My husband said he’s jealous of me because my blog has so many comments and so many cool features. I sigh ! He thinks I am a blogging genius.

Picture Source : Einstein.

Come on, you really think I am a genius ? Come read my confession.

*Note : Everything that you read on this blog which is highlighted and underlined is a link.

One of my friends at church made the following comment on the post that I had recently wrote : 3 blogs I wish I have known when I started blogging.

” Thank you, Jamy, for those helpful hints you give on your blog, and the links, concerning blogging tips. Those are really helpful. I like the ostrich and the monkey graphics too—funny! When your name and blog site become listed in Wikipedia (which may be soon!), please let us know!”

Now he really made me felt like a genius, didn’t he ?

Want the truth, nothing but the truth ?

If you want the truth : this is the truth. I knew very little about the tech know how.

My dummies confession :
When I first read Problogger’s blog, I was so impressed by his writing. I went on to read his “About” page and I bookmarked it. The next day I went back via the bookmark icon to go to his blog because I wanted to read what new insights I could get from his blog. When I got to his blog, I saw the same thing I read the day before, the “About” page. Days in and days out, whenever I went to his blog, I saw the same thing , the “About” page, not knowing that in fact I had bookmarked his “About” page. I thought to myself, this guy was quite weired, if he’s so famous and a professional blogger, why was he not updating his blog like most professional bloggers said to be a good blogger, you need to give new content to your readers frequently. In fact, I was so disappointed like when you went to see a movie and your hero got beaten by the evil one. Then one day, I could not remember whose blog I read and there was a link to problogger again , and this time the link took me to a new post I had never read before. Only then did I realize there’s an archive and home page or front page :). I suppose you don’t believe that was me when I first started bloggin, hey ?

My blessings :
But, I have to say I am very very fortunate, I count my blessings daily. I am very blessed to get where I am in such a short time. Many of my friends who had started earlier might not necessary get where I am now. I am very thankful for the number of readers who dropped by , made comments, subscribed to my feed, the willingness of Kuanhoong and Ken to be my guest writers (their inputs certainly made this blog looked more professional) , my Ecafers bloggers who are so willing to display the coffee lady logo and linked to this blog, I am thankful about my Alexa’s ranking and the number of paid post I received.

The 2 influencing factors:
1. My community of of tech friends.
Without them, I am still muddling my way through the blogging jungles. It makes a whole world of difference ! Kuanhoong, Ken, Mayank, Chee Kui , Shankar, Nirmal and many others who had helped me one way or another. I owe much of my blogging knowledge to them.

2. My thirst for learning new things.
I love to learn, I love to explore, I love the unknown, and I love risk. I think that is why I had set up to read law in Cambridge University and to do a round-the-world backpack trip before I hit 30. I did not make it to Cambridge University (which is a story by itself) but I did make my round-the-world trip. When I was standing at the peak of the Swiss Alps, I screamed ! ” I MADE IT.” I conquered the odds because my Australian’s cardiologist advised me otherwise because of the thin air at the peak was not too favorable condition for my congenital heart disease.

The BIBLE said to whom much is given, and much is required. So I decided to start this dummies guides series. In a way , it is a way of contributing to the new bloggers network. I am sure there are many people out there who are also struggling on html, php and many other technical issues. So this series is dedicated to all of you newbies.

My recent greatest accomplishments :
I finally understood the tech know how of :
1. Download an application or features or even a picture.
2. Upload to the server where I host my blog.
3. Insert into my Wordpress application.

As simple as it seems, I have no clue of what was UPLOAD until recently.
These were questions on my mind for a long time : Upload to where, how, use what equipment ?

2 Most important Plugins which I like to share :
1. Clean Archive (in wordpress platform)
2. Social bookmark button (both wordpress and blogspot platform).

Ken Xu wrote a very comprehensive list of Plugins in his post titled : 30 Wordpress Plugins for Beginner and Char of Essential Keystrokes wrote a post titled : More WordPress Plug-in Goodness hit my softest spot.

When I read this Plugin at Char post’s on Sean of GeekWithLaptop’s SRG Clean Archive. I set my quest on finding how to install that piece of code (Plugin). But, you have to agree with me that it is the neatest way of searching an archive page.

Searching a specific post on a blog becomes such an easy task. Every post is indexed, you can find every post you want to find within a glance.

Let’s look at Ken Xu’s archive, Char archive and Mine archive page, you got to admit that it is also what you want for your archive page ?

My sincere thanks to both Ken and Char. I want to thank them for their lists.

I am a system freak. At my home, I labeled my drawers, my cabinets and I won’t elaborate more than that.

In fact, Ken’s article was about WordPress Plugins. But, from his post, I found a valuable piece of plugin for my blogspot’s users.

The plugin is a social Bookmarking Widget. My husband and I had a hard time trying to figure out how to put a bookmark such as stumble or digg into blogspot’s post. This is a very useful tip that Ken has provided.

When you click Ken’s link, it leads you to this site titled : Add This ! (click on the link, it will take you to the page where you can add on the widget).

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This is the page where you blogspot’s users need to go : Button Select.

The rest is quite simple, all you need to do is follow the instruction to get the code to be inserted into your template.

And you should have a social bookmark button at the end of each post on your blog.

This is a snippet of my husband blog’s social bookmark button.

The whole topic of why is social bookmarking such as stumble and digg are so important is in itself another dummies series.

2 morals :
1. Your can achieve as high as you aim, start small step at a time but aim high !
2. Remember an easy indexed achieve is very important as your blog expands. You not only add value to your blog but also your readers.

I hope you enjoy this post as much as I have put it together.

Sincerely Jamy

This entry was posted on Saturday, August 18th, 2007 at 6:15 pm and is filed under ZMisc. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.