Free hosting dreams

Is there such a thing as completely free hosting.Many claim to offer this service but it comes with conditions such as banners and ads.
I stumbled upon a company that offers the closest thng to 100 % free hosting. Its called i6 networks. I almost closed the page before doing a double take and decided to give it a try.

The package they are allegedly 'giving away' is very comprehensive and feature rich. I wont go into the details or you might think I am canvassing for them.

Where is the catch(es) ? DRUMROLL !...............
The service is free for the first year only.
Your domain has to be at least 2 months old to be hosted for free.

So far i havent mentioned a single expletive on this blog but right now I am tempted to say £Y&*%

Adsense earnings without clicks

Today I checked my adsense reports and realized I had earned 0.01(next to nothing but that’s not the point) but I had zero clicks.
After searching all over the Internet for an explanation I only came back to google adsense help and got the answer I was seeking.

I was under the impression that you did not get paid for ad impressions (excuse the silly pun). Contrary to my belief there are certain ads that do pay for impression. CPM ads as they are known, pay per thousand impression. Silly me.

So there i can still earn with zero clicks

Google explains it here.
https://www.google.com/adsense/support/bin/answer.py?answer=18192&ctx=en:search&query=earnings+without+clicks&topic=&type=f

Wordpress Wins by TKO

Wordpress Wins by TKO
The fight raged one could really tell who was going to win. Wordpress seemed to be connecting more head blows but Blogger did not go down. In the end a unanimous decision was made to give the victory to WordPress.

What I like most about WordPress
-Speed, Speed , Speed I am using a dialup connection and publishing to Blogger is way too slow.

-Control over content. Just imagine one day google decides to shut you down. The Horror. With WordPress you have total control over your content. As long as you stay within the agreed bounds of your hosting provider you are totally safe.

-Blogger does not support categories and customisation is limited or difficult. I had my Wordpress blog up and running and managed to change to a three column template very easily

What I like most about Blogger
-Blogger is very easy to use.I am still to figure out several things on the wordpress platform such as inserting adsense, tags, images e.t.c

-The first issue I had with WordPress was security. At the time of writing there was news of the wordpress platform having been hacked.
WordPress 2.1.1 dangerous, Upgrade to 2.1.2

Verdict
Guys you can find my blog at my new home –xHydra.com Powered by WordPress
I will however find time to post to my Blogger blog from time to time.

Wordpress vs Blogger (ROUND 2)

Ok why am I challenging all users of Blogger.com by continually posting about Wordpress. First of all Blogger TOS don't disallow me from mentioning competitors. Secondly its a free capitalist web and anyone is free to try any product they wish.It actually may turn out that Blogger is better than Wordpress.

To be able to use Wordpress the blogger must have a basic understanding of web hosting and should be able to do things like creating a Mysql database and editing PHP code to place adsense code, redit, fark, and de.licio.us widgets on the blog

As mentioned before in the previous post minimum requirements are :

* PHP version 4.2

* MySQL version 4.0

Installing Wordpress on a blog hosted at Godaddy (Linux Deluxe Account)

The host for my new Wordpress blog is Godaddy.com. Godaddy is considered to be the grumpy granddad of all web hosts and is sometimes difficult to work with.

I was surprised that the job turned out to be a true ‘5 Minute Install’, simple from start to end.

Installing Wordpress on a Godaddy account is truly a trivial task.

Step 1.

Download Wordpress from http://wordpress.org/download/. (There is unofficial news however floating Wordpress 2.1.2 has been breached and is not secure)

Unzip the folder to your local drive

Step 2

Login to your Godaddy account and go to Control panel > MySQL.

Click on Create New Database. Select your prefered version and enter the other requested details.

The next screen shows you that the database has been created. Take note of the “Host name ”. It is required in the next step.

Step 3

Open the folder where you extracted wordpress and rename the file wp-config-sample.php to wp-config.php. Open this file using either Dreamweaver or Notepad

Edit the following lines by entering the details that you used to create the database on the Godaddy control Panel

define('DB_NAME', ''); // The name of the database
define('DB_USER', ''); // Your MySQL username
define('DB_PASSWORD', ''); // ...and password
define('DB_HOST', ''); // 99% chance you won't need to change this value

Your wp-config.php should now appear like this.

Step 4

Using your favourite ftp client upload the whole Wordpress folder onto your web server.

Step 5

Type http://www.yourDOMAIN.com/wordpress/wp-admin/install.php to begin installing Wordpress.

WordPress will then create the required database tables in the database and issue you with a randomly generated admin password.

You can now log on at http://www.yourDOMAIN.com/wordpress/wp-admin/wp-login.php

SIMPLE AS THAT!!

Common errors

"Error establishing a database connection....."

99 % of the time this error occurs when you have edited wp-config.php wrongly. Check your DB_NAME, DB_USER, DB_PASSWORD and DB_HOST variables.

Those who say Godaddy sucks can eat their hats. HAPPY BLOGGING.

Adding adsense to wordpress blog.

Today i had a short flirt with wordpress.I created a new blog with them. Obviously my immediate action was to try and add google adsense to my blog.

I searched and searched the Wordpress dashboard but there seemed to be no place to edit or configure ads. It turns out you cannot place ads if you are being hosted on a free wordpress subdomain e.g bugsniper.wordpress.com.

However I did a little research on how Wordpress users configure adsense on their blog and came across this link. It shows how may add PPC ads to their wordpress blogs.

http://codex.wordpress.org/User:Tomhanna/Adding_Ads_to_Wordpress

If you want to be able to display adsense on a Wordpress Blog Follow these steps

- Get a Hosting account that provides hosting with at least:

* PHP version 4.2 or greater
* MySQL version 4.0 or greater

- Download Wordpress from http://wordpress.org/download/

- Install this on your account.

- Go to presentation > Themes editor and select where you want the ads displayed