A Poetic Expression » Blogging

Wordpress Wizard – Learning Wordpress easily

rdilipk1 — Sun, 20 Sep 2009 16:24:59 +0000

Wordpress is the best blogging platform that I have ever seen and used. I became a fan of Wordpress since the day I first used it to host my first blog at http://liveajoke.wordpress.com.

I fell in love with Wordpress, so much so that I immediately knew that this was a powerful tool that I could put to use to create a range of websites and blogs. Today I author about 8 different blogs that are powered by Wordpress and I also run numerous minisites on Wordpress.

But, is Wordpress that easy to install and maintain?

Good question! I have found that Wordpress is a pretty easy application to install and work on. These days hosting providers offer you an installation platform called as “Fantastico Installer”, which makes installation of such applications as easy as a click of a button.

But the difficult part in Wordpress is customization. Upgrading your blog installation, installing plugins, choosing themes, creating pages, maintaining your installation etc. are things that requires some time and a lot of expertise. People who are unaware of these things often mess up with their installation and their blog.

I found a solution to this problem with Wordpress Wizard 2.0. It is a coaching program that doesn’t have any recurring membership charges but only a one time payment of about $70.00. It comprises of a series of videos that not only coach you on installing and maintaining Wordpress blogs and websites, but also trains you on monetizing them and publicizing them.

In case you are a fan of Wordpress like me and want to learn everything about installing and maintaining a blogs and promoting it, then go ahead and check out this program here.

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Kawasaki Syndrome Travolta Son death

rdilipk1 — Fri, 09 Jan 2009 18:01:22 +0000

John Travolta’s 16 year old Son, Jett Travolta died a few days back. The Travolta’s said that he was suffering from a disease called as “Kawasaki Syndrome” and all of a sudden, the term has caught the headlines of every magazine and news website.
I was a bit curious to know what this disease was and hence I dug through everything that was available. The disease had strange symptoms and was not that widely spread, hence the availability of very little knowledge.

Kawasaki syndrome is also known as ‘lymph node syndrome’, ‘mucocutaneous node disease’, ‘infantile polyarteritis’ and ‘Kawasaki disease’. It is an inflammation (vasculitis) of the middle-sized arteries. It affects many organs, including the skin, mucous membranes, lymph nodes, and blood vessel walls, but the most serious effect is on the heart. It is called so, because it was first described by Tomisaku Kawasaki in 1967 in Japan.

Kawasaki Syndrome is predominantly seen in Japan though lately the disease has been diagnosed in the United States as well, This is a disease that is more commonly seen in children below the age of 5 years and too mostly in boys.

The reason or, cause of the Kawasaki disease is still unknown. But most of the theories revolve around immunological causes as the prime reason. But available evidence says that the reason could be an infection but whether the cause is a conventional antigenic substance or a superantigen is still under debate.

This disease affects the heart the most. Kawasaki disease can cause inflammation of blood vessels in the coronary arteries and subsequent dilatation of the coronary arteries. This can further lead to heart attacks even in young children.

The symptoms of the disease –
Kawasaki Syndrome begins with a high and persistent fever that does not respond to normal doses of paracetamol or, ibuprofen. The fever may persist steadily for up to two weeks and is normally accompanied by irritability. Affected children develop red eyes, red mucous membranes in the mouth, red cracked lips, a “strawberry tongue” and swollen lymph nodes. Skin rashes occur early in the disease, and peeling of the skin in the genital area, hands, and feet (especially around the nails and on the palms and soles) may occur in later phases. Some of these symptoms may come and go during the course of the illness. The following symptoms might point to Kawasaki Syndrome –

High-grade fever (greater than 39 ?C or 102 ?F; often as high as 40 ?C or 104 ?F) that normally lasts for more than 5 days if left untreated.
Red eyes (conjunctivitis) without pus or drainage, also known as “conjunctival injection”.
Bright red, chapped, or cracked lips.
Red mucous membranes in the mouth.
Strawberry tongue, white coating on the tongue or prominent red bumps (papillae) on the back of the tongue.
Red palms of the hands and the soles of the feet.
Rash which may take many forms, but not vesicular (blister-like), on the trunk.
Swollen lymph nodes (frequently only one lymph node is swollen), particularly in the neck area.
Joint pain (arthralgia) and swelling, frequently symmetrical.
Irritability.
Tachycardia (rapid heart beat).
Peeling (desquamation) palms and soles (later in the illness); peeling may begin around the nails.
Beau’s lines (transverse grooves on nails)

If your child experiences any of the above symptom, it is advisable to take him to the doctor because Kawasaki Syndrome can only be diagnosed and treated clinically.

Traffic – The Squidoo way

rdilipk1 — Wed, 25 Jun 2008 17:28:32 +0000

Traffic is something that any website or, blog warrants. But sending traffic to your website can be the most difficult things to do. But there are ways to generate traffic without spending too much money.’, ‘

When I first started to blog, my feeling was that my blog would be read by a thousand visitors from the first day itself. Though the reason why I started blogging was because I wanted a medium to express myself, I still yearned for people to visit my blog and read what I wrote. After a few days of blogging, I found that nobody was visiting my blog. Nobody knew about my blog and my blog was lost amongst the hundred thousand other websites on the web. I realized that generating traffic and sending them to your webiste is not a child’’s play. It needs some serious work. But the problem was that I did not know, what was the work involved. I did not want to spend money on advertising because my blog was not something that was intended to generate revenue.

As I browsed through the internet, I stumbled upon a website called “Squidoo” which let users creat a one-page website on topics of their interest. Because it was something new for me, I registered for a new account on Squidoo. I created my first one-page website that Squidoers call a “Lens”. This idea was interesting and my first lens was amazing. I felt, that I should create lenses on topics that interested me. So I went ahead and created a couple of lenses and left a link back to my blog, so that if my lens were read by internet-surfers, they might check my blog for further details. None of this was an intentional idea to send traffic to my website.

After a couple of months, I logged into my blog to write a new post and to my surprise I found that there was a comment from a reader. I wondered how this reader came to my blog and went to “google” to search, to see if my blog was listed. I was surprised at the result. My lens in Squidoo was there in the first page on Google. I was amazed. This was working. Since that day, I have written quite a few lenses on Squidoo and have many accounts.

Squidoo has become on the biggest traffic generator to my websites and as a by-product there is lot of fun as well. A few of my lens of interest on Squidoo are:

If you are seriously considering generating traffic for your blogs or, website or, want to sell some products without investing in a website, then Squidoo is the best option. Give it a try, it is interesting and addicting.

Just write a lens and submit it to isleofsquid and you would start seeing traffic to your lens.

Blog-for-bucks cheaters

rdilipk1 — Sun, 18 May 2008 17:42:59 +0000

With blogging becoming a way of making money, more and more bloggers are taking to paid-blogging. And with this is increasing the number of cheats.’, ‘

I had never wanted to blog for money and that was not my objective when I started to blog. But as I matured as a blogger, I learnt about paid-blogging and accepted a few projects from a few paid-blogging companies.

That is when I received a mail from a “Skylar Sinclaire” from an email address ”bigbucks@blog-for-bucks.com” requesting for a few posts in my blog for some money. I had no reasons to doubt their integrity and agreed to the project. They agreed to pay me on a date after about 15 days from the date I made the posts. I submitted the posts and waited patiently for the payment till the due date. When I did not receive any communication or, payment from them, I wrote to the email from where I received the post-requests. I received no reply for this mail and subsequent mails that I sent. Only then did I realize that I had been cheated. These scoundrels request posts and agree to pay you at a much later date so that the links are indexed and their purpose is solved. They then refuse to pay.

All my fellow bloggers beware of such requests. Also do not even consider registering to their site at “blog-for-bucks.com”.