As general, there are many kinds of blogger -from his/her intention to blog or his/her preferences to use WordPress as his/her blogging CMS. Some bloggers do the blogging "just" to share things, to socialize, to keep update and stay connected to his/her communities, etc. Many others use blogs to earn money either. And the great thing about this WordPress CMS is that it can be any blogs or websites as the blogger wants. It is pretty simple, yet powerful CMS.

There are many books, many tutorials have been written to explore and master WordPress. There are free resources and also paid ones. If you have money and intent to buy some learning resources, you can go here. With 40 videos, anybody will master WordPress easily, from zero to complete knowledge from the very start to have your own self-hosting blogs using WordPress. Here is a screenshot of the chapter and videos available:  

Happy blogging using WordPress and thank you for reading..

Thank you for reading.

At first, it seemed so difficult to me to apply this theme. Later on, I found out why.. I've placed the files not at its proper place, so I failed at the first try. Then, I carefully read the instruction or the guidance that came along with the files.. and thanks God, everything then went so so smoothly.

This theme is wonderful !! It is so easy to apply, and has so many attractive features -at least for me. What I like best from this theme are:

This theme has so many great features, that encourage me to explore everything in it. But, there are also some features that I think should be added too, mainly:

1. The navigator buttons. The "next posts" and "previous posts" buttons as navigation for the blog visitor, even for the owner of the blog, is accordingly become something important to me.  The navigation links, the "older entries" and "newer entries" were placed below the posts at the first page of the blog. I almost can't find them, since they're blurred with the strong brown-colored line. Furthermore, I could not find these navigation when I open a single post. I wish that these navigation links could be found easily.
2. I experienced, unproper view when I want to see any posts that belong to a category. The view is not at as it should be: mainly because of the dropping side-widgets, and the darken view.
3. I also found, that this theme is best opened with Mozilla Firefox (I use V.3.0.4) and Internet Explorer 7. Everything is just fine with these two browsers. Though, some links will be dissappear when I use Opera (V10.x beta), and Google Chrome, especially the links below the flash-banner, which leads to a certain post when clicked.
4. The "Twitter Updates" at the right side. Eventhough I finally signed up for Twitter, I found that, this feature is not really "everybody-demanded". This feature is really great for the Twitter members, but it seemed unlikely for the non-Twitter-Member.
5. The absence of "blog copyright" below the theme. Unlikely most of the free WordPress theme I ever used, there are no "blog-copyrigted" sign at the bottom of the theme. In my opinion, this feature or sign, should be there, therefore it should be added at the next version.

After all, I really really like this "ZinMag Futura Theme". I really enjoy using this theme, the implementation was smooth and without any difficulties at all. Finally, credits and thanks goes to "Web Hosting Geeks" for this great, free, eye-catching theme. For a newbie like me, having blog with display like this is amazing. So, thanks again.

I have some blogs, mostly on Blogspot, while i have 2 blogs only using WordPress. One of my WordPress blog is mervandi.wordpress.com which is a free-service blog, with the wordpress_com on the address. While the other one is TheGeom.com which is a self-hosted WordPress blog.

Of course there are some advantages and disadvantages of using the free-service blog and self-hosted one. Here are some of them:

1. Free-service blog

• The free-service blog usually contains the name of the service provider at the end of the address. For example: mervandi.blogspot.com or mervandi.wordpress.com. Yes, just like my other blogs.
• One of the most advantages of this free-service blog is, that it will never die. You don't have to worry that your blog will be disappear. As long as the service-provider is there, your blogs will be there too. You don't have to be bothered to manage the domain name, you don't have to worry about the space-quota of your blog, you don't have to worry that your domain name and the hosting will expire, because they're all handled by the service provider.
• While one of the most disadvantages is, that you could not modify or manage everything at the blog freely. For example: you can not use any theme you like with the free-service blog. Just like this blog.. where I could not put another blog-themes I like, but the themes given by the service provider -in this case is WordPress.com.

2. Self-hosted blog 

• Self-hosted blog is easily recognized from its name. First, it does not contain the name of any blog-provider like Blogspot, WordPress, Multiply and so on. Second, it contains only the name and the dot (could be .com, .net, .id, web.id and so on). For example: TheGeom.com.
• The most disadvantages of a self-hosted blog are: you will get busy with the domain and hosting matters, from the very start. You will be considering very carefully where to hire a server for space -called a hosting-, and when you've done with it, you must keep the domain and the hosting a life, for which you must pay for some extra money in order to maintain your domain (that is the blog name), and watch carefully your bandwith and space-quota of your hosting. Otherwise, your blog will be gone forever. Imagine the busy works, if you have many self-hosted blogs.
• The most advantages of a self-hosted blog are: you can manage anything of your blog, you can even monetize it, and the most important is that you are the very only master of your blog. It means that you can put or delete themes or anything you like or dislike from your blog, you can spare some space for people hire, or you can apply to any service provider for profit or revenue-sharing by putting their ads on your self-hosted blog. In short, you can optimize your blog at its potential.

Well then, it's up to you, whether you prefer to own a free-service blog or the self-hosted blog. Whatever your decision is, I invite you to visit my blogs, and perhaps we could link each other on blogs. See you around..!

Thank you for visiting, reading and may be commenting. I'll put this post on my other wordpress blog too.

Perburuan theme berlanjut. Setelah sempat teler gara-gara halaman depan yang memble, beberapa waktu yang lalu saya coba searching lagi, mencari theme2 lainnya. Alhamdulillah, akhirnya dapat lagi beberapa theme keren baru untuk melengkapi koleksi theme yang sudah ada sebelumnya. Diantara theme baru itu :

- Ada Theme Indian Muslims dan Padangan dari Jauhari, melengkapi koleksi Theme Ayumi yang sudah ada di blog TheGeom ini sebelumnya.

- Terus, ada Theme Gossip City dari Elene G. dari Design Disease. Theme ini bagus banget , dan jadi theme andalan selama sekian waktu, sebelum akhirnya ketemu dengan Theme Lemon_Twist.

- Sempat juga download theme Lemon_Lime dari Chris Murphy, cuman belum pernah dicoba ditampilkan ke publik, baru sempat di-preview tampilannya saja.

- Lemon Twist dari Chris Murphy juga. Termasuk theme favorit saya. Gara-gara theme ini, saya jadi kepingin utak-atik blog lagi. Hasilnya.. halaman depan Thegeom bisa tampil normal pakai theme ini . TheGeom juga jadi tampil "lebih normal" untuk beberapa theme yang sebelumnya amburadul.

Silahkan saja kalau ingin mencoba salah satu theme diatas. Linknya sudah ada semua, bisa dicoba dan dipilih. Kalau saya sendiri sih, theme mana yang akan dipakai lagi tergantung pada suasana hati, dan kesesuaian tampilan themenya. Sangat bisa jadi, Anda akan mendapatkan tampilan yang lain dengan theme yang berbeda lagi, saat Anda berkunjung ke blog ini lagi esok hari. 

—update ended— 

Alhamdulillah, hari ini sempat bikin beberapa posting lagi, sambil ganti theme baru. Theme ini namanya Personal Theme dari 1800blogger and iThemes .

Semoga dengan penggunaan theme baru ini, tampilan blog menjadi lebih menyegarkan, terutama dengan memasang foto anak-anak sebagai bagian dari theme. Jadi, bisa lihat foto anak-anak sambil mengurusi blog. Enjoy ya…! (more later). 

TheGeom adalah nama blog ini, mudah-mudahan Anda ingat. Sebenarnya alasan penggunaan nama TheGeom untuk nama blog adalah agar secara filosofi, blog ini berkembang dengan luas. Saya tidak tahu istilah tepatnya.

TheGeom adalah nama salah satu syntax dalam database spasial PostgreSQL dan PostGIS, yang digunakan untuk menggambarkan atau mendefinisikan gambar bidang-bidang peta, yang disebut sebagai geometry (geom). TheGeom juga bisa diasosiasikan dengan dunia, karena potongan katanya, yaitu geo, yang berarti dunia atau bumi.

Namun, untuk membesarkan blog ternyata bukan pekerjaan mudah, apalagi untuk saya yang newbie ini. Berbagai cara tentu saja dilakukan dan dicoba. Mulai dari pasang berbagai theme (atau skin), pasang berbagai plugin untuk blog, daftar di komunitas blog, berkunjung dan meninggalkan jejak di berbagai blog, coba-coba cara SEO (Search Engine Optimization), dan sebagainya pun dilakukan. Hasilnya ? ya seperti ini adanya.. Namun kendala terbesar dan terberat yang saya rasakan adalah: gairah menulis dan koneksi internet.

Gairah menulis memang yang paling menentukan. Dan ini yang beberapa bulan ini menghilang. Lihat saja postingan saya terakhir sebelumnya adalah pada Bulan Oktober 2007. 

Terlepas dari gairah menulis yang sedang coba dibangkitkan lagi, ada permasalahan yang selalu mengganggu, yaitu Homepage Blog TheGeom ini. Masalah sesungguhnya adalah bahwa halaman depan blog TheGeom ini menjadi sangat tidak beraturan, beberapa bagiannya berlarian tidak semestinya seperti yang diharapkan. 

Sebenarnya, pada saat awal launching blog TheGeom ini, tidak ada masalah dengan tampilannya termasuk halaman depannya. Seiring dengan penggunaan theme (yang semuanya adalah free dan hasil download), serta plugin-plugin yang saya pasang, lama kelamaan tampilan Home nya menjadi berantakan.  Sidebar turun, warna tidak sesuai, dan sebagainya.

Mohon saran dan masukan dari teman-teman Blogger atas masalah halaman depan TheGeom ini. Setiap saran dan komentar, highly appreciated. Saya sudah coba berbagai theme untuk "menyembunyikan" masalah ini, biar tidak terlalu kentara, tetapi kurang begitu berhasil. Berbagai theme yang sudah saya coba pakai untuk blog ini, bisa Anda lihat disini.

Terima kasih atas saran, masukan, dan komentarnya. 

This Firefox Extension’s name is Adsense Notifier, where you can download it here or here. In order to be able to utilize this extension, firstly you must have firefox version 2.0 or higher already installed to your computer. Then visit the url to download the extension. Wait until the download complete. After that, firefox will inform you -with a dialog box coming up- that there is a plugin ready to install. Just press the install button, and wait till it completes. After doing this, your firefox is now ready to notify you about your adsense earning. But, in order it runs properly, you must restart the firefox.

After firefox restarted, please be aware that there is an icon at the right-most bottom of your browser (at status bar). The adsense notifier icon is displayed as a paper with some colored bars in it. Please make sure of this first. If you could not find the icon, you should recheck to make sure that this adsense-notifier extension is already activated (i'll show you how to activate and deactivate this plugin later).

Activate The Plugin

Here is how to activate your Adsense-Notifier extension:
1. Start firefox, then click on menu at Tools –> click Add on

2. Add-ons box will popup showing three buttons like this:

• Options button: to show a dialog box to set up your account, and how to display earning report.
• Disable (Enable) button: disable means to deactivate the plugin, while enable will activate the plugin. You have to make sure that the plugin is enabled (that is the plugin will state Disable to deactivate it).
• Uninstall button: to remove the plugin from your computer or firefox.

Setting Account and Display

To run the plugin, first you must submit your adsense account username and password, and set up how the report displays at your firefox satus bar. Now, click on Options button at Add-ons dialog box above. This will lead you to a dialog box, named: Adsense Notifier. Simply there are 3 more options there, here they are:

1. Summit your account: at Adsense Notifier Options, summit your Adsense Username and Password on the correspond text-boxes:

2. Customize your action. At Adsense Actions Options you can customize what action will show / be done whhen you do right, left, or control (ctrl) clicking. You can also choose the default Adsense Window action, when you do the click.

3. Customize your display report. At Adsense Display Options, you can customize how to display your earning report. You can sort your report base on Today’s report or others. You could also group your display report, Number Locale, et cetera. For fast use, you could leave it as given.

4. Press OK, and wait for your browser will display like this:

. The numbers shown at the status bar of your firefox will depend on your options at step 3 above, especially when you marked boxes below the ‘Show the following items‘ there (the Impressions, Clicks, CTR, CPM, Earnings, RPC).

Quick Display

It’s just a simple steps to do, since the dialog boxes are simply designed. Still, if you want a fast display of your Adsense earning, simply (1) submit your Adsense Username and Password, then (2) click OK button at the bottom, and you should see your earning report at the satatus bar.

Hope that this one is useful.

For bloggers, absolutely, this is an opportunity they won't miss. Every blogger has opportunity to join this program, either as a publisher or as a n advertiser at once. This opportunity is open world-wide, every blogger from every country could take part on this program, including Indonesia.

Many Indonesian bloggers, nowadays are Adsense Publishers. As its number grows rapidly, it is become a deep concerns for us to maintain mutual benefit between Indonesian adsense publishers and Google Inc as the owner of Google Adsense.

For that reason, we, Indonesian bloggers conduct a campaign named: "Save Google Adsense." In this campaign we want to seduce for every Indonesian Adsense Publisher to be a good Indonesian Adsense Publisher.
This campaign, is believed to be able to strengthen a good image of Indonesian adsense-publishers (bloggers). One way to do this campaign is by putting a banner stated "Save Google Adsense" at publishers' blog or website. Many articles also have been made for this. You can try to do some search engine using keyword: 'save google adsense'.
 
As this campaign, firstly introduced by Cosa Aranda, many Indonesian bloggers agreed to put his blog as link of the banner, although this is not a must. Save Google Adsense campaign came to mind, since there are publishers got banned for something they didn't do. With this campaign, we'd like to warn every indonesian blogger to be aware of anything that could lead to account suspension or get banned. ]]> http://www.thegeom.com/2007/09/17/save-google-adsense-campaign/feed/ 1