Know Your Blog’s Standing

Are you wondering what your page rank is? Your future page rank? What are the sites that are linking to you? And an estimated cost of your blog?

There is one site that can do all those: HowRank Webmaster & SEO Tools is a complete stop for SEO people, bloggers, and all webmasters. They pretty much offer every tool a webmaster needs to asses his/her blog.

I went to check out this site earlier this evening and I have to say that I am very impressed. It is simple and easy-to-use. You can check pretty much everything from your page rank to you blog’s CPC earnings. My favorite tool is the Backlink Fetcher because through this I am able to know who’s linking to my blogs.

There’s only one thing unimpressive I’ve noticed about HowRank and that is they used that of iwebtool’s Future Page Rank Prediction tool.

Overall, I recommend that you as a blogger should go and visit this site and check you blog’s standing. Because by knowing how you blog is ranked, you’ll be able to work on it better.

Finding the Right Web Host

There’s a huge possibility that I might have already convinced you into getting your own domain name and your own paid hosting. If not then I urge you to read my previous posts regarding getting yourself a paid hosting and learn why it is so important that you start your blog in a paid hosting rather than in free blogging sites.

Setting up a blog in a paid hosting is not that difficult at all and if that does not convince you then have somebody do it for you for a minimal price. There are actually some cheap web hosts offering web hosting plans that include Wordpress blog setups for free. All you need to do is have a little patience until you find the right web host that will fulfill your blog’s installation requirements. You’ll get a hosting for as low as 1$ each month so imagine having full control of your blog just for 12$ a year. But you have to be careful, cheap does not always mean reliable so when deciding which web hosting plan to buy, you have to review the following points:

1. Your web/blog requirements.
2. Price
3. Data Transfer
4. Web Space
5. Technical Support

Compare web hosting plans from different sellers. This could get complicated because there are a lot of web hosts that offers the same plan for the same prices. Perhaps it will also help you to read some   web hosting reviews about the web hosting company before you purchase a plan from them.

Giving Up on WP MU

So I gave up on the idea that I can ever install Wordpress MU in my webhost account. I only signed up for a webhosting plan that gives me Cpanel and I am on a shared web server. I can’t touch my DNS settings and I can’t get support from my webhost to edit my httpd.conf file.

So I cancel the hosting plan I dedicated for Wordpress MU and I am still waiting for the refund. I don’t know if I’ll be interested to install Wordpress MU again but it is not likely so. Two days of trying to install it and fighting with an unsupportive webhost didn’t exactly inspire me to continue.

Getting a Paid Web Hosting Plan

Having your blog in a paid hosting gives you 100% control of your blog that is why I always advise my readers and my friends, even those who are neophytes when it comes to blogging, to transfer or to start their blog in a paid hosting.

Getting a web hosting plan and installing your own wordpress blog in it seems scary sometimes specially to non-computer –and-internet savvy persons because they are afraid that they won’t be able to manage to do those. If you have the same problem don’t worry because there are a lot of solutions out there.

You can read articles about it because there are hundreds of how-to articles about managing your web hosting and as for the installation of wordpress blog, you’ll also find some webhosts who are willing to install a wordpress blog in your hosting for free or for a minimal fee. When looking for a webhost,  I advise you to drop by at WebHostingRating.com because they offer a list of top web hosting companies based on costumer rating. WebHostingRating.com should help you in your quest of finding the perfect web hosting  plan and package because they are the biggest searchable web hosting directory featuring complete information on all web hosting providers, their web hosting plans, promotional and discount coupons, and unedited reviews by real customers.

Uploading Photos to Your Blog

When uploading a photo to your blog, be sure that you had it resized specially if you are going to display just the thumbnail of the photo. In this manner you are saving a lot of web space. Another reason why you should resize your images before uploading them is because your blog will load faster. A blog that needs to display a 3.2MB photo will take more time to load compared to a blog that only needs to display a 150KB.

If you are afraid that your images will lose vividness and colors when resizing, then you are not using the right software. Photoshop is an excellent software. It has a more major purposes but it is also great for resizing photos. If you don’t have the budget for the software or if Photoshop is too complicated for you, there are other photo editing software in the net that that you can download for free. Don’t depend on Microsoft Office Picture Manager when to resizing your photos because is an awful software for this purpose.

The above photo is resized using Microsoft Office Picture Manager and below photo is resized using Photoshop.