The Second Nexus

Do you want to help spread the Catholic faith
online?

CIM Net Educ., February 2008

The classic blogger

If you are like most seasoned Catholics, you may
have started a web log at www.blogger.com. That’s
a good start. And with a dial-up connection, it’s
not too much on your pocket.  The challenge though is
maintaining the blog and letting it enter into the
mainstream of the internet searches.  Maintaining
the blog is easy as we can always find inspiration
in something to write: a faith experience, a devotion
we want to share, a book we have read and wish to
invite others to read also, and other spiritual
experiences we wish others would also learn to tap.
The biggest challenge though is to let our blog enter
the mainstream of the internet.  That requires our own
domain and a web hosting account.  And not only that,
Catholic bloggers also need to learn the basics of
ethical search engine optimization.  All these we
can help you obtain if you would use the information
and resources in our web site.

Download our free Catholic eBook

To know the ropes of advancing from a free web
hosting account to a paid web hosting account, the
information that you need is in our free Catholic
eBook.  You can download it at our partner web site
in Gospel and Culture: Free Catholic eBook. The
eBook can teach you how to make that leap of faith
from a free blog hosting account to a paid web
hosting package.  But before that leap of faith,
there are still some other steps that will help
you make that leap of faith a wise one: like
learning first some HTML coding, CSS, and the
use of graphics and images; registering at one of
our webrings at WebRing.com to learn how others
are building web sites and blog sites; and being
a member of the SEO Techniques classes - a list
that teaches the basics of ethical search engine
optimization free.  Once you have done these 3
steps then you can make a wise decision.

Yahoo! Web Hosting

Yahoo! Web Hosting has a good starter package for
one who wants to build a Catholic web site.  For
one, it has the facility to create multiple blog
accounts.  Also, you can make one of your blogs
as the home page of your web site, thus freeing
you from the need to purchase expensive templates.
With a WordPress blog or a Movable Type Publishing
Platform blog, you can already have a wide variety
of blog templates to choose from which will be a
standard design acceptable by those who set the
web design standards on the Net.

Yahoo! and Microsoft

As of this time, Microsoft is intending to buy
the Yahoo! portal.  There are no definite decisions
yet on the matter but a Microsoft-Yahoo! merger
may be good for Yahoo!’s web hosting business as
the technology of Microsoft can help in improving
the services rendered by Yahoo! to its web hosting
clients.  If indeed Microsoft buys Yahoo!, then
this is an opportune time for anyone interested in
entering the mainstream of the Net to purchase a
paid web hosting account.  The pooling of resources
of Yahoo! and Microsoft can greatly enhance the
way web pages are uploaded on operating systems
like Microsoft XP Home or Professional. So let us
wait and see how it goes.

Increase rss subscribers through Feedburner.com

CIM Net Educ., January 2008

Finding ways to increase your readership

It is very challenging to increase readership for a
web log or a web site that speaks on Catholicism.  One
way to do so is to create an rss feed of which many
use to obtain the content of a web site without having
to go to the web site itself.  Once the rss feed is
created, the next step is to promote it.  This can
be done in the following ways:

• placing the new graphic standard for rss in
  a very prominent part of your web page
• registering your rss feed in directories that
  indexes rss feeds
• burning your rss feed through Feedburner.com

Burning an rss feed through Feedburner.com

Feedburner.com has been acquired by the Google network
and their service helps those with rss feeds to
increase their subscription or readership.  It does
this by “burning” the feed.  The process of burning a
rss feed is by entering the url of your feed in their
system, and then they will create a “landing” page
wherein your feed can be customized in many of their
specialized features.  This landing page includes
many buttons of popular rss feed readers and aggregators.
When someone clicks on the burned feed, he can easily
subscribe by choosing the feed reader he always and
usually uses.

Many ways to optimize and publicize your feed

Since Feedburner.com specializes on rss feeds, it
has a system of helping the rss feed owner optimize
his feed.  The rss feed owner can make his feed read
well in all feed reading systems - including ipods
and mobile devices.  He can also provide his readers
with bookmarks he selects from such bookmark web sites
as del.cio.us, furl.net, and bloglines.com. The
specialized features which Feedburner.com provides
are basically free and as of this time of writing
many, many bloggers and web site owners are availing
of their service and benefitting a great deal from
their system.

Example of a burned feed

Examples of burned feeds are our three rss feeds that
have been “burned” by the Feedburner system.  You may
visit their landing pages by clicking on one of the
three rss feed orange logos on the right column of this
web log.  Once you see how their landing pages help a
lot of rss feed owners and also potential feed readers
looking for specialized content, then you will be
convinced of the features and system of Feedburner.com

Updating always

For obtaining information on the latest in technology,
it is good to subscribe to rss feeds that provide the
latest news on technology.  Another way is through your
searches in the search engines.  In developing a blog
or web site, we often need information on a lot of
things.  Sometimes, in our searches we stumble upon
other information that are also helpful in developing
our sites.  It is good to take note of these information
as they will help develop our blog or web site according
to the progressive trend the networks are directed towards.

How to Create a WordPress Blog in Yahoo Web
Hosting

Yahoo Web Hosting

With Yahoo Web Hosting, you can easily create a
WordPress Blog since Yahoo Web Hosting incorporates
the creation of these blogs in its hosting services.
You can create as many blogs as you can with your
account.  And if you wish to make one of your blogs
to be the home page of your web site, there is an
option by which you can also do this.  Below are
the steps that you can take in creating a WordPress
blog with Yahoo Web Hosting account

Steps in creating a WordPress blog

Step 1: Place in your browser the url of Yahoo
Web Hosting - http://webhosting.yahoo.com/

Step 2: Log in to your Yahoo account with your
Yahoo ID and password.

Step 3: Once logged in, you will be directed to the
Web Hosting Control Panel.

Step 4: Click on the “Create & Update” tab in the
Web Hosting Control Panel.

Step 5: Find the link “Activate a WordPress blog”
and click on the link.

Step 6: As the page uploads, there will be four
items that you will have to register: the user id,
a password, the confirm password, and an email
address.

Step 7: Select what user id, password and email
address you want for the blog you will create. It
is good to record this privately at once so that
you will not forget these information.

Step 8: There will be a box that say “make my
blog my home page”.  This is an option which you
can take if you want this blog to be your home
page.  If you do want to make this blog your home
page, just check on the box.

Step 9: Then, select the activation path you wish
for this blog: either “standard” (recommended for
most users) or “custom” (recommended for advanced
users).  Selecting “standard” would be a basic
step.

Step 10: Once finished, click on the “Next” button.

Step 11: You will then be led to the “Accept
License Agreement” page.  Just click on the box
to accept the License Agreement.  Checking the box
means “I have read and agree to the terms of the
GNU General Public License.

Step 12: Once finished, click the “Activate” button.

Step 13: Activation takes some time.  Wait a minute
for the WordPress blog to be activated.

Step 14: Once activated, you will be led to a page
which says, “Congratulations! Your WordPress blog
was successfully activated!”

Step 15: Note down your Blog web address (URL) so
that you can go back to it next time.

Step 16: You can now choose what theme of template
you wish for your WordPress blog.  There is a default
theme but there are other options.  Choose default
or other options.

Step 17: To opt for other options, click on the
“Change Themes” link.

Step 18: The WordPress log in page will then appear.

Step 19: Log in to your newly created WordPress
blog with your selected username and password.

Step 20: Choose among the themes given.  Then,
click on the link of the theme chosen.

Step 21: As the theme of the template is activated,
go to the “Options” tab and click on the tab.

Step 22: Choose a title for your Blog in the
“Weblog Title” line.

Step 23: Then for the “Tagline”, write a brief
description of what your blog is about.

Step 24: As for the comment options, you are given
two options: “anyone can register” or “users must be
registered and logged in to comment”. It is good to
choose the latter so that you can prevent spam in
your blog.

Step 25: Once finished, click “Update Options”
button.