Are you using the free-hosting WordPress.com to create your blog? If yes, most importantly, have you read the Terms of Service? I’d guess the answer is “No”. I’m not surprise. Nevertheless, it is a good practice to read the terms for any service or program that you signed up for to avoid future headache. Let me summarize the terms of WordPress.com for you :

The Website is available only to individuals who are at least 13 years old.

You must not describe or assign keywords to your blog in a misleading or unlawful manner.

You are entirely responsible for the content of, and any harm resulting from, that Content.

Content is not pornographic, spam, contain or install any viruses etc.

http://en.support.wordpress.com/advertising/

AdSense, Yahoo, Chitika, TextLinkAds, and other third-party advertising is not allowed here at WordPress.com … huge bumper!

If your WP blog is of high traffic though, WordPress.com do allow you to join their in-house advertising program to earn that extra buck.

To avoid all these restrictions, simply go for self-installation of WordPress on your own cPanel and you can enjoy the power of WordPress without having to worry on whether WordPress.com might suspend your hosted blog with them.

Very soon, it’ll be a 2012! Have you made your new year resolutions yet? I believe crafting your own business to be your own boss is one many will wish.

One of the most common question if you’re starting an e-business is to ask – what products to sell.

There are 4 categories of products which you might consider to start your e-business. They are :

1. Children products

2. Women products

3. Elderly proudcts

4. Men products

Yes, children products are always my favourite. Parents of their kids will surely buy anything for their young ones and both, most probably working adults, have the spending power. Educational products, toys, even high-tech gadgets like the iPad, parents will surely grab for their kids if they can afford it or they think it’s worth it for their youngs. Ask any parent, their biggest spending is surely for their kids.

Next, women products. This is a well known trend, women spent more dollars online than anyone else. Shoes, clothings, accessories, watches, cosmetics … coupled with a lot of so-called discounts and offers many online stores are offering, these women are crazy to chase over these merchandises.

Followed by products for the elderly and men … ooops, guys, sorry. Statistically, how many pairs of shoes do guys have compared to the number of shoes cabinets women have

So, don’t hesitate. Start your 2012 with a boom with an e-business. You’ll never regret you do (or at least try).

Designing Web wishes you and your family a merry Christmas!

Hope you like the snow and snowcouple Yes, if you’ve a WordPress blog, why not add on such plugin to increase the festive mood The plugin I used here is WP-Christmas.

Needless to say, it’s worth every penny and time to create your own e-business. The best job on earth is when the boss is actually yourself! Especially in today’s unpredictable economic turmoil, it is definitely worth to strive out on your own. Of course, that does not mean firing your boss. The true solution is to be an “entreployee” – a term that I’ve always preached – half entrepreneur, half employee or rather, an enterprising employee.

I’ve recently read a very good book – The 4-Hour Workweek by Tim Ferriss. Tim mentioned something like this in his book that he had work 40-hour a week to earn $40K a year; well, typical of a middle-class blue/white collar. Now, he is working a mere 4-hour a week and is earning $40K a month. How’s that for a change? Work less, earn more.

Also sharing with you on another book I’ve read quite some time back is The One-Minute Millionaire. In this book, it mentioned that there are (only) 4 areas to explore to become a millionaire – (1) real estate – buying/selling/investing in property, (2) investment in stocks and equities, (3) start a business and (4) internet. Well, to start diving into property and investment need quite a big sum of initial capital and, of course, along with the high returns (provided you’ve the right knowledge) are high risks. Starting a brick-n-mortar business need capital too. However, if you leverage on the internet to start an e-business, the startup capital is kept to the minimal.

Starting an e-business is by no mean an easy task. Nevertheless, it is the best option you have to gain financial and time freedom. The key thing here is that you must acquire the right skillsets and mindset to run your e-business so that it can be profitable, sustainable, scalable and hopefully … outsourceable. In fact, the ability to outsource your business, or at least part of your business is an important factor to gain time freedom … seriously, the 4-Hour Workweek is a must read to reaffirm the importance of outsourcing whatever you can possibly outsource; and the book gives you invaluable outsourcing resources that saves you tons of dollars.

So back to the question of whether it is worth to start your own e-business? The answer is a big Yes! Stick to Designing Web as I’ll be sharing with you on some of the crucial tools and resources to start an e-business.

I’m in the pipeline to create Designing Web Memberships. Tentatively, I’ve 3 membership levels in mind :

Gold Membership – where members can enjoy unlimited web resources like unlimited web hosting, over 200+ premium WordPress themes, unlimited managed blogs at Blogs Machine, unlimited e-stores at HubStores etc.

Platinum Membership – All that of Gold Membership plus Blogs Machine Income Blueprint, video-based and online tutorials worth $$$ etc.

Diamond Membership – All that of Gold and Platinum memberships plus personal coaching etc.

The keynote advantage of these memberships is that all the memberships are single one-time only payment! This worry-free, pay one-time and enjoy unlimited offers is excellent especially for newbies and beginning internet marketers.

More details of these memberships to be finalized and released very soon … stay tuned!

If you’re using WordPress, it is always a good practice to upgrade to the latest version, in this case, WordPress 3.2.1.

However, I came to realize that web hosting providers, especially those on shared hosting, have a default 8MB or 32MB in terms of PHP memory limit. That means that the maximum memory allocated to run a PHP script is 32MB.

So, if you click on the Automatically Upgrade button in your WordPress dashboard, you’ll see an error message like :

Fatal error: Allowed memory size of 33554432 bytes exhausted (tried to allocate 3981813 bytes) in /home/user/public_html/wp-includes/class-http.php on line 1420

The upgrade from WordPress 3.1.x to WordPress 3.2.x is a rather “huge” one. It requires more than 32MB to execute the change.

So how do you upgrade your WordPress to 3.2.x?

Well, one way, a rather recommended way, is to upgrade it manually – http://codex.wordpress.org/Updating_WordPress

Nevertheless, if you insist to click that auto upgrade button (you lazy bum bum, LOL; no prob, I’m like you), there are several ways to do it.

First, try disable all your plugins, the major ones. Try again, and it might work. Hint : But upgrading to WordPress 3.2.x seems to always breach the 32MB memory limit. Alternatively, you can upload a php.ini file (I’ve included the down link here in .txt format; just download and rename it to php.ini) to your root WordPress folder.

Else, you can try increasing the WP_memory_limit  to 64MB in wp-config.php as in http://codex.wordpress.org/Editing_wp-config.php#Increasing_memory_allocated_to_PHP

Last, but not least, contact your hosting provider to increase your PHP memory limit.

Now, why do hosting providers set such limit. It’s for a good reason to conserve the resources, especially on a shared server. Nevertheless, many of the hosting providers are increasing the limit to 64MB as they realize many of the clients are using WordPress.

If you have a corporate website, high chance is you’ll need an online support ticketing system so that you can provide prompt online support to your clients.

However, it may be due to technical difficulties or that you’re not using cPanel with Fantastico, you’ll find it rather helpless to set up such a helpdesk system.

Fear not. To have a professional helpdesk without any hassle on your part, all you need to do is to go to Answer Helpdesk and you can request for an osTicket Helpdesk to be set up for you … FREE of charge!

No worry, there’s no gimmick here. Just to commemorate the launch of Unlimited Host PRO which provide unlimited web hosting.

If you’ve tried to build an email list, you know that list building doesn’t quite work as well as it used to. More and more people do not like to handout their regular e-mail addresses these days, so you end with a list filled with no-response, rubbish and unreachable email addresses that no-one ever checks. This doesn’t sound good, isn’t it?

Now, what if the emails you’re collating are your subscribers’ emails that they use for their Facebook? Bingo! Most people joined Facebook with their very active emails, emails that they will check and actually read.

With Digi Social Squeeze, we now have an extremely powerful and effective WordPress plugin that allow you to build a highly responsive list without the boring autoresponder opt-in form. All you need to do is to give them a “Connect with Facebook” button … check the the button in action right at our sidebar. The moment your visitors click on the button, their Facebook email is automatically added to your autoresponder list … the very email that they use for friends and family, which they will check every day.

Sounds pretty neat, right?

Digi Social Squeeze will -

-  Let you set up a social squeeze page in five minutes
-  Take care of all the Facebook integration with a couple of clicks
-  Use one-click conversion on your squeeze pages to dramatically increase your opt-in rates
-  Build you the most responsive list you’ve ever had
-  Give you access to six professionally designed, high-converting squeeze page templates

If you want to start building lists that actually work, I seriously suggest you get in fast … go ahead, and try out the live button right at our sidebar to see how it work No worry, I will NOT spam you, guaranteed. I’ll only give you occasional SECRET OFFERS that you’ll gonna love it, serious.

Check it out now -

http://bit.ly/rrtSMb

P.S.  The plugin’s covered by a 60-day guarantee, so you’ve got nothing to lose by giving it a test drive.

Hurray! Designing Web got a new home. It’s now migrated to Unlimited Host PRO – a new hosting with everything unlimited ie. unlimited domains, unlimited bandwidth, unlimited mySQL databases … all unlimited.

Beside having a new server, Designing Web is also upgraded to the very latest WordPress 3.2.1 too!

Well, the migration is not without hiccups. But all turns out well at the end.

Again, I’d like to apologize for the long delay in posting in Designing Web. Primarily it’s because I’ve had a couple of major projects at hands.

Nevertheless, now that those projects are with great progress, I’ll certainly commit more effort back in Designing Web to give you more useful tips and posts.

Get back to you soon.