The Blogosphere Three Years Later
It’s been almost three years since I posted my first entry in the blogosphere. Sure, there are so many things that have changed in the world of blogs. The blogs themselves and their owners.
For almost three years, the blogosphere had helped me in so many ways. I have met great people like Shari, KT, Robbie, Talamasca, and Hazel to name some. Sad to say, bloggers do come and go. And I’m just glad that even though I have a hectic schedule because I’m overloaded in school and sometimes I find myself frustrated with the blogosphere, I’m still here. I’ve also learned a lot of things. Back in 2004, I was blogging manually, and now, I’m using the most abused blogging software available, WordPress. What amazes me is that even though there are so many users of it who don’t really know how to use it, they are still comfortable with it. I wonder if these people know that it is documented and there is a support forums for it. An advice: stop posting your questions about WP in your blogs, either you search the codex or post your questions at the forums. Further more, don’t be afraid to experiment (but be sure to backup your database) and read! Reading can really save you from looking stupid. It’s been also my outlet of frustrations. The entries that contain my frustrations to my siblings, classmates, teachers, and random people are scattered in this site: some are available to the reading public, others are password-protected, and a few are marked as private.
In my first year of blogging, it’s very seldom that you’ll see blogs written in Filipino (and published by a Filipino). I can still remember that those people who started blogging before me were desperately looking for Filipino bloggers. Like them, I was also looking for some. A year or two later, the blogosphere was infected by stupid Filipino bloggers. Okay, I’m going to try to be more constructive. There was a sudden outrage from the pioneering Filipino bloggers. There was even this blogger who does not even know anything about PHP, he’ll ask whomever he thinks is good at PHP. And I was one of his victims. He asked me if I can help him. Even though it was my first time to meet him, I gave him a helping hand. Because of my stupidity, I gave him a zipped copy of one of my old themes1. The next thing I knew, he used my theme almost as is! I asked him to remove it because it’s very stupid, and not to mention rude.
Because the post where I originally wrote this is password-protected, let me quote some paragraphs:
If you don’t know something, it’s okay to ask for some help. But not to the extreme that you will ask somebody for help every time. We have other things to do like our studies, projects and our own sites. And most of all, do not get mad or laugh at me when I can’t solve your problem or I did not get your instructions! Remember, it’s me who is helping you! And mind you, be sure that you really know what your problem is before asking for help, otherwise, nothing will happen. I don’t have all time just to look at your codes and find the source of your problem.
Kapal mo hu?
A friendly advice, start with HTML (better if with CSS), do not proceed to PHP and other advanced programming languages if you don’t know HTML and CSS!
There are other issues that happened a year ago. After some months, I did not experience these issues because some bloggers (and that includes me) addressed these issues. They were really annoying. The most annoying were the spam comments from legitimate people. Don’t you get agitated when you read a comment that contains only a single smilie or does not have any connection with the post in question whatsoever?
I’ve been receiving a few lately. It would be better if you’ll not post your comments if you won’t read the entry itself. Remember, we don’t blog because of ranking, more so, not just to get multitude of comments. Besides, leaving comments in other blogs does not guarantee you that the blog owner will pay you a visit and leave a comment.
Another issue that I’m also having lately are post notifications via IM. You don’t really have to IM me that there is a new entry in your site. That’s why there is RSS, isn’t it? RSS notifies me that there is a new entry in your site whenever you post one. Most blogging softwares automatically publish your feeds. I can read your entries without even visiting your site. Do you get it?
Also, don’t forget that blogs are not really diaries. Yes, you can post something about your life. But if you’ll only discuss your life, your readers might get bored.
I can only suggest one thing: read! As what I had written above, reading can save you from looking stupid. Believe me, it’s true.
PS: Want to install PHP plus Apache plus mySQL in you own computer? Try Xampp! It’s for free! With this, you can run every single PHP file in your computer. This is not an advertisment from B2P. Actually, it’s currently installed in my computer.
- And hey, he does not even know how to extract it! [↩]
