I Am Blogie

I was invited to Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia to be a resource speaker at the Asian Bloggers & Social Media Conference, which was held from 28 to 29 July 2010. The flight itinerary that the event organizers arranged had me traveling on my birthday! But that was OK — I gladly sacrificed my birthday celebration for the chance to see Kuala Lumpur for the first time.

I had already met three Malaysians on my trips to Hong Kong, at BlogFest.Asia and at the Asia-Pacific Regional Internet Governance Forum. Two of them, Sean and Siew Eng, went out of their way to show me around the Federal Territory of Kuala Lumpur. The first thing on my mind was Malaysian cuisine, so Sean brought me to Jalan Alor. That place is well-known for street fare, and is populated by Chinese food outlets mostly. It’s a lively place, with plenty of foreigners and locals mixed in to form a cacophony of languages and cultures.

During my stay, Muslims around the world were celebrating Eid ul-Fitr (the Islamic celebration that marks the end of Ramadan). Sean was explaining to me that Malaysia enjoys good relations with Middle Eastern countries, that’s why there were so many Arabs in KL when I was there. Women in burqa or abaya were everywhere to be seen — that was my first time to see so many Arabs in one place, which made for a novel experience for me.

Speaking of Islam, Siew Eng brought me to Muzium Kesenian Islam (Islamic Arts Museum). The museum has a huge collection of artifacts dating to early Islamic periods. Of particular interest to me was the assembly of Arabic calligraphy. Many of the calligraphic artifacts — pottery, scrolls, Qur’an tomes — were from the period when China had a heavy influence on the art. It was a feast for the eyes! There was also a piece of ancient history that came from Mindanao: a betel-nut box cast from bronze and inlaid with silver, dating back from the middle of the 19th century.

Malaysian cuisine did not disappoint. From native Malay dishes to Chinese food, my palate has never been so satisfied! When I wrote about Taste of Malaysia, a restaurant in Davao City, I was already looking forward to the gastronomic experience in KL. The food offerings around Bukit Bintang (a.k.a. “Star Hill”) alone were enough to please any foodie, but there was more! Even the humble offerings of Wan Tan Mee Jln Sg Besi (which is something like Colasa’s in Davao) blew my mind. At that place I had wild boar curry, and a soup of vegetables stuffed with fish paste, washed down with calamansi juice that had kiamoy (plum preserves) in it. I considered the gastronomic treats my belated birthday celebration!

One other thing that made my Kuala Lumpur trip a memorable one was the people. I’ve already mentioned the two Malaysian friends who took the time to accommodate me. There were also the conference participants who made the effort to express their appreciation of my WordPress presentation. (I even got tentative offers to come back for more!)

Then there were the strangers I met — and there were quite a few. The most engaging acquaintance that I made was a half-Filipino Malaysian, with whom I had the pleasure of spending my last few hours in the city. He was on his way to his hometown in Sabah. I had an early flight, so I’d already checked out and was brought to the train/bus station by Siew Eng at midnight. I was anticipating several hours of loneliness ahead of me… but, thanks to a simple act of kindness, was able to meet Ramli, whose mother is Tausug, and who turns out to share a hobby of mine. It’s always a delight for me to meet people who have the same love of languages as I do. Ramli and I spent the next few hours talking about Bahasa Melayu, Tagalog, Dabawenyo and Tausug (the last two of which are very similar linguistically).

At the airport (the Low-Cost Carrier Terminal), I also had a brief encounter with a Malaysian who spoke passable Tagalog. As soon as he found out I was Filipino, he used all the usual Filipino greetings on me. I found Malaysians to be like that during my stay: accommodating and polite. Which makes me look forward to my next visit to this truly Asian country.

What didn’t I like about KL? The traffic? Nope — Manila’s is much worse. The prices? Hmmm… There are lots of inexpensive places for meals and shopping, right in the heart of Kuala Lumpur.

There’s one thing, actually. Malaysia’s government, ruled by the Barisan Nasional political party since independence, does not seem to look upon freedom of expression very favorably. Coming from an advocacy that upholds just that, I felt a persistent low-intensity buzz while I was there. Not that I feared being jailed anytime during my stay, but it’s a kind of feeling you don’t have in countries where you know there’s complete freedom of expression. I was warned that there are regulations in place against “illegal assembly” (but who defines what is legal and what is illegal?) and against improper behavior (such as two unmarried people being together at night in public parks). Being warned of such things does not sit well with many people, I would imagine.

Just when I arrived back in the Philippines, one of my Malaysian friends told me about the arrests that were made among those who participated in a candlelight vigil last Sunday. The vigil was a peaceful protest to let the Malaysian government know that they were calling for the abolition of the Internal Security Act (ISA). For more information on this and other issues brewing in Malaysia, please visit Malaysiakini.com.

I hope that the Malaysian government will listen more intently to these calls for more freedom and openness. Kuala Lumpur, Kota Kinabalu and other places in Malaysia are truly beautiful and worth visiting — Malaysian tourism promotions abroad are among the best in the world — so, in my opinion, it would be a great boon to the country if the Malaysian people did enjoy the freedoms for which they have been clamoring.

On the whole, though, the trip to Malaysia was one of the best journeys I’ve had so far: gastronomically, socially and professionally.

In continuing my advocacy for the adoption of the world’s #1 blogging sofware & CMS across Mindanao, I’ll be conducting an advanced training seminar on the deployment, utilization & management of WordPress this 25th of July (Saturday) at Cagayan de Oro City.

Specifically, the following are the topics to be covered:

• WP installation & maintenance
• Web hosting fundamentals for proper WP deployment
• Understanding WP theme templates
• Choosing & managing useful WP plugins
• Managing content on WP
  • Recommended usage of categories & tags
  • Publishing best practices
  • Fundamental SEO techniques
• Monetizing your blog with Google AdSense (for confirmation)

Cagayan de Oro is a wired city, with lots of free-wifi hotspots all over the place, and a growing number of bloggers and online content writers — the perfect setting for promoting the use of the most flexible content management engine there is. Moreover, the city is the appointed host of the 3rd Mindanao Bloggers Summit, which will be happening on 24 October 2009.

The WP training seminar will be held at Coffee Works, from 1:30 PM to 5:00 PM. (Please bookmark this post for updates.)

Registration fee is ₱500 per person (to be collected at the door on the seminar date). Please click here to sign up!

I look forward to meeting with the CDO Bloggers very soon!

Sponsored By: 1st Mindanao Bloggers Summit - 27 Oct 2007, Davao City

This is especially useful for corporate or community websites that make use of WordPress as a content management system: a custom login / registration page for your WordPress-powered site. For websites with multiple authors or subscribers who log in to the dashboard a lot, don’t you think the default login screen below is rather bland?

If you agree with me, then it’s time to skin that screen, and get something like this:

Think “branding” and “user experience”.

For some of my WordPress deployments, I now use the plugin called, aptly enough, Theme My Login. What it does is, it replaces the default WP login page with your active theme’s page template, where it embeds the login or registration interface. The new look and feel of your site’s login screen will surely build more loyalty and promote a feel good experience among your subscribers.

The plugin’s compatible with WP2.8, and lets you define the messages that appear on the customized page. I just wish that the plugin author would add more options in succeeding updates. For sure, the ability to apply layout settings and stuff, without having to do code, will be most welcome to plenty of end users.

Still, this plugin is much better than Register Plus, a similar plugin that I’d written about before. It even generates a widget for you to put a login box on your sidebar. When logged in, the widget can show your Gravatar and links to the dashboard, etc.

Have fun with your login pages!

You’re a Web developer and you need some sort of staging for your WordPress-powered site. You don’t like developing your site directly off of your production server because (1) Internet connectivity isn’t always reliable or fast, (2) you prefer to keep your site under wraps until it’s ready for the public eye, (3) some other reason I haven’t thougth of yet.

Although WordPress will run on Windows/IIS, chances are, your Web hosting will be on a Linux box running Apache. So, the best way to recreate that environment for local development on your desktop or notebook is to install a local Web server package. What I use now to develop new WordPress sites is WampServer 2.

WampServer emulates the Apache Web server with PHP and MySQL installed. All the necessary modules that WordPress needs (e.g., mod rewrite) are present, and it takes just a few minutes to install and run. Do you feel a how-to coming on…?

OK, let’s get started. I’m assuming here that you use Windows. If not, I’m sure you’ll find something similar for your Mac.

Installing WampServer

Download WampServer 2 from the link above, and install it on your local machine. It will do everything in the background for you, including installing PHP and MySQL. What’s more, you’ll even have access to your own phpMyAdmin and, if you prefer the classic approach, a MySQL console.

After installation and initial launch, you’ll get a WampServer icon on your system tray, looking like half a speedometer. Click on it to bring up the menu. If it’s not online, click on Put Online. If you type “localhost” on your browser URL bar, you will see something like this page:

To install WordPress, follow the steps below. But before that, don’t forget to activate Apache’s rewrite module — without this, you won’t be able to make use of WordPress permalinks. Left-click on the WampServer icon on the system tray, and go to Apache » Apache modules. You’ll then get a long list of modules arranged alphabetically. Look for rewrite_module and check it.

Installing WordPress

OK, now for WordPress. Extract the WordPress .zip file onto c:\ — this will create c:\wordpress. You may change the name of the folder to anything that you fancy, but for our purposes, let’s keep it as is.

Bring up the WampServer menu, and create an alias directory: Apache » Alias directories » + Add an alias. This will cause a command-prompt window to open with the following screen:

Enter your alias.
For example,
 
'test'
 
would create an alias for the url
 
http://localhost/test/
:_

Let’s use blog as our alias. The next screen will show this:

Enter the destination of your alias.
For example,
 
'c:/test/'
 
would make http://localhost/blog/ point to
 
c:/test/
:_

Enter c:/wordpress/, the directory we created earlier. When successful, a message saying “Alias created. Please Enter to exit…” will appear. Now you’ve created a website account with the URL, http://localhost/blog/.

Next, let’s create the database and database user in MySQL. Take a look at this page from the WordPress.org codex for step-by-step instructions on creating databases using phpMyAdmin.

Armed with your database name, username and password, you can now go ahead and perform the famous WordPress 5-minute install. Load http://localhost/blog/ on your browser, and you’ll see that WordPress says it will create the configuration file for you. Go to the next screen and enter the database credentials, and voilá! You now have a WordPress site running on your desktop or notebook!

WP2.8’s theme installation / uploading should work, as well as the similar interface for plugins. Everything should look and feel as if you had a live WordPress install, except that this one’s probably much faster and responsive.

To the bat cave!

After you’ve done your design work, template-tweaking and all your customizations, after publishing your new site’s static pages (”About”, “Contact Form”, etc.), and probably a few blog posts as well, you can now deploy your WordPress site onto your production server.

Backup your database by following this excellent procedure written by Automattic.

Use cPanel or FTP to transfer the WordPress folders and files (wp-admin, wp-includes, wp-content & all the .php and other files in the main directory) to your website account on your production server. No need to reinstall WordPress. Simply transfer the entire local site to the live Web.

WP-DBManager options

If you’ve installed plugins (e.g., WP-DBManager) that have settings asking for server paths, make sure to change them to the proper values as soon as you finish transferring your site. Take a look at the screenshot of WP-DBManager, which I installed in my own WampServer-driven local WordPress site. As you will see, the server paths indicated are those of my local machine’s. After deploying this site to the Web, I should change these values to my production server’s paths. (Good thing this plugin has auto-detect buttons!)

Now for your database. Presumably, you already have a .sql file on your local hard drive, generated by the backup procedure above.

On your production server, bring up phpMyAdmin and create a database with the same name as the one you created earlier on your local machine. Specify the same username and password as well. (Otherwise, if you use different database login credentials, change those values in your wp-config.php file.) Now, choose that new database and select Import from one of the horizontal tabs, and follow the instructions.

And that’s it! Your new WordPress-powered site’s live!

[Updated: 2 July 2009]

Two seminars on WordPress will be held this month in Davao City. One is for bloggers, and the other one is for Web developers who are looking into using WordPress as a content management system (CMS).

Here are the schedules:

Lane Systems locator map

Seminar 1: WordPress as CMS

Date: 3 July 2009 (Friday)

Time: 5:00 – 8:00 P.M.

Venue: Lane Systems conference room, Wheels n’ More Drive, J.P. Laurel Ave., Bajada, Davao City (in the compound where Urban Club & AutoShop are located)

Fee: ₱450 per person

This seminar will tackle the fundamentals of the WordPress engine: the templating system; built-in PHP functions for delivering & manipulating content; design elements; introduction to theme & plugin design. Installation and maintenance best practices will also be included. Prerequisites: PHP, XHTML & CSS.

PhilNITS locator map

Seminar 2: WordPress for Bloggers

Date: 4 July 2009 (Saturday)

Time: 2:00 – 6:00 P.M.

Venue: PhilNITS Lab, 5/F Mintrade Bldg, Monteverde cor. Sales Sts. (this is the building where DTI-11 is located; at the ground floor is PNB)

Fee: ₱300 per person  |  Student rate: ₱150

The seminar for bloggers will feature advanced coverage on WordPress deployment & utilization: how to make the most out of your self-hosted WordPress installation. Important topics: theme management; plugin management; SEO basics; introduction to the world of server hosting. Bonus topic: AdSense integration and optimization, c/o Lyle Santos.

The seminar fees will go towards renting of the venue and cost of materials. Payment will be collected at the door.

To join either of the seminars (or both), please register by fillling out this form.

Sponsored By: 1st Mindanao Bloggers Summit - 27 Oct 2007, Davao City

In the market for woot!-inspiring premium WordPress themes? Head on over to WooThemes.com — they’ve redesigned their entire site (calling it WOO2) and are now offering a 4-for-1 special sale.

Ever since I discovered the Woo rockstars, I’ve made over all my blogs with premium WordPress themes from their fantastic collection. They have themes for straightforward blogs, for magazine-type sites, online news, portfolio sites, even e-commerce webs. WooThemes are designed with function and form in mind. And as if it weren’t enough to give us professionally-crafted theme packages, each theme ships with several color schemes. Talk about major giveaways!

What’s more, WooThemes are avidly supported by their designers, as well as by a large community of “Woo ninjas” and users. Their support forum is an excellent resource that can help you explore how you can extend the functionality of your WordPress themes. And, problems do crop up once in a while — good thing is, chances are, you’ll find the solution in the forum.

Hurry! Their 4-for-1 deal lasts only up to 24 June 2009. But just in case you miss that one, there’s still the 2-for-1 perpetual promo at WooThemes.com.

(This is NOT a paid post.)

Sponsored By: DVO Bloggers Network - the Davao blogosphere

I bought this domain almost exactly a year ago (4 June 2008, to be exact), because my friend Markku jokingly threatened to hijack it after I’d told him about a word I thought I had coined: “foodnography”. I was already blogging about food for some time, and the way we bloggers take photos of food before eating amused me as something akin to that less decent activity by shady filmmakers.

For about a year — because I really had no plans of taking up photography on any serious level — Foodnography.com was relegated to the backburner. I just put up a definition page with a Google search engine on it. But that all changed last May 2009 when I decided to transform it into a WordPress photo blog dedicated to food. And hopefully populate it with orgasmic shots of gustatory photography.

Today, I have decided to open the blog up to contributors. For the growth of Foodnography.com, I welcome submissions of high-quality photographs of food and beverages from all over the world. Naturally, there’ll be lots of link-love to go around for those generous enough to help make the site a success!

Foodnography.com is currently running on WordPress 2.8, and sports the über-cool premium theme, Aperture, from WooThemes.com. Important plugins used: WP-PostRatings and cforms. As with my other blogs, you can also view Foodnography.com on your iPhone or iPod touch, thanks to another plugin, WPtouch iPhone Theme.