit the WWW alias from the CNAME record and fill-up the “Point to hostname” with ghs.google.com. You can read http://www.google.com/support/blogger/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=55373 for information about this setting.

After you’re finished with this configuration, you need to wait a couple of hours or less before the new DNS control settings are applied. When the changes takes effect, you’ll see that when you visit your new domain, it will use your blogger account. You can now modify the template of your site to suit to the niche or topic that you want to be featured by your new site.

For more question about this stuff, you can leave your comment below and I will try to reply to the inquiry. Good luck and happy blogging!

How to Have A $2 to $8 Website and Setting A Custom Domain in Blogger is a post from: Felixberto Baguyo Jr.

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I discovered several sites again today which I will not mention on this post that is infected by the same virus that infected it last year but with slight modification on the malicious code. Some websites I know were also hacked and defaced. The problem is that sometimes, you can’t discover it until you find it out that Google already tagging/marking your site with a disturbing message “This site may harm your computer.” Which will immediately cause a drop on your traffic. The pain is it will take sometime before the “said mark” before Google lifts it.

This infection will really hurt your site in terms of traffic and sales lost which makes your SEO effort become useless. It is because, browsers today like Chrome and Firefox block sites with the said mark preventing users to open it even after you clean it.

This is the reason why you should avoid the infection to happen. It is as always I said, “prevention is always better than cure.” Here’s some of the things that you should consider to avoid this kind of situation (based on the suggestion of StopBadWare.org and my previous tips):

Protect your site

• Ensure that any software you use (e.g., blogging software like WordPress, third party scripts, etc.) is kept up to date with the latest security fixes, either by you (if you installed the software) or by your hosting provider.
• Remove any scripts, services, or other software that you are no longer using.
• Change any default passwords that come with the software you are using.
• Use appropriate file permissions on your web server.
• Limit the access to the site. Remove old users that is not part of the team that should access the site.

Protect your password

• Use a strong password and change it occasionally, especially if you have reason to think it has been compromised. A minimum of 12 character passwords composed of at least 2 symbols, 2 number and 2 upper case letters can create a hard to crack password.

Protect your computer

• Use appropriate firewall, anti-virus, anti-malware or anti-badware. Usually infection starts on your PC. Even if you follow the previous preventive measures but you neglect your own PC, still your website can be infected.
• Read StopBadWare.org’s tips on preventing badware infections for more information about this.

Rogue Viruses / Badware Keeps on Attacking Sites is a post from: Felixberto Baguyo Jr.

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My site was infected by a certain virus that embeds itself on PHP and Javascript files. The malware/virus attached itself at the end of the file and connecting to a certain website with a ccTLD .RU. It attached a code with GNU GPL code encrypted in Javascript. It infects all index.*, default*.* and *.js files.

Since, I am using a shared hosting, all of my sites under the hosting was infected and at first I did the fixing manually but since its a time consuming tasks, I decided to create a PHP code to clean this file. Here’s what you need to do to fix your website from the said GNU GPL infection.

1. Check your PC for any infections using an anti-virus like AVAST and MalwareBytes.
2. Change the password of your hosting and FTP access.
3. Download the file: FIXFILES.ZIP here. (Right Click ->Save Target As or Right Click->Save Link As)
4. Extract the FIXFILES.PHP from the archive and upload it to the root directory of your website (/www or / through FTP).
5. Execute it. ( Type http://www.yourwebsite.com/fixfiles.php on your address bar)
6. After executing the file, the cleaning of the infected files will start. Wait until all the files are listed.

The program reads all the files on your website and check for any existence of a certain signature of the virus or malware. It then removes the maliscious code and rewrite the file without the virus. Note: Use this PHP code at your own risks and Bleuken.com or the author is not liable of any loss or damage that it might cause to your website. As I have said, this is the same code that I use to fix this website and this code really fix everything. Good luck!

Fixing GNU GPL Virus/Malware is a post from: Felixberto Baguyo Jr.

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Do you know where does your website traffic come from? Well, if not then you should find a way to know it. You can use the following websites / online tools to see how your visitors find your site and the origins of the traffic:

• AwStats or Webalizer. It is usually provided by your hosting as part of your package. Some hosting set it on by default others requires you to enable them. Webalizer provides a detail and summary of the traffic from the country where they came from, entry/exit pages, search agents/sites used and event the response code of the site.
• Google Analytics. This is a great analytic tool from Google that requires you to sign-up for an account and embed a javascript tracking code on every pages of your site. There’s a lot of segment and reports that you can generate and find from this traffic tool. You can even connect your Adsense account so that you can determine which of your sites earn better and what keyword or articles attracts more clicks and money.
• Alexa – A traffic ranking site that shows you the top most visited websites on the net classified by countries and categories. You can also see your traffic rank on other countries using this site plus the most keyword that the site is known of.

Traffic Sources from G.A.

Now, as you can see on the image above, which is taken from Google Analytics it shows that most of my traffic are from search engine (73.24%) then referring sites (22.56%) and got less direct traffic (4.19%). Well with this data, it shows that the domain name that I choose for my personal blog is not that easy to remember but it also shows that my search engine optimization effort works.

Where Does Your Traffic Come From? is a post from: Felixberto Baguyo Jr.

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Load Speed & Search Engines

Its really annoying if you visit a site then it really loads slow. What if you own that site well of course you don’t want your readers / visitors to ‘suffer’ this way. Do you know that search engine might consider the load speed later to be part of their ranking factor? (read: New Google Ranking Factor in 2010: Site Load Speed, for more information regarding this issue.) That’s right they are planning to consider that later next year and you should be ready for that. If you site has a low grade of E or D on YSlow or on any Speedtest then you should consider taking measures to make the experience of your users much better.

Here are some of tips that you might consider to be implemented on your site to cope with this situation:

1. If you are using WordPress, install page caching plug-ins such as Super Cache and/or DB Cache. This WP plug-ins create a static equivalent of your dynamic web pages making it to load fast and decreases CPU and server/disk usage on your hosting.
2. Use small graphics. Utilize JPG/JPEG format images. It is known to have higher quality and compression rate compared to other file format.
3. Minimize the use of widgets or site enhancement that uses Javascripts.
4. Set expiration dates for your graphics, CSS and other files. This will minimize request loads for the site for revisiting visitors.

More of WordPress and plug-ins information at oes tsetnoc blog.

Making Your Blog to Load Fast is a post from: Felixberto Baguyo Jr.

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Custom 404 Tips

There are some cases that visitors or even you misspelled URLs from your site when they try to visit a specific page on your website. Sometimes they use from other site that point to non-existing page or posts from your blogs or website. This happens when you delete a page or rename the permalink or URL of a page. This usually results to a 404 error response from your server or a “Error Not Found” page which is a blank page with a large text: “Error 404 – Not Found.” It will be like a dead end for your readers.

Now, for better user experience, you could customize the 404 page that will be involved for responding to this kind of situation. If you are using WordPress as your CMS for your site, the 404 page is usually part of the theme of the site which you can easily customize by editing it on the theme editor found on the dashboard. The filename is usually 404.php or 404.html for non-Wordpress sites.

You can use the following Javascript from Google to the page to provide a search functionality and page suggestions plus URL fixer for the 404 page: (don’t forget to replace the GOOG_FIXURL_SITE value with the URL of your own site).

<script type="text/javascript">
 var GOOG_FIXURL_LANG = 'en';
 var GOOG_FIXURL_SITE = 'http://www.bleuken/'
</script>
<script type="text/javascript"
 src="http://linkhelp.clients.google.com/tbproxy/lh/wm/fixurl.js">
</script>

Aside from this Javascript code, you can also list all the posts on your WordPress blog using the following code:

<ul><?php get_archives('postbypost', 1000); ?></ul>

The code will list the 1000 posts of your site and if in case you have more than 1k, just replace it with your desired number.

Don’t be satisfied with a plain 404 page and leave your visitors with nothing for a not found URL. Provide them with something through this suggested tweak or improvement on your “Error – not found” page.

Customize Your 404 Page for Better User Experience is a post from: Felixberto Baguyo Jr.

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PLDT MyDSL MyWorld Logo

Recently, I changed my internet connection to PLDT DSL in our province from Smart Bro. I really find it fast compared to the wireless connection but I also experienced a certain problem from DSL which I don’t know if it is just a coincident or what. I always lost my connection on PLDT DSL after midnight and it only resumes early before 7 in the morning. I already experienced it twice and I don’t know if they have technical problems or it is just what it is. I don’t want to call their 171 customer care yet to report this incident but I am planning to if I will experience the same thing more later.

Now in my search for solution or fix for this problem on the web (using my SmartBro – I believe that it only needs some tweak on the DNS of the connection settings), I found this post from NonThoughts blog enumerating a list of different valid DNS servers that is working with PLDT. Here are the numbers listed by the said blog post and I use the first 4 numbers on the list and my connection on PLDT did came back.

58.69.254.3
58.69.254.4
58.69.254.8
58.69.254.9
58.69.254.43
58.69.254.46
58.69.254.70
58.69.254.72
58.69.254.103
58.69.254.104
58.69.254.106
58.69.254.133
58.69.254.134
58,69.254.135
58.69.254.137
202.57.96.4
203.87.128.3
203.172.11.21
203.172.11.25
203.172.11.26

You might ask how you will specify this DNS on your connection. The following video shows how to change your DNS to use the listed numbers.

If you find any problem with your PLDT DSL connection, leave your comment here and share your thoughts, tips, tweaks or fix that have done to deal with this problem. PLDT DSL users will be very glad to read some good tips from you.

PLDT DSL Connection Problems and Fix is a post from: Felixberto Baguyo Jr.

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There’s a lot of anti-virus software in the market today but still a lot of people are victimized by these programming codes that gone rogue into the cyberspace and annoying a lot of people in the world. Conficker is on the top list of the most prevalent virus in the world and the Taterf that targets massively multiplayer online role-playing games (MMORPGs) is just a sample of viruses that attacked businesses and computers around the globe. Now to the question what is the most effective “anti-virus” for you, the answer is not another memory hog anti-virus software (of course we need it) but the real cure is “awareness.” Knowledgeable of the different preventive measures and policies to apply on your business operations and computer usage can make a real fix even the threat is not yet there.

Here are some of the things that you need to consider to implement a very effective way of preventing or fixing possible virus threats:

• Be aware. Inform yourself of the latest security threats by reading intelligence reports from different anti-virus and security websites. Remember, “knowledge is power.”
• Beware. Once you are aware of the threats, beware and be ready. For instance, you already know that virus infections are prevalent on thumb drive so you need to implement policy in your office (or even at home) that nobody will use a pen drive specially if it was used on other PC outside the office/home. If in case if it can’t be avoided, equipped your computers with autorun.inf disabler and anti-virus programs.
• Be secured, don’t disable your firewall. Usually game players disable their firewall for some reasons. However this causes the problem in the long run. Firewall protects you from being easily accessed by malicious codes and if it is disabled then its like you open your house for theft to be ransacked.
• Be cautious. When you surf the internet and search on different search engines, be cautious of the websites you are opening. Search engines like Google and Yahoo have this mechanism of identifying if a website is dangerous or not. They usually marked this site then shows on their result pages that “This page may harm your computer.” They did not put this message on their result pages for no reasons. So don’t dare to click it.
• And Finally, be equipped. Install an anti-virus program that has a real-time scanner, network and web security features. Update the virus database of this program regularly. Regular updates makes a higher chance for your computer not to be infected by recent viruses.

Hope these tips will help you deal with your “virus problems.”

Most Effective “Anti-Virus” For You is a post from: Felixberto Baguyo Jr.

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Foxpro to MySQL

Ever since the “death” of Visual Foxpro, I changed my primary programming language to much livelier and used offline and online by a lot of people. I shift to PHP, VB.Net and then later will go through Phyton (next year). As part of my transfer to other language, my problem that I encountered was transferring the data from my FoxPro tables to the MySQL server. I refuse to use MSSQL because it is so expensive to implement. Now here’s what I’ve did to transfer the data:

1. I installed the ODBC connector which you can download at MySQL’s download page.
2. Then, since I wasn’t able to find a freeware to directly transfer the data from Foxpro to MySQL, I converted first Foxpro tables to MS Access format through converting it to Foxplus format first (using copy to filename type FOXPLUS) then importing it to MS Access as a new table.
3. I download a free tool that is use to migrate Access database to MySQL which you can download it HERE then use it to transfer the Access data to MySQL. Remember this freeware requires you to install the MySQL’s ODBC connector before it will work.

To summarize what I’ve did, here’s the flow:

Foxpro -> Access -> MySQL

Migrating/Transferring Data from Foxpro to MySQL is a post from: Felixberto Baguyo Jr.

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Here’s a video from a webinar that featured Tim Ash discussing about “the 7 sins of landing page design.” I first found this from SEO.ph forum shared by user: PBO and want it to share it here too. I’ve listed below the summary of the topics that was discussed on the video.

• Sin #1:Unclear Call-to-Action Redemption #1: Strengthening Call-to-Action
• Sin #2: Too Many Choices Redemption #2: Reducing Choices
• Sin #3: Asking for Too Much Information Redemption #3: Simplifying Forms
• Sin #4: Too Much Text Redemption #4: Shorten Your Text
• Sin #5: Not Keeping Your Promises Redemption #5: Keep your promises
• Sin #6: Visual Distraction Redemption #6: Make it More Boring
• Sin #7: Lack of Credibility & Trust Redemption #7: Borrow & Solidify Trust

Landing page designs for your site is important because it is the page where the potential customers establish a “first and lasting impression” about your site and at the same all the leads and conversion started. Better landing pages can bring a real difference to the revenue to come to your organization.

Tips for Better Landing Page Designs is a post from: Felixberto Baguyo Jr.

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