Yet Another WordPress TechBlog
I’ve been applying for an online job for a couple of months now, yet no one has gotten interest in me. I nearly got one though. I don’t know if I blew it or if it was the employer’s loss because in our last conversation he asked, How much was your previous salary? I knew I did the right thing. I answered in ranges since exact figures could sometimes get applicants from being screened out, but it seemed that luck didn’t go my way. Two months of online job hunting… and counting.
Now, I’m in front of my computer and luckily I still have an Internet connection. Before I get a notice of disconnection from my ISP, I might as well waste my bandwidth on something that’s noble. I love hanging out in tech-forums. It just gives me a sense fulfillment being able to post informative comments. I wish to reach out to more audiences now, and blogging is the best way that I could do this.
The first challenge was finding a content management system that would suit my blogging needs. I’ve only heard of two CMSes specializing in blogs- b2evolution and WordPress. I’ve used the former for a brief moment but haven’t really gone as far as installing and configuring it. WordPress? Never. Why did I choose the latter? I don’t know. Maybe because I have this book, Building Online Communities With Drupal, phpBB and WordPress (which I didn’t even read) and it has the word in it, or maybe because I like the look and feel of the WordPress Web site. I just didn’t know, but I chose it anyway.
The second challenge was the site name and design. So I pulled up Google Suggest to get a glimpse of what people were searching for. My initial idea was a Website where I could write about a topic I love the most- technology… and just about anything that I could comment on. It turned out that the terms, technology news and tech news were on top. I figured that I could also have a niche on the terms, tech review, tech updates, and tech review blog so I might as well take note of them. Eventually, the word review caught my interest. I then pulled up Thesaurus and finally got the word that sounded fascinating- afterlight.
I had a lot of fun designing this blog. My general idea was to bring light to those in darkness and initially thought of snow, an idea I got after watching the movie, Shinobi. I tried comping it in Photoshop but it didn’t turn out well because I insisted on a dark background. Images as white as snow didn’t really complement with black, so it was back to the drawing board. I tried playing with the design for a while and after browsing dozens of royalty-free images at stock.xchng, I ended up playing with matchsticks. Yup, here it is. I present to you the first design of Project Afterlight. I didn’t know playing with fire was fun, yet little did I know that designing was the easy part.
Now came the third challenge- coding. I have to say that the WordPress Support site has an excellent resource for first time themers like me. Coding cost me two weeks of headache, but it would have been longer if their documentation was less than excellent. However, I learned a great deal out of this challenge. I felt good solving my layout problems without asking others for support and instead, relied on search engines to track down the solutions. What pleased me most was the fact that I did this on my own, which could one day prove to be a reflection of my true self.
The final challenge was getting my blog online. Finding a decent Web host was easy. Installing WordPress on that host took me a couple of hours to figure out and configuration added another hour. Overall, I managed to get my blog working properly in most modern browsers including Firefox 2, Internet Explorer 7, Opera 9.2, and Safari 1.2.
Mission accomplished!
So while I’m counting my days of unemployment and while waiting for my notice of disconnection, I might as well spend my time talking about my online adventures.
I hope you’ll enjoy hanging out in here as much as I enjoyed the challenges in creating this site. Project Afterlight may just be another WordPress techblog, but its perspectives are certainly unique among others.
–Gabriel
February 27th, 2008 at 0:39
Thanks a lot for this information, that what i was looking for to do in my blog but, I didn’t know what was the term for it. Well now i know and thanks for the tips.
March 11th, 2008 at 1:09
Nice theme you’ve created, I’m sure you’ll be employed very soon, have you tried offering your service in forums? No harm trying, mate, all the best then!
March 20th, 2008 at 1:12
Are you still looking for online work? I like what you have done here and have several sites which need attention http://www.xeroxbypc.com is a lead generating website.
I need SEO work done on it.
I have oher sites that sell products. the latest which is under development is http://www.weddingdressesweddinggowns.com I am going to outsource the design work on it but if you are interested and able then we can talk.
What sort of work are you looking for? I need web designers, a project manager, content providers, web editors and webmasters.
Let me know if you are interested.
March 20th, 2008 at 8:05
Hello Sean,
Thanks a bunch for visiting my blog. I actually have a couple of jobs at the moment. One as an encoder and the other one as a system administrator. I’m leaving the encoding job by April because it isn’t rewarding enough.
Do you have any available positions for part time work? I’m very much interested in the Web designer position. I read as much as I can about Information Architecture, Web Usability, and Web Accessibility. I also practice standards-based Web design… not so much on the visual design aspect, but more on the XHTML & CSS coding techniques used for SEO and accessibility purposes.
March 20th, 2008 at 8:16
There are many online jobs just be carefull of scams. Make sure that you will get paid at the end.
April 2nd, 2008 at 17:16
In general, headache tells about pain in head from eyebrow to upper part of. More widely, headache covers whether disturbance of pain in the whole head or not, including face and upper part of nape. Headache can be abnormal head sensation and classified based on mechanism of pain. The important thing in the case of pain in head is related to situation, activity and patient’s attitude. Pain in head frequently becomes manifestation of difficult life adaptation taking place temporarily or permanently. Appearance of pain in head is affected by disturbance of central nerve system involving brain trunk, limbus’s system and hypothalamus, so it is not a separated disease. Disturbance probably influences perception and sensitivity of pain biochemically and causes the changes of vascular and muscular.
Here are probably some suggestions:
What needs to do to reduce the risks of getting headache?
• Avoid sleeping with arms as a pillow, on a couch or armchair, or on a too high pillow that makes neck bent up strictly.
• Avoid habit of massaging parts of shoulder, neck or head. This makes light dislocation and headache.
• Avoid habit of fracturing neck, unless exercising and after enough proper warming up. Important nerves and the blood vessel are located in that spot.
What should do if you are too late having headache?
• Pennasia Normalization
is safer because it does not take medicine into your body.
• When drug addiction (light or heavy) happens, Pennasia Normalization
really needed.
Hopefully the sufferers of this illness will get well soon.
Regards,
Pennasia
September 11th, 2008 at 5:25
Cool theme there.
November 12th, 2008 at 3:00
I’ve been there and is very frustrating, but you seem to be very calmed. That’s good man!
April 16th, 2009 at 21:58
Yeah, well it seems that you know how to handle a situation like this. Cool!
July 28th, 2009 at 17:50
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