Taking small steps to improve and change the directions of this website. I don’t think I’m calling it a blog anymore since I’m using lesser these days to log my daily encounters. For that I’ve got my other blog and my twitter. So I am changing the kind of content and purpose here at Claudia.sg.

New Blog. New Theme. New Direction.

My first step to it is to change the look and feel. Going back to the magazine style which I did once. Now what I need is a logo that represents my purpose. Will be running a mini contest to call for logo submission soon. Do keep a look out for it.

And with new directions, I am looking out for passionate writers who would like to contribute to this site. Drop me a message here and let’s have a chat.

OMG!! I tell you!! I want to scream and than quickly dig a huge hole in the ground and hide inside!! I feel guilty, silly, stupid and a total bimbo right now!

First I would like to thank Kahwee for his rescue and Uzyn for creating the backup host for me which than lead Kahwee to discover that it was the wordpress theme that causes all the problem! Quoting from Kahwee, “didn’t know a theme can be so powerful..” Yes! It was the typography theme that I adored so much that causes it!

Than I have to apologize to my web host – Top Hosting Centre. When my blog went down after the WordPress 2.8 upgrade, the immediate reaction was “WTH is happening to my host!!!??!!” Yap, that I’m sure is the first reaction of most people. This was hyped up even more since the host server was down two weeks ago when I was hosting the Search for N contest. Naturally I submitted a new ticket and demanded for them to get it fixed asap. But after 48hours, they couldn’t tell me what went wrong! Because the direction I thought the error was from was wrong! Its not because of the database crashing but its because of a critical conflict with the wordpress theme! Sooo sorry Sandra from THC for the big boo boo!

Now my blog is back, I feel alive again!! Woohooo!!!

Back to setting up my MBP! Yap! I got it!! More updates in my tweets! And also checked out the setting up qik I live-streamed just now.

And the forgetful-claudia in me had to do the theme change on the possibly highest-traffic-for-the-year day! I’m such a fool!

Anyway, since I’m on the topic of analytic, thought I should share my top content hits for the year so far, from Jan 1, 2009 to today.

1. National Geographic Store in Singapore
2. Almost an iPhone – Samsung F480
3. Let’s Talk About Sex! (For females only!)
4. CtG reviews the Lenovo S10 IdeaPad
5. My 1st Speed Dating… On Singapore Flyer!
6. A VERY familiar Tiger Beer Model Spotted!
7. Great Year of the Ox for me!
8. CtG Review – Samsung Innov8

Have you read any of the above posts before?

By the way, the above traffic are mostly from search engines. Is your blog optimised for search engines? One of the things you should do is to change/ check that your permalink is not some random numbers. Update that if you can. On wordpress, you can find this under settings > permalinks.

I did a little survey with my readers and friends to see if I should stop using the more tag in my post and shows full entry on my homepage. This will end up with super long pages since I usually have pretty long posts with photos and all. But than results show that more prefers to scroll down a blog than to click on posts to read them.

Some replies from plurk

After trying it out on my Where is Claudia? blog, I think scrolling isn’t that bad now isn’t it? With nice smooth trackpad to glide on, with scrolling wheels on mouse and the always there page down button to press, I think scrolling will in fact make reading of blogs easier. So I’ve decided to let it scroll from now on.

With effect from this post (actually since the one before this), all posts up here will be showing the full posts on the home page. I’ll limit it to 5 posts only. But if the scrolling gets tough, I’ll reduce the number of posts to 3.

Oh! And I think flickr is going to hate me! Especially if all 5 latest posts going to be filled with lots of photos! LOL!!!

So now that I’m scrolling it, will you visit this blog more often and stay a little longer too? *blinks*

Photo from here. Hope he don’t mind me using it.

I’m beginning to feel that my blogging is getting kinda sad. It somehow seems like life has come to a standstill for me. Nothing I do seems like a blogable post. When one’s life get bored, their blog becomes boring too isn’t it?

There has been much discussions for long time within my small social circle online on whether or not to start blogging professionally in niche blogs or to start having a certain focus in one’s blogging style. And I did try to take a step out to separate my postings to couple other places where I hope to concentrate. But its just so tough for me.

Unlike many out there, I don’t read a lot daily. In fact, I don’t read much at all. And I prefer not to copy and paste things I read somewhere and post it as content (partial or in full) in my blogs. I’m not a collector of news. I want to be the creator, or as what Walter shared, a my very own storyteller.

A friend of mine shared that it is pretty easy to earn lots of money from just blogging collecting and repeating of news alone. Just start many many niche blogs and follow many many feeds, than post copy and paste content from your feeds to your blogs. There’s little thinking to do but you’ll get lots of traffic coming to your google adsense and blog ads filled site. I’m sure you know who are the few famous known people who’re doing this.

But wait a minute! That’s not my kind of storytelling. And these blogs get on my nerve at times. So now I just don’t go to them or totally ignore their feeds in Ping.

I know, I know! You’re going to ask why am I changing theme so often. Recently I changed the layout of this blog, and now I’m changing the theme! Claudia is too free liao lah! *cough*

Actually no, I’m not that free, I’m just getting tired of the darkness from my previous theme and needed something to freshened it up. Don’t you think this is so much brighter now? Also added a sitemap (finally!) to this 4-year-old blog.

Over the next few days (or maybe weeks or even months!), I’ll be trying to customized this theme, adding new plugins, working on some categorizing of my uncategorized posts.

I might disappear from blogging, facebook and plurk for awhile. Firstly cause I’m sick! 3rd day already! Hope Panadol Flu Max will work wonders tonight. And also I need to sort out the mess I’ve created in my life. Nope, nothing is wrong with my relationship with Abang, in fact, we’ll be celebrating our 5th anniversary on 10 Nov 2008 after his exams. The mess I’ve created is kinda work related and I blame it all on my own stupidity and lack of career directions. I hope all will be solved soon. I need to start accumulating my CPF!! If you’ve any openings that you think is suitable for me, drop me a note k?

Till we meet again…