Many of my friends have asked me how to blog and publish on the internet. Well, I’ve taken the time to compile a easy step by step tutorial if you will, of how to start from nothing to having a fully running, visitor visiting blog. First you need some core things to start off and about $15 to start off and about $5 to maintain every month. While you do this, grab a Snickers, I’ll be eating ramen as I write this. LOL! [[RIP to Mr Momofuku Ando, inventor of the ramen - Jan 5 2007]]. Now, I’m really writing this for the super newbie so don’t comment and say things like, duh or no shit!

1 – You’ll Need a Domain or a Website

You can get a domain from ICANN accredited registrar such as Yahoo Small Business or GoDaddy.com. You can get one from as little as $1.99 [on sale] to $8.00 [normal price] for a year. Discounts may apply if you register for more than one year. You will need a credit or debit card or PayPal to pay for this service. PayPal is a popular web payment service.

2 – You’ll Need Web Hosting

You can get web hosting from me or thousands of other websites who offer it for anywhere from $3 – $10 a month. There are some for more and others for less, you get what you pay for but somewhere in the $5 range is adequate. Here are the server specifications to look for while you shop for your hosting plan.

• Linux servers, I go with Linux because they are easier and safer to use.
• PHP, MySQL, CGI enabled, you will need these services to run your blog. Most hosts should already have them.
• FTP access, again, most hosts has them.

Sign up for a web host and they will give you 2 very important IP addresses you have to jot down. These are your DNS name servers, they are required so your domain can point to your web hosting server and display your website properly. They usually look like this: ns1.hostsite.com and ns2.hostsite.com, hostsite being your hosting company.

3 – Log In To Your Domain Control Panel

There are two main features of a domain control panel you should know about, the domain locking feature and the name servers feature. The domain locking feature enables or disables your domain from being transfered to another registrar, default, you should have this On or Locked or someone can steal your domain. The other feature, name servers, you need to change them according to what your web hosting company gives you, this is that ns1.hostsite.com business you have to worry about. When you logout of the domain control panel, make sure the name servers are set correctly and you have domain locking on or enabled.

4 – Log In To Your Hosting Control Panel

The popular web hosting control panels are easy to use, for example, cPanel which I’ve been using for years allow to you to control almost every aspect of your website. From adding email accounts to created MySQL databases. To create a blog, you first need to create a MySQL database with a username and password for the database. You have to note down all these things as you will need them later. So go ahead and create your MySQL database with a username and password.

5 – Download a Blogging Engine or Script

This is fairly easy to do, I like to use the WordPress blogging engine, it’s simple and easy to use. There are other engines out there such as TypePad but you do your research and find out what fits you best. But for this tutorial, I will use WordPress as an example. Go and download the WordPress engine script here. After you download it, extract it onto a folder on your desktop for easy access.

6 – Log In To Your Website via FTP

FTP stands for file transfer protocol, with a FTP program you can easily access your website and transfer files on and off the website. These files will be the extracted content of the blogging script you downloaded on the previous step. I recommend you to download the FileZilla FTP Client, you can get it here. When you install and run the program, there will be a few things you should know from your web host. Your username and password. On the top of the program, you should type your domain name for the Address field. So mine would be Address: tonycai.com, you can fill in the username and password field on your own. For the port number, put 21 as it’s the port number for FTP. Then click quick connect. Get use to the program and how it works before you continue to the next step. The left side are files from your local computer, and the right panel are files on your website.

7 – Upload Your Content On The FTP

Navigate with your FTP client to the folder public_html, any files in that folder can be accessed on your website. For example, if you have a file in the folder like this, /public_html/test.html then you can access it though your website like this, www.yourwebsite.com/test.html. Now go ahead and upload all the extracted files from the WordPress download into your right side panel in the public_html folder. The FTP program will handle this automatically for you and upload all the files onto the server.

8 – Now Run and Install The WordPress Blog Engine

After all the files are uploaded correctly, you should rename the file wp-config-sample.php to wp-config.php, then right click it and click View/Edit.

Make sure you change these settings according to the MySQL info you jotted down:

define(‘DB_NAME’, ‘wordpress‘); // The name of the database
define(‘DB_USER’, ‘username‘); // Your MySQL username
define(‘DB_PASSWORD’, ‘password‘); // …and password
define(‘DB_HOST’, ‘localhost’); // 99% chance you won’t need to change this value

The BOLD is what you need to change. You should already have this info jotted down from before. If you don’t have this information, you probably did not create your MySQL database yet. Please see STEP 4. After you changed this file, save and press X and it will re-upload and you have to click YES to overwrite the older file already on the server.

9 – Finish Installtion

Now you can finish your installation by by running the install script, just simply go to your website, www.yourwebsite.com, and follow the directions to complete the installation!

10 – Log In To Your WordPress Blog Administration Panel

Now your installation is complete, you need to log into your WordPress admin panel by going to www.yourwebsite.com/wp-admin, you should bookmark this site as you will use it every time you blog. Familiarize yourself with this control panel. Head over to Write to write your first blog post!

Congratulations, you installed WordPress! Your a BLOGGER!

I would like comments and suggestions to this tutorial. Thanks!

This is so ironic, he master of it all! MySpace Tom, out of all people to get hacked and his bulletin used for SPAM! Hilarious! You all know that annoying thing when someone hacks you and steals your password and posts bulletins by you. It happened to him, he must of clicked a fake link somewhere along the way. To protect yourself from getting hacked like Tom, learn never to click on other people’s bulletin if they say their selling a phone or something else that you know the person has no interest in. MySpace goers aren’t always the brightest when it comes to knowing the shady parts of the World Wide Web.

I was on Digg today and this is the most stupidest thing I’ve seen Apple do. Threaten bloggers who post information about using iPhone’s interface on their PocketPC’s! Someone made a skin for the PocketPC to look like the iPhone’s buttons. Apple says it’s copyrighted material, their ones to speak! The icon package has also been taken off the forums. This isn’t the first time Apple pursued something like this, previously, they were throwing lawsuits around to bloggers who mention iPhone’s design. LOL
Heres a picture of the comparason:

Oh and if you find the download good luck and let me know. We’ll put it on RapidShare for everyone!* The author says that there were over 500 downloads of the mod but was forced to take it down because of the lawsuit letter received from Apple lawyers.

* LOL I’m gonna get sued for saying that. Lame Apple!

Oh my god! I just had a conversation with a soon to be famous figure on the telecommunications industry! He’s the CEO of AllFreeCalls.net, the company that provides free calling to anywhere in the world for free. The service is only two days old and it’s already popular amongst social networks. When this truly goes public, he’s gonna be famous!

Tony Cai: Hi, thanks for the free calls!
Pat Phelan: your welcome
Pat Phelan: did you find quality ok?
Tony Cai: It’s great.
Tony Cai: Do you plan to have other numbers in case call loads get heavier
Pat Phelan: we have capacity for 160 million minutes on standby
Tony Cai: Minutes as in this service is not indefinite?
Pat Phelan: indefinite, i hve a guarntee unless the FCC change legislation until 2010
Pat Phelan: we will also be adding new countries soon
Tony Cai: Wow. this is great.
Pat Phelan: where do you call?
Tony Cai: I don’t call anywhere specific but I have tested the service in a few countries.
Tony Cai: It sounds great. and I’m calling with my VOIP service so it’s totally free for me, not even a charge to call to Iowa.
Tony Cai: By the way, are you from Iowa?
Pat Phelan: great,I would love to get it up to 50 countries in the next 10 weeks,thats our target
Pat Phelan: I am from Ireland
Pat Phelan: 2.20am here
Pat Phelan: company ceo here
Tony Cai: Cool, well sounds great man. Nice talking to ya, I just wanted to stop by and say thanks.
Tony Cai: I’m going to be up online till like 3AM today here in the east coast of the US
Pat Phelan: you too,thanks for supporting us
Tony Cai: Absolutely, I already blogged about this as well as many others as you know.
Pat Phelan: fab
Tony Cai: Have a good night, I’ll keep in touch.
Pat Phelan: night

He says that “50 more countries will be available within 10 weeks”, he hopes to push. This is so exciting for all the international callers out there.

Here is my previous post about AllFreeCalls:
http://www.tonycai.com/2007/01/13/call-international-worldwide-free/

I spent to day home today so I was bored and decided to dedicate my free time to create a Mozilla “Stony Brook University” site search plugin for all Mozilla browsers. You might already have some pre-installed plugins like Google or Yahoo! but there isn’t one for Stony Brook, until now.

With this plugin you can search StonyBrook without having to be on their homepage. This should be very convenient for all university students and staff. Why not help my college community search better with this tool?

See the Google Code Project page here!

You can find this plugin and install it here!

Go Stony Brook!

So it’s officially a week since I launched my blog and it’s been a big hit! I’m a believer of “if you build it, they will come” of course with the help of Digg, Technorati and various pinging services. It tells me that I’m going on the right direction with the content of my blog. I’m really happy to see this grow, I check the dot map of the geo-locations of visitors every day! LOL.

Below are the stats from Google Analytics:

I’d like to thank WordPress for their awesome blogging system, the authors of all my plugins, Digg, Technorati and MyBlogLog for their neat community features. All the services allowed me to do what I do. Again thanks.

Thats right! Now you can call anywhere in the world for free! No calling cards, nothing! Simple dial 712-858-8094 and when prompted dial 011 + Country Code + Number! It’s that easy! Eliminate buying phone cards all together. You will be charged as a local call, I have VOIP [[Voice Over IP]] calling to anywhere where in the US, Canada and Puerto Rico so a simple call to Iowa won’t cost me anything. If you own a cell phone and have free nights and weekends, this could defiantly benefit you.

So far, the countries that are available for free are:

Argentina, Australia, Belgium, Brazil (Rio De Janerio), Canada, China, Christmas & Coco’s Island, Cyprus, Denmark, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Mexico, Netherlands, Norway, Poland (Warsaw), Portugal, Russia, Singapore, South Korea, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Thailand, UK and USA.

And more are coming soon, so check back at my blog and I will update!
Shh, keep this on the down low! lol

!UPDATE!

TIP: Wait for all the messages to pass, right after it says Thank you, you can start dialing your destination number, if you dial while they are speaking, it might not go through.

The service is back online again however the way to use it has changed. Please visit Yak4Ever a.k.a AllFreeCalls to see instructions!

In a jolly mood, how about a song?:
[audio:http://litstudies.org/blackparade.mp3]

I’d say so, with all the good things that the iPhone does, other phones that already exists can do too! Japan had phones that could do a lot more a long time ago, so the United States are just catching up to them. TechCrunch reported a 10 million page hits on their iPhone article when it was initially posted the first day. Now, it’s pretty much old news. The bill with the iPhone will be high for sure, calculating to $1,900+ a year for service. That’s too much for what a regular cell phone can do today! Think about it, it’s not all that crazy!

Others weren’t too happy when Steve Jobs announced the release of JUST the iPhone and AppleTV at MacWorld 2007, many others were expecting a new MiniMac, new displays, new MacBook models, but none of those were even mentioned at MacWorld. Disappointing!

My three cents: LOL!
- Your gonna get robbed [[possibly beaten for it]] if you purchase it.
- Bill is too damn high. $1900+? Hell NO!
- Ehh, other phones can do what it can do.

This is a crazy despite I would say, deal from Sprint Air, they are offering 1 cent deals on select locations on specific days ONLY if you purchase your tickets today before 11:59PM.

Here are the NY deals my fellow New Yorkers:

Flights available from Atlanta, Altantic City, Boston, Cancun, Chicago, Detroit, Fot Lauderdale, Fort Myers, Grand Cayman, Cayman Islands, Kingston, Las Vegas, Montego Bay, Myrtle Beach, Nassau, New York, Orlando, Providence, Punta Cana, San Juan, Santa Domingo, Tampa, Washington DC!

Remember, only on specific dates and ONLY if you purchase by tonight! I would really love to go to Myrtle Beach for 5 cents! lol. Heck Detroit too! lol.

Total Fare Example: (Well of course it’s not exactly 1 cent)
Number of Passengers: 3
Airfare+: $0.30
Taxes and Fees: $57.90 (what’s this?)
Travel Insurance++: $0.00 (Tell me more)
Total: $58.20
Total Due: $58.20

For complete details, visit Sprint Air here.

Whao! What a long day I had today, the previous night, I slept at 3:30AM [[3 O`CLOCK]]. This morning I woke up at 10AM to meet with some friends from Stony Brook for a special hangout session. So I made my way to 59th Street, Central Park, the original plan was to go ice skating there at Wallman Rink but that was too expensive! 25$, the last time I was there, it was a moderate $17. Damn!

So my friends decide to go to Bryant Park which was free but all I had to do was rent the skates! When we met up and got on line to purchase the skates, they didn’t charge me! lol [[yepp i got free skates]] and I wanted to pay their asses but they thought I payed, oh well, LMAO! But I didn’t bring a LOCK and had to purchase one for fucking $9, what a ripoff, no wonder admission was free.

However, guess what was going on underground! My friend twins got arrested an patted down by NYPD when they claimed that twins did everything together, even go in the same turnstile! They were on the walls with their hands up and the funny thing is that their the last ones that cops should be worrying about in a city like this. Bitches were fined $60 each. LmAO! I got the pics but I don’t think they want them on the internet!

Anyway, I’m skating and having fun with my friends, all of a sudden this fucking 30 year old looking cracker in khakis kicks my blade, and I elbow his ass, I’m like WTF and I thought that was the end of it but NOOO, the next lap, he comes and pushes me (by accident)* he made it seemed BUT fucking HELL NO! I told my boys and they go and try to trip his ass. LMAO!! [[nice lookin out yall]]. So I go and try to talk to him, he acts like he don’t see me, what a pussy.

So after that we had lunch/dinner at Mc Donald’s at 42nd and the females had to go home cause it was getting kinda late [[5o`clock]], it wasn’t even that late! but they had to go… whatever..

Then we headed over to the 42nd Street Lowes movie there to catch a movie. I saw the movie “Prime Evil” which was awesome hot! Recommend it for the thriller, gruesome loving audience. However on the way, there, at AMC thetre across the street, we caught a quick glimpse of Aishwarya Rai, she’s the Ms Universe of India, freaking HOT as hell! being accompanied by Abhishek Bachchan to their movie premiere of Guru (2007). My friend got a better view of her being that they were like 2 feet away from her! Jesus, she was hot! While trying to get a closer look, freaking NYPD cops were trying to hit me with their night sticks if I didn’t get off the streets! LOL! I was gonna take a picture of it but he was seriously about to hit me! I fucking ran!

After that, we headed over to good old Toys-R-Us, where I for the first time touched a Nintendo Wii’s game controller and go to demo one of their games. Awesome game play but the graphics isn’t all that great. Reaching to the conclusion of my day, I had one last crazy moment. It was time to go home but what happened in 34th Street train station made my day. My friends and I were talking about girls, college and porn. Tell me how my friend digs midget porn haha!

Yep and so that was my day in a nutshell!