Finally!

One year and 9 months since my first ever blog, I’m glad to have my own domain name at last.

This is already the third iteration of My Ark Full of Worry-Free Thoughts and this time, I’m making it in my own dot com website. Check out the About This Site page to see the progression of this site.

While my previous two sites especially the one hosted by i.ph are pretty much cool, one disappointment I have over them is that there are limitations to what I can do. Having now my own domain name allowed me to have more control over the contents and especially the layout of my site. But I never thought that it will be difficult. In fact, it has taken me 6 days after I installed WordPress at my host’s server before I was able to make this first post.

I chose ploghost to be my host as it Philippine-based which means that paying for their services is easier as it is through bank deposit in the local currency. Having no time to go to a bank though, I paid through PayPal. Helpdesk support is also faster than their foreign counterparts since we are in the same time frame. Best of all, their hosting and domain registration fees are also cheaper. I chose their Plesk Plan 50 Windows package where I paid a one time cost of P1,092 with this breakdown:

P375 for 3 months hosting

P600 for domain name registration

P117 for 12% VAT

I’ll also be paying P420 every quarter for the hosting for a total of P2,352 for the year including 12% VAT. Not bad I think considering most hosts are charging at least P3,000 per year.

After I paid last February 4, I was given my account details the next day and link to my control panel. When I log-on, that’s when I realized that this is a different ball game than having your site hosted by free servers like my previous ones. In the case of my blogspot and i.ph blogs, I have no difficulty starting as there are already templates available for you to chose from and all you have to do is fill them up with your own contents and presto, you got yourself a blog!

I spent the next few hours exploring with my Plesk control panel searching for some magical buttons that will allow me to start making a blog. Wikipedia has been of great help to me as I searched for the meaning of the terms I have encountered until I came with the term CMS which the control panel tells me that must be installed in the server. It means content management system. In my online search, I found out that the most popular ones are WordPress, Joomla and Drupal. I chose WordPress. I also learned that I have to have an FTP software that will allow me to upload and download files to my server. I chose FileZilla since it is free. After downloading the WordPress installer, I tried to upload it to my host’s server but to my dismay, I can’t install it. I read the instructions and followed them carefully but it will not work. I searched for answers online and found out that apparently, it must be because PHP support is not installed in my server. I was already getting annoyed that time. I then remembered to ask assistance from my host’s helpdesk. It was already late at night so I left a message for them.

There was no reply the morning of the next day so I sent a message again. It was 2:00 PM before someone answered to my plight. After an hour of exchanging messages with the support personnel by the name of Jason, he found out that I am on their Windows server which does not support PHP scripts. He recommended switching to their CPanel Plan 75 Red Hat package. Yeah right, go ahead, whatever it takes to make my website up and running. About two hours later, a new account has been created for me. Finally, I was able to install Wordpres after two days!

For the next days, I scoured the internet to download and try various themes and plugins I see fit for my web site. I know HTML but that was not enough for me to be able to make my site look like the way I wanted it to. And so, I was forced to learn CSS.

Now, 6 days after this site was online, I now officially launch My Ark Full of Worry-Free Thoughts version 3.0.

Welcome aboard! The ark is now ready to sail!

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Tags: ark, first post, i.ph, paypal, ploghost, wikipedia