Have Your Own Site

I have been blogging for half a decade now, and although the first year of it was something experimental, I began to get a little serious in blogging in 2007, when I wanted to have a place for my scrapbook layouts. From there my life as a blogger moved on, and in 2008, I had my very first blogsite that's completely mine. With the help of a friend of mine, she helped me set up my own travel blog.

Having your own site doesn't just mean typing the words and putting pictures - it also meant knowing the basics of what you were doing. Having my own blog made me learn about codes and how to reach out to people, just so they would come and read what I have written. Of course, it is not just about blogging, many people have their own sites to suit their own preferences, and that's the beauty of it, actually. If you have your own site, you can transform it to whatever you want it to.

If you're planning to have your own site, it's best that you get the top host for it. Things to take into consideration are:

• Value for Money - of course hosting doesn't come for free.
• Reliability and Uptime - do know that you may have to update your site every now and then, and you need to have your site up whenever you needed to. This also means that people from all over the world might check your site, and if you're running a business, you don't want them to see an error message, right?
• Customer Service and Technical Support - Every now and then, sites will be having glitches, or because of your curiosity about trying new things, you will encounter some mistakes and when this happen, you need to have a good host with customer and technical support ready to help you.
• Features - Taking how much hosting would cost you, of course you have to make sure it got some good features.
• Storage Space and Bandwidth - I personally didn't have problems with this as I host the images into a different site, but if you don't have any ways of hosting your pictures and videos elsewhere, you need to check just how big is the storage that comes with the hosting package.
• Ease of Use - Not all people wanting to have sites have the knowledge of the technical know hows. Just like me, I don't know much about creating a site from the ground up, so your host has to be user friendly.

Technical as it may seem, having your own website is certainly a rewarding thing. Not only do you get to share different things about yourself, it's also a way to learn new things. I always say that no man is born knowing things he knows now, and things we do in life is a learning experience. If you want to have your own site, go ahead and do it. At first it would feel as if walking on a dim lighted path, but as you go on, you will realized at how far you just "traveled."

A good site starts with a good host. Read, research, then decide.

*** Jenn ***

Shark's Eggs

Continuing with the Marine Life pictures...


More pictures from the Manila Ocean Park... these are shark's eggs, one of the most fascinating thing I have ever seen. I remember seeing the development of the shark's eggs from a TV educational show, and it's just so amazing to see how a little shark move inside its eggs. I wonder how long will it take before the shark comes out...

*** Jenn ***

Needle Fish

Good thing I was able to upload pictures from the Coron Trip in my Multiply site.. I thought all of the images I would share were from Manila Ocean Park. Anyway, while in Kayangan Lake, we had the chance to ride a raft and roam around the lake, but when Ryan and I were done from our turn, we stayed with Erick as we watch the girls (Kei, Lei, and Dianne) enjoy their raft trip. A group of foreign tourists sat next to us, and they all wanted to snorkel, so their guide threw some pieces of bread in the water. These cute fishes showed up and started nibbling on the bread, and seeing the water quite clearly, I went near to take a picture. Not really a good capture - I am afraid to come very near the edge as I might fall.

*** Jenn ***

Garden Eel

Upon checking my files, I realized that the available pictures for this theme were all from Manila Ocean Park, during our visit last December. I do have enough images to share, but I apologize if the pictures will all be from the park.

This one's a garden eel, mom's favorite creature in the park. She loves how the eels would sway with the water and how they would duck back in their holes when people would come near them. Taking this picture required patience, because it was a bit difficult to focus the camera. I set my camera to macro - aquarium, but because there was a glass and the fish was a bit too thin, focusing required a lot of tries. Not only that, I really had to wait for this little fellow to come out before I could focus! :D It was all worth it.

*** Jenn ***

New Theme - Marine Life

New week, new theme... this week, it's all about Marine Life, and here's my share for today:


I don't know what's gotten into mom's head, but out of the blue, she just invited her kids to go to the Manila Ocean Park. Brother didn't like the idea because tickets are expensive, but since I personally didn't want to turn mom down, I backed up mom's idea, and we just found ourselves into the park. The jellies are the park's newest attractions, and I didn't let the moment pass without taking pictures of them. At first, I struggled with the camera settings, but as I progress, I was able to get the hang of it.

There were quite a lot of species of jellies in the park, but this one's my favorite.

*** Jenn ***

Pearls

Continuing with the jewelry posts this week:



As a blogger, I just love joining blog memes. It gives me help in what sort of pictures to take of (sometimes), and it also allows me to mingle with different bloggers all over the world.

On Wednesdays, I do ABC Wednesday, and on one particular cycle, I thought of posting "pearls" for letter "P." What came to mind was this necklace, and the metallic statuette we have. The necklace was given to me by my father as his gift for finishing third in the class when I was in Grade Five. A year before, I finished fourth... and because I was a better student that year, he made sure he gave me something much special. He gave me a necklace and a bracelet set, which I rarely wear because I am not really into jewelry. But of course, I do appreciated his gestures. I let my mom keep this for me, and whenever we needed some jewelry to wear us three girls (mom, sis, and I) just share each other's jewelry.

*** Jenn ***

African Beads

My jewelry share for today:


When a photo hunters game I joined in called for an image of "something made of wood," I instantly thought about this - a necklace made of wooden beads sent to me by mail from a Nigerian man I met online. I met him through the chatroom of the social networking site Hi5, and upon knowing I am from the Philippines and that I am a Catholic, he asked for some help regarding the seminaries. When I sent him different articles about the seminaries here in the Philippines, he gave me this necklace as this thank you gift. Well, he didn't become a priest, but currently, he is working for a charitable institution in Nigeria helping out of school youths to get back on track. He and I don't talk anymore (as he is always on the road), but I will always remember his kind gestures and how he helped in praying for my intentions.

The one in the picture is my sister. I didn't know how to take a picture of the necklace, so I asked her to model for me. If you're a friend of mine in Facebook, you will see the whole album there.

*** Jenn ***

New Week, New Theme

I am now back from my short vacation... and since I can upload some pictures in the PC, I am happy to get back to the thematic photo hunting again. This week, I randomly chose "jewelry," and here's my share.



When my sister was around 3 or 4 years old, our neighbor gifted her with these earrings for her birthday. We let her wore it in an instant, and a few years later, she just started complaining about her ears becoming painful. Upon close inspection, we realized that the "cap" of the earrings were already embedded in her ears! Mom didn't want to take her to the clinic (at that time money was way too tight), and she decided to take it out herself. However, taking it out wasn't as easy as we thought it was - and seeing how mom cry because she was feeling my sister's pain (plus the fact that she didn't want to cause more pain to her youngest child) was too much for us to bear as well.

My sister no longer wears this set of earrings, she doesn't want to experience any of the pain anymore.

*** Jenn ***