My First Blog

February 14, 2008 | Filed Under First Steps

Finally.

My first attempt in writing a blog. For months, I’ve been thinking of having my own space and write stuff in the web. I’ve been lost (and still lost somehow) with many aspects of blogging.

First off. I would like to thank the vlexo community for providing me the opportunity to explore cpanel by providing me my free webhost last December. I was searching Google for information about blogging and webhosting and just found myself signing in to the vlexo forum. I hanged out in the forum for a while, replied and posted to some threads. I found out some time later that they are offering a free webhosting service. I am eager to try it out, so I gathered information from the forum threads about the free hosting application process. I read and scoured the forum for days following the links and information needed before jumping in and applying for a free webhosting. I read the TOS (Terms of Service), the vlexo webhosting features and I also took time reading what other applicants have written when they applied for the free webhost service. I especially noted why some applications were rejected and why others were instantly approved by the vlexo staff.

Equipped with all the information needed, I applied. And just minutes after posting my request, it was approved! Great!

Now, I have my free webhost, what next?! Basically, learn what I can do with the provided webhost. I learned cpanel, creating mySQL database (thanks to Matt of www.precisionforums.com) and fantastico-installed scripts.

For the next couple of weeks after acquiring my free vlexo webhost account, I installed and tested available fantastico scripts on my free account. It opened up and diverted my attention away from blogging as I discovered another interesting web application : Forums. I installed, learned, configured and tried running forum applications on my free account. I tried SMF and myBB. It was fun !

The learning curve is somehow stressful since I have to learn many different things at the same time. Learning webhost ins-and-outs and information about forum (plugins, theme, administration, troubleshooting etc). But it is fun and rewarding.

Well, I joined some forum to help and guide me along the way. Aside from the vlexo community forum, I joined Matt’s Precision Forums and Kalina’s WebTalkForums. I also joined other forums but that is for another blog entry. :p

Fast forward. I bought my domain name from namecheap.com and availed of a paid shared hosting from vlexo.com.

My current dilemma is putting all the pieces of gathered information about blogging and making it all work. I am now shifting my interest from my original plan (a different CMS software) to this newly discovered “blogging”. I will try to learn and know more about the intricacies of blogging. I have already installed WordPress on my paid webhost account and I have gathered WordPress plugins.

And now, I’m still working my way in making sense out of them. :p

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