I'm a full-time mummy

Ladies and gentlemen, I feel I really should share out this with you guys. It's definitely not a professional lesson, more like a mini tutorial from me, a knowledge transfer I'd say. I think from now on, if I learned any new things that I can think can benefits you guys who are passionate about blogging, I'd like to share it out through my own blog meme, which is:

So, what is a Gravatar? No, no, not Avatar. I meant, GRAVATAR. With the letter "GR" in front. According to the website,

"Gravatar is an image that follows you from site to site appearing beside your name when you do things like comment or post on a blog. Avatars help identify your posts on blogs and web forums, so why not on any site?"

Errmm... does any of that make sense to you? Put it to simple lay-man words, Gravatar is an icon that represents you, an image in this sense that whenever you go to other people site or when you leave your comments, your icon/image will appear right where your identity is. If you are using Blogger, then your profile picture will be the one showing. But you see, nowadays, Blogger is not the only thing available for people to use on their blog or website. There are Wordpress and other blog host as well. So this is where Gravatar comes in handy.

If you noticed my blog, some of the people who left their comments have this funny looking images next to their profile:

Now it's definitely not my blog visitor / reader's choice to have that funny looking image as their profile picture. It's just that I like to imagine the people who left me a comment really looks funny like that hahaha... kidding kidding...

Back to being serious, now this is because on my blog template, it is defaulted that comments are to use Gravatar images to show the user's profile. If the person's email address is not found in the Gravatar's database, then this funny looking images will be shown - cos this is from the Wavatar settings in my blog template.

Meaning, when you leave me a comment, my blog template will search the Gravatar database using your email address. If they finds it, they will show your image next to your comment in my post. Else, the funny Wavatar icons will be shown. There are many other websites and blogs out there and a lot of them are using the same method, only that most of them choose Monster ID or Identicon instead of mine, which is Wavatar.

Monster ID icons looks like these:

Identicon icons looks like these:

As I'm no longer using Blogger, I cannot use the user's Google profile picture to show on their comments, hence Gravatar is the best choice. When you leave a comment on my blog post, you will notice a short description right next to the email entry which says " (Will show your Gravatar icon) " - this is because Gravatar extracts your image using your email address. I can of course select MonsterID or Identicon to show as your profile image but I prefer to use Wavatar instead.  RequiredPlease enter a valid e-mail

Simply put, to create your profile on Gravatar, you just need to enter your email address and upload your image into their site. Easy peasy! Of course, just a note of advise, if you are serious about blogging and establishing your own identity and also your blog identity, you'd want to design your profile image as close to your blog template. This is to make people associate the image with your blog whenever they see it!

You can click at this link to start creating your own Gravatar now! That's all the mini tutorial I have for now. Will post more when I came across any new stuff! Or feel free to drop me a comment or email and if I know how to do it, I'll be glad to share it in the next post, else I'll try my best to find out if I don't know about it. Cheers!

Now that I have slowly settled down with my own domain, let me tell you why I left Blogger...

(*Image taken from Google search)

Don't get me wrong... I really, really love Blogger! I love the fact that it is so easy for me to draft and schedule my post(s), how their widgets interconnect and so easy for me to set up, the various free themes and templates I can use (well, I only stuck to the one and only I found when I started blogging after quitting my IT job to be a SAHM). I love how easy it is to just sign up and follow other awesome peoples' blogs and read their new posts in my dashboard.

Anyhooo, back to this topic. I was on my usual blog hopping routine when I stumbled into this post and I read on. To be honest, prior to that I've been toying with the idea of having my own domain, not because of stumbling into that post, but more into having my own blog identity. And also getting stressed seeing the long URL of my blogger blog (http://imafulltimemummy.blogspot.com/), I thought that the time is ripe for me to get my own domain, shorten up the URL and make it nice and simple. And then I came across that post. And it made me even more determined to have my own domain and leave Blogger.

Below are the excerpts from the post:

"If you're a "deal blogger" or "frugal blogger", and you like blogging, you need to move your blog. Now. Blogger has an ineffective system for finding and removing spam blogs, and bloggers are suffering as a result. It's not just deal bloggers, either. Visit Blogger's help desk and you'll see post after post after post from bloggers of all sorts with the same issue.
What's happening? Blogger's spam-seeking bots spider its blogs looking for offenders. Blogger doesn't give any specifics about how the bots "find" them, but my theory is that it looks for words that turn up commonly in spam blogs--words like "free" and "sale" and "cheap". Another theory is that Blogger's bots look for blogs by the same user which link to each other. When the bots find a potential spam blog, the blog is locked or, as seems to be more common lately, deleted without a human ever reviewing the blog to see if the bot's judgment is accurate."

Ok, I am not a deal or frugal blogger. But I love love love blogging. It is one of the activity that keeps me sane after taking care of a mischievous and super curious toddler. It keeps me busy when my toddler is taking his day time naps. It keeps me connected to the outside world. It keeps me intriqued to know more on what's happening outside the 4 walls in my home. And I've also developed a new passion which is to do product reviews. I started with book reviews cos I love reading, and then I branch out to reviewing household and baby products and life is good! It keeps me active on the mind and body!

Then read on the next excerpt from the same post:

"Can it happen to you? Sure it can, especially if you use words like "free" and "sale" a lot in your blog."

Oh wow... since I started doing product reviews, I do put in the words "free", "giveaway" and so on. I am at risk here! I don't want to wake up one morning and found out I was locked out of my own blog. The blog that I labored on passionately since I became a SAHM in June 2009. The blog which I nurtured, decorated and beautify in every possible ways. The blog which I defended and protected like a strict mother hen against those blogstalkers who easily steals my posts ideas, blog design and widgets. The blog which helps me made new bloggy friends all over the world. Of course, maybe I'm overreacting here. I mean, there are gazillions of blogger blogs out on the Net, why am I so worried? It wouldn't happen to me. Yes, this is what we always think when we see bad stuff happening to other people. But again, like I said, I have been toying with the idea of having my own domain, so why not?

Of course, I do surf and searched more posts with regards to the stories of peoples' blogs being shut down without notice and the more I read, the more worried I got. So, the rest is history, here we are, at my new blog domain and so far, I've been pretty happy and satisfied with it. Of course, it gets really tiring and draining during the migration phase (handled by hubby since he's more knowledgeable in programming and scripting all this stuff) and the designing part is done by myself - in order to save $ hiring a web designer to design my new blog.

But I guess, with my own domain now hosting on our own server, I get the total control on what's going to happen to my blog (other than the part of the hosting server being down for maintenance, most of the time there won't be any issue of my blog being down), I don't have to be worried that my blog will get deleted (unless I've got itchy fingers and accidentally remove something while tweaking with my blog hahaha).

There you go... if you have any further questions you'd like me to explain more, please drop me a comment, I'll try my best to answer and share my experience with you guys! :)

... is what my blog would say! My blog has finally found its own home!

After the process of acquiring my own domain (http://www.imafulltimemummy.com/) since 11th June 2010, I have immediately proceeded to design my new blog layout and settings. There are tons of things to take care of, such as:

* Hosting - where should I host my own blog domain now? Wordpress? Etc?

* Blog Design - how do I want my blog to look like now? Do I use back the previous design or do from scratch?

* Blog Identity (header/banner, buttons, signatures, gravatar etc) - depends on my blog design... if I use back my blogspot design, then everything pretty much remains the same...

* Migration of data - what about my almost 350 posts since I started blogging in June last year? Not to mention over 2000+ comments received on my blog? Do I leave it in blogspot or I move it over to my new domain?

* Activities - What about my current blogging activities in http://imafulltimemummy.blogspot.com/?

* Followers - What about my current followers? How do I migrate them over?

Well, anyway, after much considerations and some wishy-washy-indecisive-do and redo process, I have decided to:

* Hosting - go for something other than Wordpress.. I am not a fan of Wordpress actually...

* Blog Design - refer to one of the template from BlogEngine (*thanks to Magnus Jepson for his template!) and fine tune it myself based on my own liking... The reason why I decided NOT to use back my previous template in http://imafulltimemummy.blogspot.com/ is because of my blog identity. I want it to be unique and hence decided to not reuse the template in my blogspot theme.

* Blog Identity (header/banner, buttons, signatures, gravatar etc) - Since I decided to do my own blog design, everything has to be designed and customised from scratch! Blog headers, all the sidebar titles, my new blog signature, gravatar, new blog buttons, new blog meme etc... Please excuse the simple design as I do not have any experience in graphic designs and I do all this using Microsoft Paint & Powerpoint softwares but I do love it myself so I guess you guys have to just bear with the ugliness of them OK?

* Migration of data - As much as it saddens me to leave everything as it is in my old blogspot blog, I made this decision mainly because I want to start everything fresh... I mean, I finally have my OWN BLOG DOMAIN! So I decided to leave all the old posts and comments as it is (even though I did initially migrated all of them over to BlogEngine for my testing in this new domain). Oh, another reason is most of the images in my http://imafulltimemummy.blogspot.com/ are watermarked as http://imafulltimemummy.blogspot.com/. "Bad move", says my husband... Yeap... how would I know I would one day decided to have my own blog domain and be super strict and possesive with my own images??!!!

* Activities - As for current blogging activities in http://imafulltimemummy.blogspot.com/, I have to temporarily reduce and even stop posting some new stuff in the blog (need to keep those new ideas in my new blog ehem ehem!) and just be contented with blog hopping while I rushed up the development of this my own blog domain. I also have a giveaway running in my blogspot which will ends on 30th June 2010, so I figured it'd be best if I announce the winner here later ...

* Followers - As for moving over my followers, I did some searching on the Net and found some tutorials to guide me along, but as of now, I'm still tinkering around as not very good in web scripting for this... thank God hubby managed to set up the Google Friend Connect widget for me!

Of course, I do get worried with things like:

• Will my own blog domain be as awesome as my older blog in http://imafulltimemummy.blogspot.com/?
• Do the images for my own blog domain looks nice?  (You have NO idea how much time I spent designing and redo, screen capture, cut and paste, upload and delete all those images you see in this blog now!) Oh well, to save myself from spending $$$ in getting a web designer or purchasing those ready made or customised blog templates and images on the Net, I will not regret this decision! 
  
• Will my own blog domain be getting back its regular bloggy friends and visitors or am I going to be the only one reading my own blog domain now?

Oh well, now all that is history... I've gotta move forward.

Today is a brand new day for me... and definitely for my blog.

Finally I don't have to be in fear of 'squatting' over blogspot (free thing doesn't mean its good... I'll explain more on this later...)

I've got to get down to doing some product reviews which are waiting for me for a while now and also posting some new developments on Ben... Till then, thank you for coming here and I really hope I will see you back here again!

p.s: If you don't mind, could you leave me your feedback about this blog? Anything that comes on your mind when you are here... like the design, structure and layout, the sidebar widgets, fonts, anything... Thanks, really appreciate it!