I’m an avid WordPress supporter. That’s why you’re now looking at this WordPress blog. That doesn’t mean I’m against or anti-blogger.

The main concern to me about having a blog with your own domain name (powered by WordPress) and a free hosting blogspot with blogger.com is “ownership”.

Now, while having your blog using WordPress as the blogging platform is the ideal case, in terms of ownership and full control, you’d still need to leverage on the popular blogger.com to have your blogspots.

The ultimate advantages of blogspots are – it’s FREE! Yes, zero dime required to start a blog. And also, blogspots tend to have high (ready) traffic and (Google) search engine ranking position (SERP).

The only thing I’m “sick” of blogspots is the skin or theme. The default skins are so uninteresting and boring.

Worry not. There are tons of free blogger templates available online that you can use to face-lift your blogspots. Here’s one of my top recommendations :

http://mashable.com/2007/09/13/blogger-templates/

The blogger skins there are absolutely stunning! Try it!

Choosing a good web host is one of the most important steps in webmastering.

Bottom line, a good web host must be reliable with good SLA – service level agreement.

Here is the list of important criterias that must be included in a good web host :

• Supports PHP and CGI
• Ability to addon unlimited domains
• Able to create unlimited mySQL databases
• 99.99% uptime guarantee (SLA)
• 24/7 helpdesk support
• Include cPanel and Fantastico
• etc.

If you search for “asiapac web hosting”, you’ll see VREWebHosting.com on the 1st page (if not number 1) in Google. With web servers located in world-class data centers in Singapore, VREWebHosting provides the fastest response time to Singapore, Australia, India, China, Malaysia, Philippines, Thailand, Hong Kong, Indonesia and other Asia Pacific countries.

Hence, if you are in need of a reliable and quality web host, VREWebHosting should be your top choice.

Here are 2 of the best FREE Photoshop alternatives :

1. Paint.NET – http://getpaint.net

2. GIMP – http://gimp.org

Both are excellent graphic editors that support layers.

Between the 2, Paint.NET looks more sophisticated and can be rather intimidating for beginners. For those new to graphic editing, I’d suggest to try GIMP.

For those who frequently download files from the Internet, or simply hope to download files faster … much faster, I’d strongly recommend :

Free Download Manager

It’s a freeware which allow you to download (multiple) files at amazing speed. The best part is, it’s FREE!

Try it. You’ll surely appreciate this piece of software.

When anyone ask me which is the best blogging platform, I’ve only one answer – take a look at this blog … the answer is definite. It’s WordPress!

Basically, there are only 2 blogging platforms. Free or hosted.

Free blogging platforms refer to Blogger.com and WordPress.com (do not confuse this free hosting platform with the hosted one powered by WordPress).

Hosted blogs are blogs created at your own web server, usually with your own registered domain name.

Take WebmasteringTips.com for example. This is a hosted blog created with the web host cPanel (Fantastico). And the blogging platform for this blog is WordPress – the best blogging platform that I highly recommend you to use.

Advantages of the (hosted) WordPress blogging platform :

1. Full ownership – of the domain and content. You can have your own branding.

2. WordPress is extremely search engine friendly.

3. There are tonnes of free plugins you can use with WordPress.

4. There are tonnes of free WordPress themes (just like this one).

So the next time you’re deciding on which blogging platform to use, it’ll be WordPress!