Transition from BlogSpot to Wordpress

After 3 years of blogging on Blogger’s platform, now it’s time for me to move on  and say goodbye, not to you but to Blogger/BlogSpot. Finally, Eli Shares had moved to a self-hosted WordPress and is  officially registered under a .com domain.

I chose 8th of July to mark the date of rebirth and transition of Eli Shares on a new platform because it is a special day for me. It’s my birthday!! This significant date would be a great anniversary for both my birthday and blog.

Actually I have been considering to migrate earlier but I thought I should wait and set a date, so, in the mean time I could do some research and build some sort of knowledge on the migrating process and also the reason WHY I should consider to migrate.

Believe me, migration is not a simple task especially when you want to maintain the traffic, permalinks, comments etc. Unless you’re planning to start fresh. Therefore, sufficient amount of reading and research is essential.

For those BlogSpot users whom were considering on migrating to a self-hosted Wordpress platform, I would recommend you to read these:

Convert from Blogger to Wordpress

Moving from Blogger to Wordpress: Best Practices

Top 3 Problems on Importing Blogger To Wordpress

12 Steps To Convert Your Blog From Blogger To Wordpress

Maintain permalinks moving from new Blogger to WordPress 2.0

Migrate your Blog from Blogger to WordPress with all the Google Juice

One major obstacle I faced in the process of the transition was to transfer the Intense Debate comments from BlogSpot to Wordpress. There are no plugins available for me to import the comments (it has been disabled), so I have to do it manually.

The Transition

When you’re still young you rely on your “parents” to support you, doesn’t matter which family you’re from – Blogger, Wordpress.com, LiveJournal or Xanga. But as we grew and progress, we might have this in mind…

“I’m grown up now, my “parents” only offers me  limited supports, I wanna go out and explore the blogging world, I wanna expand, I wanna stand on my on, maybe I need to find a partner for myself (Joint Ventures), I think it’s time for me to get out of this nest.”

This is where things starts to become more exciting and more challenging. Seriously, moving over to WordPress was really a big decision and certainly the best choice I have ever made. With abundance of great features, premium themes, plugins and of course FREEDOM, I have no regret.

Although, to be honest, BlogSpot is free and it’s easier to use but you have not much control over your blog. Meanwhile, WordPress might be slightly complicated at first but eventually you’ll learn along the process and you have more control over your blog.

By the way, we humans are control freaks so there’s a good reason why Google wanted to control your blog. Your content and blog are too valuable to be on BlogSpot so why not consider a move? Another bad news of having your blog on BlogSpot is that you’ll also risk having your blog deleted and I’m sure you don’t want that to happen to your blog.

Hosting your own blog is relatively affordable nowadays and Eli Shares is proudly hosted with iPage – a leader in web hosting. With unlimited disk space, bandwidth and email, 99.9% uptime and 24x7 support, and also with addition of other great features, iPage offers you a web hosting plan as low as RM 0.40 per day!

Currently, Eli Shares is still under the process of transitioning phase so please bear with me. I still have a lot of things to do – transferring Intense Debate comments, fixing links, posts, RSS feeds and other tweaks, and also theme selection.

Note: This will be the last post in elishares.blogspot.com. I would like to take this opportunity to thank all my readers, bloggers, commenters whom have spent the valuable time reading, linking and commenting in this blog. You guys are awesome!!

See you on the other side @ Eli Shares dot com

I’ve Won the Preliminary Round of the Bloggywood Squares Game Show Webinar

I’m very proud and excited to announce that this is the greatest achievement that I have ever accomplished as a blogger so far…

I’ve WON the 1st round of BLOGGYWOOD SQUARES
Online Game Show!!

… this also happens to be my first experience to ever participate in a webinar as well as online contest.

I would like to say a BIG and HUGE thank you to the sponsor, Beyond Blogging and the awesome hosts, namely: Nathan Hangen, Mike-Cliffe Jones, Jordan Cooper for organizing Bloggywood Squares and chose me as a contestant; and also to the special guest of the day, David Risley.

Since the webinar session is hosted in the US and is online at 7pm, been living in the other side of the world, 12 hours difference, I have to get myself to sleep earlier so I could wake up early in the morning to participate in this FREE webinar.

Yes, you heard me, a FREE webinar plus a chance to be chosen as a contestant for the game show!!

In this one hour webinar, I have learned a lot of valuable lessons on blogging, ranging from marketing to technical advices. I have also learned a new term today, affiliate link cloaking – basically hiding or cloaking your original affiliate link to prevent theft.
BLOGGYWOOD SQUARES
To all bloggers reading this post, I would highly recommend you to participate because you will learn a lot through this webinar. Subscribe to Bloggywood Squares and get instant access.

• Learn how to turn your blog into a highly profitable business and have fun at the same time!
• Get chosen as a contestant and win some awesome prizes!
• Watch as an audience member and participate in the show!
• Grand Finale winner will receive free membership to the Beyond Blogging Project worth $795 ( 2,547.58 MYR )!

Watch this video below for more detailed information about the webinar

Very useful TIPS
Like any other seminar or webinar, you need to get yourself prepared mentally and most importantly, get your “recording” tools prepared. I would like to stress the issue because I didn’t prepared well before the webinar start, thus, losing some valuable information. Basically, you just can’t rely on your brain to help you memorize everything.
I would highly recommend you these useful tools:
Pen and paper
This is the most basic and most important recording tools. The paper will act as your memory. So before the webinar starts, make sure you have your pen and papers prepared.
Audacity
Audacity is a free audio recorder and editor where you can record live audio during the webinar. Start recording before the webinar starts and you won't miss a single conversation for the whole course.
CamStudio
Not satisfied with audios only? CamStudio, another free software, is able to record all screen and audio activities on your computer. Start recording before the webinar starts and you won't miss a single conversation and activities for the whole course.
Print Screen and Paint
You might have heard of this before, the PRINT SCREEN key allows you to capture an image of the entire screen – what you see is what you get. Open the Paint application and paste it. Now you’ll have an image of the activity during the webinar.
You might have been wondering what I’ve won in the preliminary round. Honestly, I only remembered one out of four – Linchpin by Seth Gordin. That is the reason why I highly recommended you to get your recording tools well prepared before the webinar. By the way, I’ve also qualified myself to participate in the Grand Finale.

Wish me luck for the Grand Finale!

Again, here is the link to Bloggywood Squares.
Subscribe and get instant access to the webinar.

stadiumASTRO World Cup Fantasy

Despite in the amidst of preparation for final exam, my attention and focus are mainly on the South Africa FIFA World Cup 2010. On top of that, since I can’t engage in sporting activities yet due to my ankle injury, the only way to satisfy my crave on football is by playing FIFA Manager 10 and other virtual football related activities.

And for the first time in my life, caused by the excitement of the World Cup and also the attractive prizes awaits, I gave online football fantasy a try. Though there are tons of World Cup fantasy league out there, I chose to participate in a contest which are from my homeland, the stadiumASTRO Fantasy – a contest organized by MAXIS and ASTRO. In conjunction with this contest, Sarawak Bloggers host their very own Fantasy League Contest, the Sarawak Bloggers World Cup Fantasy League Challenge. But this contest is only for registered Sarawak Bloggers members and entries are already closed.

But don’t get disheartened, you still have the chance to join the stadiumASTRO Fantasy Contest and stand a chance to win attractive prizes which includes a 40” LCD TV, a Sony VAIO Laptop, Blackberry Bold 2, an iPhone and also meet up with Lionel Messi in Barcelona or Frank Lampard in London.

To know more about the stadiumAstro World Cup Fantasy contest, click the image above.

Does School Destroy Our Creativity?

Photo taken from Education.

First of all I would like to wish all the teachers Happy Teachers Day!!

I really appreciate and grateful to these great group of individuals whom had devoted their life to educate us to be a better person in the future. Despite of our mischievousness and ignorance, they never failed to educate and bring out our potentials through knowledge, skills and values.

But there lies a problem that has significant effect to all those who had gone through the educational system. The question is…

Does school destroy our creativity? 

I still remember when I was in the kindergarten, education was fun. I love to go to school. I love to explore and I have a loads of things that intrigued me. In the kindergarten that I’ve went, the teachers were great, though they were strict they promote critical thinking and also do encourage us to do mistakes in our learning process. It does build up my interest in all the subjects that I learn. The best part is we’re constantly rewarded if we do well in class.

I believe most of you have this kind of similar experience too. That is why when we were kids, we will take a chance. If we don’t know how to do something, we will have a go on it. We are not frightened to do mistakes. We are not frightened to be wrong because there’s no punishment unless we are naughty.

As I entered primary school everything turned out to be completely different. Obviously the educational system was way different compared to what I have experienced in kindergarten. This time, teachers discourage us to do mistakes. Every single mistake will result in punishment. Under this educational system, we are trained to be like a parrot. “MEMORIZE THIS!” instructed by the teachers. We’re thought to memorize, but not to understand. Don’t ask why, just memorize! If wrong, spank you!

I and many others do understand and appreciate the good intention of our teachers, but this is not an effective way to educate the students.

Here is an interesting video that I would like to share with you. Sir Ken Robinson, an internationally recognized leader in the development of innovation and human resources, has an interesting point of view on how destructive is our current education system.

This video is 20 minutes long and was recorded at TED Talks in 2006. I’m sure you’ll love his humour and great thoughts.

Here’s another video of his lecture at UCLA. This video takes about 1 and a half hour, but believe me it worth you the time.

If you like and enjoy this post please share it around in Facebook or tweet it so that the message could reach a much wider audience.

Connect with Me on Facebook

Finally, Eli Shares has officially launch its own page on Facebook.
Eli Shares Page would be a great channel for me to connect with you, the readers and bloggers, to build an online community where we can socialize, interact with each other and maximize our relationship.

You can easily ‘Like’ Eli Shares by:

1. Visiting Eli Shares Page
2. Clicking the Like button on the side bar

Some quick updates:

I have removed the cBox widget from the blog because in my opinion, after a couple of years having it embedded in my blog, I discover that:

• cBox doesn’t function as an effective method to connect with readers.
• It had caused delay in page load time.
• People tend to comment in the cbox rather than in the post itself.
• It has hidden pop-up advertisement.
• Worst, YOU CAN’T CONNECT WITH OTHERS (Bloggers)

Alternatively, if you would like to leave me a message, you can just drop me a Holla in the Facebook page or you can also email me.

Another widget I have removed is the Top Commentators Widget. The main purpose of me having that widget is to promote comment, in the same time helping the commenter/bloggers to promote their blog.

But after I’ve switched to Intense Debate, I notice that the Top Commentators Widget doesn’t record the comment count in Intense Debate, therefore I have decided to scrap it down.