Sunday Photograph | Theme: Self-Reflection

When the mind is calm and the emotions are settled, it becomes easy to reflect on life...

Blogs and Blogging

I am filled with amazement to see people committed to blogging across so many areas, and I mean it. I plan to go for an outing and, I bump into a travel blog. I think of buying something, and I land up on a product review blog. 

Personal blogging through The Global Crisis

 As the crisis caused by COVID-19 pandemic deepens and takes an unprecedented toll on public health, life is all about quarantine and lockdown. In fact, it has affected every aspect of life - social, economic, psychological and probably everything else. No matter how much we hate the situation we are in, this is the reality of the moment. As we unwillingly accept the situation, all kinds of freedom we enjoyed so far, are not available any more.

Discover Blogging: Episode 14 | Ready, Steady, Go...

Having discussed WordPress.com 4 Plans in detail in Episode 13: Putting things in perspective, it's time to jump into action. My​ ​sincere​ ​apologies​ ​to​ ​keep​ ​you​ ​on​ ​hold! Let us dive into it. I had suggested in Episode 8: Get Started to keep a few things ready to sail through this part smoothly. In line with that, just keep in mind your objective.

Discover Blogging: Episode 13 | WordPress Plans: Putting things in perspective

Having discussed the 4 plans offered by WordPress.com in the previous 4 episodes of this series (Go back to Episode 12: WordPress Business Plan), let me do a quick recap, consolidate and assimilate the ideas here. Here is the list: Free ($0), Personal ($4), Premium ($8) and Business (~$25).

Discover Blogging: Episode 12 | WordPress Business Plan

We have covered the WordPress Free, Personal and Premium Plans. Before moving on to the next one - Business Plan - ensure that you have gone through episodes 9 (Free Plan), 10 (Personal Plan) and 11 (Premium Plan) and have understood all the three plans since they form the prerequisite for this episode. To check the plans, go to WordPress.com  and select See Plans link next to Get Started button on this page.

Discover Blogging: Episode 11 | WordPress Premium Plan

WordPress Premium plan is best for online Entrepreneurs & Freelancers and is next to the Personal plan on upgrade hierarchy. It offers very important features to exercise more control for the bloggers and web-site owners.

So far we have covered the WordPress Free (Episode 9) and Personal Plans (Episode 10). Before moving on to the next one, Premium Plan, ensure that you have gone through episodes 9 and 10 and have understood both Free and Personal plans. They are the prerequisite for this episode and this discussion builds over the previous ones. To check the plans, visit WordPress.com and select See Plans link next to Get Started button on this page.

Discover Blogging: Episode 10 | WordPress Personal Plan

Hi friends! Before I start with WordPress Personal Plan, let me ask you a question, ”Have you understood the WordPress Free Plan?” If the answer to this question is “No”, please go back to episode 9 (previous to it) which is the prerequisite to understand Personal Plan.

Discover Blogging: Episode 9 | Which is the best WordPress Plan for me?

Continuing our discussion from episode 8: Get started with WordPress.com, the next thing to do is choosing the right plan. Though the plan can be changed later, it's always good to know about what you are into and what's in store for you. The 4 WordPress plans - Free, Personal, Premium and Business - offer varying degrees of features. But which one is the best for you? 

Discover Blogging: Episode 8 | Get Started with WordPress.com

From our discussion in previous episode (Episode 7: WordPress.org Vs WordPress.com), we concluded that WordPress.com is an easy, time-efficient and secure way for a beginner. I suggest you to complete the below preparatory work before you go ahead and create your blog or website. Let me cover a few points before you start so that you are ready with the required information to run through the process of creating your blog smoothly. Though nothing you do at this stage is cast in stone but it’s always good to begin with the end in mind.

Discover Blogging: Episode 7 | WordPress.Com Vs WordPress.Org

In episode 6: WordPress, I briefly touched upon this point. WordPress comes in two flavors: WordPress.org (What is normally referred as WordPress) and WordPress.com. You will see any of the logos in the picture above when you explore the world of WordPress blogging. It’s important to understand what they are. The first picture in blue is WordPress.com’s logo and the second one in black & white is WordPress.org’s.

Discover Blogging: Episode 6 | WordPress

Taking a cue from the previous episode (Episode 5: The best blog site), let us start our discussion about WordPress. Basics of WordPress before we go and start one. For a casual blogger doing it for fun, Google Blogger or WordPress.com are equally good. WordPress is an excellent platform for those who want to build their blog or site an online business and earn a regular income from it. 

Discover Blogging: Episode 5 | The best blog site?

Making a choice of the platform for blogging or your site, in the context of your future plans, is the most important factor to avoid surprises or roadblocks later. In episodes 3 (Popular CMSs) and 4 (Google Blogger), we dealt with the most popular Content Management Systems (CMS) and their suitability for an individual blogger. Making choice of a blogging platform is a very important step for those who want to build their blog or site to develop into an online business to earn a regular income from it.

Discover Blogging: Episode 4 | Google Blogger Review

We discussed in episode 3: Popular Content Management Systems (CMS) that a CMS is a major part of a blogging platform to publish your blog and listed the most popular ones. While talking about the ease of creating and maintaining a blog, any discussion is incomplete without Google Blogger. Blogger is fundamentally a blogging platform unlike other Content Management Systems (CMSs) which can be used for varied purposes like creating a website, online shop, etc. And it is one of the most popular blogging platform. Since Google doesn’t release any statistics around its market penetration, so its position among the top blogging platforms is not known. Nevertheless, it has its big plus points.

Discover Blogging Episode 3 | Popular Content Management Systems (CMS)

In episode 2: Leveraging Internet, we discussed that blogging helps people to build online presence, their own space enabling them to present their talents, skills, hobbies, businesses, help others, broadcast their message, blog for income and many more things. A Content Management System (CMS) is a major part of a blogging platform to publish your blog. A blog is focused on digital content. A CMS system is an application software, allowing creation, modification and organization of digital content. So a CMS system helps in creating and maintaining websites and blogs. There are many web-­publishing applications which can be used as CMS systems and the most popular ones are: WordPress, Joomla and Drupal. In fact, the most widely used is WordPress.

Discover Blogging Episode 2 | Leveraging internet

Episode 1 dealt with the basic questions like: What is a Blog? and "What are different kinds of Blogs?" Blogging (and Blog marketing) is not a new area anymore and evolving fast. Blogging helps people to build online presence, their own space enabling them to present their talents, skills, hobbies, businesses, help others, broadcast their message, blog for income and many more things. The list is endless…

Internet penetration and technology

According to many sources, internet has penetrated to more than 3 billion people. This is huge and mind blowing! While I am writing it or you are reading it, there are hundreds of million people online and when we are talking about such huge number of people, there is definitely a point (and business case) to leverage internet.

Discover Blogging: Episode 1 | What is a Blog?

The questions ‘What is a Blog?’ and ‘Difference between Blog and Website?’ bring us to the starting point of what this website is all about.

It’s a space for the creative you, where you will learn the basics and get the know-how to create a blog (or website) step-wise-step. If you are ready, you may even jump to How to start a blog? Without wasting any more time further, let us just jump into action and start with the basics…

Choose a Niche [Part 3]: The Final Step

Let me start with a quick recap of the previous 2 parts of this mini-series (Go back to Choose a Niche Part 2: Explore Topics). Experts advice to follow a focused approach for your new blog (or website) around one topic (your niche). It helps you in finding your audience and growing your blog without difficulty. But choosing your niche is a tricky but very important part of your online brand and efforts. We followed a quick exercise for exploring potential niches. Here I am going to discuss one more aspect of a right niche.

Choose a Niche [Part 2]: Explore topics

In first part of the 'Choose a Niche' mini-series, I favoured for a focused approach for your new blog (or website) so that all your content is around one topic. I listed a few popular topics in 'Food for Thought' section to help you in choosing your topic or niche. That's in no way is an exhaustive list and you may need to explore many many topics before you find yours. Coming straight to the point, you can start your exploration at StumbleUpon:

StumbleUpon is a discovery engine which allows its users to find and rate web-content using the principles of peer-sourcing and social-networking. I find the stories of internet start-ups interesting and exciting and if you share the same interest as me, here is the full story about StumbleUpon on Wikipedia.

Choose a Niche [Part 1]: Focused Approach

Small minds discuss people. Average minds discuss events. Great minds discuss ideas. 

-Eleanor Roosevelt

So you want to blog but wondering what it should be about! For some reason, many people start their blog as a kind of personal diary. They are posting about their personal life and daily stuff like morning walk, playing with their dog, outing for dinner, etc. This is one of the biggest categories of blogs and unfortunately this is also the category drawing least attention. People have their lives, their stuff, their chores to do and there is no reason why they should be interested in staying with and following such a blog unless it belongs to a celebrity, a social icon or a popular personality whose personal life interests a lot of people. If that's not the case with you, your blog adds to the noise and it goes entirely unnoticed.

Discover Blogging E-Book

Update 25th October, 2021: I have discontinued the below e-book and published under How to Blog series. 

"Looking forward to create a Website or learn how to start a Blog?"
No worries, you have reached the right place. As I am developing this space for beginners who seek out to start their own blogs or create a website, I would like to take this opportunity to invite you and benefit from my e-book “A Beginner’s Guide to Blogging and Creating Websites” and to keep growing with Free email updates.

Treasure Hunt

Welcome to treasure hunt!

"Why is it a treasure hunt?"
"I will discuss more in the upcoming posts and you will agree with me!"

Google Keep Tips: How to use?

Let me start with a disclaimer: I am a happy Google Keep user so I don't make any claim not to be biased in this post. Just kidding:) but frankly, it's a wonderful app in my experience. Its web-version is equally useful and allows me to use my notes with other applications. I don't remember how I was living (or managing) without it. For the sake of completion, let me try to recall:) Before Keep, I was using hand-written notes, I had tried apps like Evernote, Google Calendar, Notepad, etc. but never became so habitual with any of them that they could become an essential part of my life.

Discover Blogging: How-to-blog series

Discover blogging is How-to-blog series of posts published on my Google+ Collection: Discover Blogging (the link doesn't work now as Google+, the social media from Google, was discontinued on April 2, 2019. I migrated the series to this blog. If you are interested in starting your blog, it's for you. 

Discover Google

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Google products allow you to organise yourself, improve your productivity, create, search, store and manage stuff online, experience the joy of blogging, connect to and share with people using Google+, implement many Creative ideas and so many things.

Google Help files

'Discover Google' is the title of the e-book I have designed to leverage the Google help files. Google help files come handy when you need to find more about a Google product you are using letting you learn life hacks that make productive use of your online time with Google products and services, for example, quick and effective search by using advanced options or getting started with Google Keep and using it effectively. Once you learn them, they are always there by your side drastically improving your performance and organising your life.