If you’re read the rules and they don’t require your posts to be on the front page, then congratulations! Now in order to exlude sponsored posts from the main page, you need to place them in a certain category like I mentioned in the post about exluding sponsored posts from your feeds. So pretty much, it comes down to just excluding categories from the main page.

Habitually Good has a nice post about the 2 methods you could use here. The code provided for method 2 is incorrect and produces the white screen of death. I’m going to briefly go over the method I use today and provide you with a valid and working code. First, you’ll need to locate The Loop in your index template and insert a function before the code. The Loop generally begins with:

<?php if ( have_posts() ) : while ( have_posts() ) : the_post(); ?>

and ends with:

<?php endwhile; else: ?>
<p><?php _e('Sorry, no posts matched your criteria.'); ?></p>
<?php endif; ?>

Now this is the function we’re going to insert before The Loop:

<?php if (is_home()) {
query_posts($query_string . "&cat=-N");
}
?>

The N in the function stands for the category (1, 2, 3, etc) you want to exclude from the main page. Make sure the “-” sign remains intact in the code. In my case, I want to exclude the Basement category, so my code would look like this:

<?php if (is_home()) {
query_posts($query_string . "&cat=-53");
}
?>

Of course, you can add this function to any pages where you wish to exclude the said category; it doesn’t have to be just your main page. That said, you need at least Wordpress 1.5+ in order for the function to work. But God knows why anyone is still using 1.5 or lower when it’s already at 2.6.

The first solution gave me didn’t work, so they just told me they’d fix it themselves and I should check back in 15 minutes. Sure enough, they fixed it in less than 5. Really, I don’t know what there is to complain about, asides from the slow speed that day and the support team’s terrible grammar, because Cirtex has been a decent host. Their prices have gone up though, and they no longer allow custom packages, which is a real shame

Anyways, I figured with the $25/year I’m spending on Cirtex, I could get 2 years worth of hosting elsewhere. I checked out Holdfire, and they have something really unique called contract buy out. What is means in a nutshell is that they’ll credit the remaining months you have with your previous host for up to $50! I contacted Jordan, owner of Holdfire, about this, and she credited me back about $10 for my remaining months at Cirtex, so my first year of hosting with Holdfire ended up being only $2! Not only that, but she helped me transfer all my files and databases over The ticket response speed was excellent (not to mention in proper English) and their replies were professional.

It’s only been 2 days with Holdfire, but everything has been great so far. I will keep you all updated on my new host as time goes on. Cheers and thank you to those who recommended me hosts!

The following are some questions to be used as conversation starters or when you want to get know someone better. Some were from books, and the rest I come up with at random times.

• What’s one thing that you hope to do or accomplish before the end of this year?
• What’s the most extreme weather you’ve been in? A memorable storm? Heat wave? Or something else?
• What is (or would be) your dream vacation?
• What’s one thing no vacation can do without?
• What has been the best trip of your life so far?
• What’s the worst thing that can happen during a vacation?
• What or who is your favorite product mascot? Why?
• What talent(s) do you have that could make you famous?
• If you could be famous for one day, what would you do?
• If you were so famous that money was no object, where would you live?
• If you could meet any famous person, who would it be?
• What would be your famous catch phrase/quote/motto/last words?
• Describe your ideal date.
• Do you think dating has become archaic?
• What are your feelings on online dating services?
• Where does your patience suffer the most?
• What was the worst advice you ever received? Did you follow it?

Click on the song name to listen and/or download. If you enjoy her songs, please support her by buying her cd’s!

Courage - Fish Leong
This is a very popular song of hers. It was one of her older ballads, but it remains a classic even till today. The lyrics are excellent, and so is the melody.
4.5 out of 5 stars

A Pain That Breathes - Fish Leong
Another ballad of hers that I love because of the lyrics. It starts out a piano intro that is bit faster and upbeat, which leads to a slower and more melancholy tune during the chorus. I picture a girl who is smiling even though she’s in great [emotional] pain whenever I hear this song. It doesn’t sound like the typical sad ballad, but you can tell from the lyrics and title that it is.
5 out of 5 stars

1 Second In Heaven - Fish Leong
This is one of her few non-ballad songs. This song is more rock than it is pop, and the style of it reminds me of FIR (a great Taiwanese band). It’s not a 100% cheerful upbeat, but with a touch of angst and darker emotions to it. Throughout the song you can hear the electric guitars, which further emphasizes its rock as opposed to pop style.
4.5 out of 5 stars

All my past rotations have been uploaded to Box.net and you can access them there. Please do not distribute the links to those files or to my Box.net account without my permission. Feel free to refer people to this page if you want to share the music. By accessing my Box.net account, you agree to abide by these terms. The password for entering is “ichiban”, without the quotation marks. Thank you and enjoy!

Download songs from past rotations.

It wouldn’t have been so bad if it just gave me the white screen of death, because then at least I could look it up and find fixes to it. Nope, it had to be sneaky and make me think that everything was ok, when in fact, it wasn’t. The footers for my blog and for my wordpress admin panel wouldn’t load. Ok, so maybe I could let that go, but then it got worse. It was like my site was melting from the bottom up, because things from the footer on would just start disappearing one by one. I was pulling my hair out while I disabled and enabled my plugins over and over again.

I think I managed to stop the meltdown of my site by disabling a couple obsolete plugins and installing WP Super Cache, a plugin which claims to make your wordpress Digg-proof. But now I think back about it, this all seems like one big joke.

1. The “spike” in traffic I got is the traffic many popular sites get daily.
2. My site wasn’t even on the front page of Digg, or any other popular social media site.

My conclusion? Something is wrong with my host. Don’t get me wrong, because Cirtex Host has been great, with affordable prices and all, but if a measily little spike in traffic like that is going to mess up my site, imagine what would happen if my site was on Digg! What annoyed me even more was when I tried talking to their support through chat and AIM (both were “available”) and they made me wait for an hour. One whole gorgeously fat hour. And they probably would’ve kept me waiting had I decided to stick around. So I left a ticket complaining and asking them what was going on, and they replied this morning saying

The server load is normal and there is no server Spike, could you please double check with your end, if you still have problem let us know with the exact URL and logins. Thank you.

I thought the reply was dumb and redundant because I obviously checked everything on my end and realized something was wrong to have left a ticket. But my site stopped melting away and the footer is back, good relief, but the load time for my admin panel is still as slow as ever. Funny everytime something goes wrong, they never reply on the spot (though they are “available”) and their ticket reply is always “everything is sunny side up! :D”. My conclusion? Cirtex Host is good if you have a small personal site/blog looking for a home. However, if you’re looking to use a lot of scripts and databases, or you’re looking to seriously expand your site, you better find another host.

Which is why I’m saying a big fat bye bye and moving out once my plan ends with Cirtex. I’m debating between Holdfire Network’s custom plan and Xfluro’s $10 promotion. Opinions, comments, reviews, and even new host recommendations are ALL WELCOME. I’m getting desperate here.

Obviously, I’m happy that my site is being featured out there, but at the same time, I know that this isn’t my design. I’m using a premade theme. So really, those sites are giving props to the original creator of the theme, not me. Well, I tweaked it here and there and I added banner, but really, it’s not saying much. So I try to look on the bright side, and it’s that my site is up on those galleries to stay! Yay to quality backlinks.

I’m going back to submitting my site to other galleries now. Hopefully I’ll be seeing more of those incoming links on my dashboard as time goes on. You guys should do it too. Even if your site doesn’t get listed, it still gives the reviewers an opportunity to check your site out. More traffic and pageviews!

[UPDATE] Ever After is also listed on Light On Dark and on CSS Star now! Visit and leave a good rating? I’ll give you a cookie in return

I’ve recently created a new category just for sponsored posts. To abide by the rules set down by advertisers, the category no way suggests that these posts are sponsored or being paid for. If anything it suggests that they suck and don’t deserve to see day light, hence why I called mine “basement“. You can names yours anything you want, so long as it doesn’t suggest that you’re receiving monetary payments in return. Name yours “little bunny froo froo” for all I care, but just dump all your boring boring posts in that one category.

Now I know many of you, including myself, give readers the option to subscribe to our blogs using rss feeds. The last thing you want is for your monotone posts about oven gloves to end up in their inboxes or on their feed readers. Yes, it’s unfortunate that those even have to be on our blogs (hopefully the idea of raking in some cash is of comfort to you, or else God knows why you’re still doing it), but at least we can make our feed subscriber’s life easier by removing sponsored posts from our feeds. There are 2 ways:

1. If you use feedburner, simply change your feed url to http://domain.com/feed?cat=-n, the n being the category you wish to exclude (you can find the number through wordpress). If you wish to exclude more than one category, use http://domain.com/feed?cat=-x&cat=-y&cat=-z
, where x, y, and z represent the categories you wish to exclude.
2. You can use plugins. The Ultimate Category Excluder does just what it says, and some more. However, compatibility with Wordpress 2.1+ is uncertain. Stealth Publish allows you to exclude posts instead of entire categories, so check that out if that’s your thing.

I personally prefer method #1, just because it’s very easy to do and takes less than a minute to complete. I’ve already configured my feeds to exclude sponsored posts. Yay!

I wrote a post on experiencing with different blog advertisements a while back, and after a month of using Project Wonderful, I’ve made $0.51. It’s obviously an improvement from the $0 I made from Google Adsense, but I feel like it’s just not quite cutting it. So I’ve decided to finally switch to self-hosted advertising, as you can see to your right, there are 3 125×125 ad spaces available at a first-come-first-serve basis. I will also provide a custom-designed ad at an additional price

I haven’t made my final decisions on the prices yet, but here’s what I’m planning to use so far:

• $2 for 1 month
• $5 for 3 months
• $7 for 6 months
• $12 for 1 year
• $1.50 for 1 custom designed ad

Do these prices seem reasonable to you guys? Any comments, suggestions, anything, would be welcome.

Another dilemma I’m having is whether or not to buy a new domain name. Google hates my butt right now (the feeling is mutual), but the thing is, I haven’t been taking offers from Payperpost and SocialSpark in a while now. 1) because their offers usually suck, or 2) they just don’t have anything at all. I figured that if I got a new domain name, I could start off fresh and maybe get my pagerank back and dig myself out of Google hell. On the contrary, I just renewed this domain, I like the idea behind the name, and switching names means building up all my backlinks from scratch. Ideas anyone?

The thing with writing sponsored posts is that the more you write, the more it decreases the overall quality of your blog. From what I’ve read of other people’s (and my own) sponsored posts, they all sound boring and dead. To me it’s like watching the commercials on TV minus all the excitement. It repels readers, or at least, I get repelled away when I see that the first couple posts are sponsored posts. I go to a blog expecting to find some interesting content or at least to hear about your day. Not to listen to you talk about police gear, unless you happened to be a police or the owner of the store.

I know I sound like a hypocrite right now, because that is what I’ve been doing for the past couple months. It didn’t occur to me at first because obviously I don’t view my site the same way a regular visitor would, but after seeing the trend on other sites, I began to realize how ANNOYING it was. So I propose a simple solution:

Pair your sponsored posts with a quality, non-sponsored post. What does this mean? Basically, if you’re going to write a sponsored post, go for it. But right after you write it, write another decent, non-sponsored post, so your quality post will be the first one your readers see, not the one about anxiety medicine. As far as I’m concerned, no rules are being broken by doing this, because usually as long as the sponsored post is on the main page of your blog, the post order is irrelevant. So why not have your readers come to your site and read something decent, so they won’t think that your blog is a wolf under sheep skin? For example, this post will be the first you see and hopefully read when you arrive at my blog, not any other sponsored post. In short, always make sure the first post on your blog is a quality post.

Yes, you’re still writing humdrum sponsored posts and in a sense you are deceiving your readers, but at the same time, you’re making it easier for them. Now they don’t have to filter and skim through posts just to find that something good and real you wrote.

Now the girl who wrote the post on inappropriate conversion was a Muslim, and when the Christian group tried to convert her at an Arabic festival, I can see why she was annoyed (and amused) at the same time. However, it’s when self-claimed Christians mock what the group was doing that I got really upset and disappointed. I don’t expect non-believers to understand what those people are doing or even why they’re doing it, but as Christians, we should know why they do it. But when you start saying things like”The bible did not say that everyone has to believe in god. there are other religions too, like Buddhism“, it’s apparent that

1. people either don’t know the bible at all
2. people have been taught to the twisted truth

I’m no expert in the bible myself and I’m still learning, but the first commandment of the 10 made it very obvious

You shall have no other gods before me. You shall not make for yourself an idol in the form of anything in heaven above or on the earth beneath or in the waters below. You shall not bow down to them or worship them; for I, the LORD your God, am a jealous God, punishing the children for the sin of the fathers to the third and fourth generation of those who hate me, but showing love to a thousand {generations} of those who love me and keep my commandments.

If you are a Christian and believe that God is the creator and ruler of the universe and that the bible is His Word, then you should know that even though the bible doesn’t explicity say “EVERYONE SHALT BELIEVE IN GOD”, it implies it very clearly. Yes there are other religions, but to God and Christians alike, those gods are nothig more than idols that humans have made and decided to worship. And God is so adamant about everyone eventually coming to know Him and believe in Him that in the new testament Jesus says again in Matthew 28:19-20

Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.

So pretty much the bible is saying, those of you who already believe, good, because now you got to make sure that everyone else knows about God too! This is why those Christian groups go out there and talk to people. They have nothing personal to gain from doing it, absolutely nothing. There are no financial rewards, not even an award on paper or a chocolate medal for doing what they do. But they do it because they know that 1) God commanded them to 2) they just want to share the joy and peace they feel with others. The second part is something that words can’t describe, but any one who has an initimate relationship with God can understand, and it’s just something you can’t keep inside of you. It’s like you want the whole world, or at least your close friends and family who are non-believers to know about it and experience the same kind of joy and peace that you have. I’m speaking from personal experience here.

What I’m trying to say is that people need to understand that these Christians are getting scorned and mocked, and sometimes even physically hurt, for what they do. Haven’t you ever wondered what’s the driving force behind them, why they’re willing to do something like this? It’s not a cult, and it’s sad to hear that even amongst Christians, some would say something like that or have such deep misunderstandings. But all I can say is that it’s not easy, and that it takes a lot of guts. But the bible never said it’d be easy, and in fact Jesus said in Jon 15:18-19

If the world hates you, keep in mind that it hated me first. If you belonged to the world, it would love you as its own. As it is, you do not belong to the world, but I have chosen you out of the world. That is why the world hates you.

Of course, it was foolish of the Christian group to chose to spread the gospel at an Arabic festival. I also don’t like it when they try to force things on to people. Things like this should never be forced, and in fact, it can’t be forced. Sometimes I think they get too desperate and too passionate that they forgot what it was like to be a non-believer.