(E-Book Cover for Invest For Living)

The materials provided by the client are the name or logo and the coins with plant image. Of course, the images can be changed anytime. The client just need to send over their preferred images and I’ll replace the ones I used in the design. If the client is fine with the images used then it is still up to the client if they want to keep it or change it.{adinserter Adcode04}

I mentioned that I created three E-Book Cover designs and you’ll find the other two designs below.

(E-Book Cover for Invest For Living)

(E-Book Cover Design for Invest For Living)

The client has yet to request any revisions or changes. My guess is, the client is already happy with the submitted designs. Now, all the client has to do is pick the one he will use as his E-Book Cover. Of course, that part has absolutely nothing to do with me.

(SpeedySparrow Homepage)

Of course, this game also had this simple rule, each participant can only guess 3 numbers per hour. Breaking this rule will disqualify a participant from the game. A participant can go over 1 hour before posting his numbers but he can’t go less than 1 hour.{adinserter Adcode04}

It’s a very simple game but it’s also very difficult to win because anyone can randomly guess the secret lucky number. It’s a game that involves a lot of luck and guessing. You can probably list down all the numbers that were posted to avoid repetition but still you’ll have to rely on luck in picking the numbers you will post next.

After four pages of posting random sets of numbers every hour (well, almost every hour), I was fortunate enough to post and guess SpeedySparrow’s Secret Lucky Number and thus win and end the game.

(SpeedySparrow’s Secret Lucky Number was 135)

Before I learned about this contest, I was already worrying about my current web hosting with them because it was already due in 3 months. At my current income rate, I was not confident that I’ll be able to renew my web hosting with them but, thanks to this contest, I won’t be worrying about my web hosting until September of next year.

I would like to thank SpeedySparrow for having this game and I’m very much looking for the next one (if they’ll have more guessing games).

Anyway, if you are looking for a Web Host that is very customer friendly then you should definitely give SpeedySparrow a try. They are very friendly specially their CEO, Sean Bowtell, and they’ll help you with any problems that you may experience with your web hosting account.

(Official Philippine Blog Awards Website)

San Pablo City Online is a Finalist under the Travel Category – Luzon while Kabalyero and in2ndLIFE are Finalists under the Gaming Category – National. The winners were announced last night in the awarding ceremony which was held at the Carlos P. Romulo Auditorium, RCBC Plaza, Makati City.{adinserter Adcode04}

I wasn’t able to attend the event because of personal reasons but I’m sure the results will be posted in Philippine Blog Awards website. I’m not expecting to win but I am curious to know who the winners are.

The Philippine Blog Awards is held every year and it aims to recognize the best blogs in the Philippines. Hopefully, the Philippine Blog Awards will not turn into a commercialized award giving body where people have to buy nominations to enter like the Philippine Web Awards.

  
(Finalists in the 2011 Philippine Blog Awards)

Anyway, I would like to thank the Philippine Blog Awards for recognizing these three blogs of mine. I’m not that good of a writer but I do enjoy blogging and I’m very happy that it’s good enough to get at least three of my blogs to the Finals of the 2011 Philippine Blog Awards.

Also, if you are a finalist in the recently concluded 2011 Philippine Blog Awards then why not show it using this simple 125×125 banner that I created.

(Finalist – 2011 Philippine Blog Awards)

Just create a new text widget and copy/paste the code below:

<div style=”text-align: center”><a href=”http://www.philippineblogawards.com.ph”><img src=”http://i.imgur.com/T7uzO.jpg” alt=”Finalist – 2011 Philippine Blog Awards” width=”125″ width=”125″ /></a></div>

After discussing all the possibilities, I decided to go with a Reseller account because a single shared account was no longer suitable for my needs. I currently have 10 active blogs and one of them is already getting some decent amount of traffic daily. One time, this blog got more than 3,000 visitors in one day and that made BlueHost deactivate my account because it cause some problems that affected the entire server.

After getting my account activated and my blogs working again, I spent most of my time looking for a new web hosting provider. I started a forum thread about it at WebHostingTalk where other forum members posted their offers, suggestions and recommendations. I sent a Private Message to a few web hosting providers and they were all very informative with their replies.

I even signed-up with a few web hosting providers just to test their shared hosting offers. The last one I tested was SpeedySparrow.com. I signed-up for a shared hosting account and immediately moved the blog with the most traffic to their server to see if it can handle it. After monitoring the blog for a couple of days, it was clear that a single shared account won’t have enough resources to handle all 10 of my blogs.

During this process, I was in constant communication with SpeedySparrow.com’s CEO and he was very helpful. He answered all my questions and provided a lot of information about the different web hosting setups. His response time was also very quick which made the exchange of communications more dynamic.

After the very long exchange of messages, I finally decided to get a Reseller account. Unfortunately, I don’t have enough money in my PayPal account to pay for an entire year so I opted for a 6 months cycle instead but I was still short by $9 USD. Now, this is where SpeedySparrow.com came to my rescue. Their COO, Eric, gave me an additional $10 USD OFF the payment price and, because of that, I was able to upgrade my Shared Hosting account to a Reseller account.

I’m currently very happy with my recent experience with SpeedySparrow.com. They patiently dealt with all my concerns and even helped me with my payment problem. If they didn’t took off $10 USD from the payment price then I’ll be, either, stuck with a Shared Hosting account or I’ll be back again at square one.

Will you get that same level of personal support from other web hosting companies? Well, you could but with SpeedySparrow.com you can be sure of it.

So, if you are looking for a web hosting service provider that will support and help you through the entire process of setting up a new hosting account then you should definitely consider SpeedySparrow.com.

He came back a few times with more information about what his friend wanted to build and his friend wanted to build a Car Auction Website. Unfortunately, the project was beyond my abilities because it will involve a lot of back-end work and I’m not a back-end person. I can write simple scripts and edit existing ones but I’m not really a coder who can write a car auction website from the ground up.{adinserter Adcode03}

I’ve worked with a few websites that used content management systems like Joomla, WordPress, Postnuke and a couple of shopping websites that used OsCommerce but designing and developing a car auction website from the ground up is something I can never do. Later that week, he told me that he found a web developer who can do both the front-end and back-end of the car auction website.

By the way, I also referred him to a local web development company operating here in San Pablo City and, in our last talk, he kinda mentioned that they are also thinking of contacting them for this car auction website project.

Going back to the car auction website, he kinda wanted me to create the design for the website and eventually work together with the web developer that he contacted. I agreed at first but, after finishing the design for the car auction website, I decided to just drop the project and give it to the person who will do the back-end. I felt that it would be more efficient if only one person will work on it specially when this other person can do both the front-end and back-end of the car auction website.

My decision to back-out of the project will also save him and his friend money because, now, they will only have to pay one person instead of two. I e-mailed his friend and explained to him my decision and he was very understandingt. I also kinda told him that I made my decision after creating a design for the car auction website. I guess he was curious about the design because he asked me for it. According to him, he showed it to his business partners and that they liked it. He even requested a few revisions done to it which I happily did.

Anyway, I’m pretty sure that they are not going to use the design I created for their car auction website and I’m not really expecting them to use it specially since I’ve already given the project to the other person and had backed-away from it.

With that said, I’m happy to say that I’m putting the design up for sale. It’s a very nice design and it is perfect for a Car Auction Website. Most of the money that I will get from the sale of this design will help me pay for a few of my domain names that are about to expire soon. If you like the design then please e-mail me your offer at romelo.itong@gmail.com.

This particular car auction website design is available in layered Photoshop File Format (.PSD). All of the images used in the design are in layers and the Photoshop version used in creating this car auction website is Photoshop CS2. Payment method accepted is PayPal.

Update: The client requested the PSD file of the design. I guess they are still interested in using the design.

Currently, the computer I am using is an older computer powered by an Intel Celeron D processor. It’s no where near the speed and performance of my work computer which is powered by an AMD Phenom II X6 processor but it allows me to browse the internet, send and receive e-mails and write my blog posts.{adinserter Adcode03}

In fact, I’ve already blogged about what happened to my power supply unit on my other blog, R.O.M.E.L.O. If you wish to know the details of what actually happened then please feel free to check it out anytime.

Learn more about computer mechanics through accredited online college programs.

I received the request from the potential client on May 19, 2011 but, because my internet went down the next day (see my post titled SmartBro Has Serious Security Issues), I was only able to work on it after I got my internet access back. It was also embarrassing because the client sent his 50% downpayment on May 20, 2011 and I was not able to respond to it.

The moment I got my internet access back, I immediately worked on his website and submitted a design a few hours later. He responded back the next day and his feedback was very positive. He was very pleased with the design but he did asked a few changes. Fortunately, the changes he asked for didn’t affect the overall design of the website and, because of that, I was able to convert the design into HTML, applied the changes he requested and created the other pages.

I uploaded the created website to my web hosting and submitted the link to it to the client for his review on the same day. The next day, I received some changes from the client but the changes were mostly about correcting typos, spellings, text changes, etc. When the changes were done I sent the files to the client but he had problems uploading it to his web host.

The client asked if I can upload it for him and I did because I do it everyday with my own websites. Besides, how hard can it be to upload files to a web server. Well, uploading the files wasn’t really hard but I it wasn’t as easy as I expected it to be because my client’s hosting package was not setup yet. I had to set it up first then upload the files via FTP. A few minutes later, the new website of the Mother Ignacia Movement of USA was up and running.

The client sent the rest of the payment and, from his e-mail, I can see that he was very happy with their new website. Click here to check out the new website of the Mother Ignacia Movement of USA.

So, if you are looking for someone to design a simple website for you, your business or organization then please don’t hesitate to contact me. Currently, I only charge $120 USD for a simple website with, at least, 5 pages.

(SmartBROken, Image Credit: Google Image Search)

The customer service representative created a service request and had us scheduled two days later. My internet access went down on May 20, 2011 and service technicians from SmartBro were scheduled to come by two days later, May 22, 2011. Because of this unexpected problem, I had 2 days of no internet access.

My local ISP is SmartBro and I think they have some serious security issues with their antenna because for the second time this month my internet access went down and their service technicians had to replace it with a different one. I asked their service technician, who replaced the antenna, why it was happening and he said someone could be messing with the system.

From what I gathered, someone who knows my account information can access my antenna via remote. This someone can be a former service technician or contractor of SmartBro and it’s not impossible because SmartBro had issues with illegal connections earlier this year. I asked the service technician if there is a way to stop other people from accessing my antenna via remote and his reply was not very promising.

I also asked the service technician if he can change my Account Information because if he can then that might stop people from accessing my antenna via remote. Unfortunately, he can’t. He said that only the main office can change or update a customer’s or subscriber’s account information.

Anyway, I have my internet access back today and, to whomever is messing with my antenna, please stop it. Go find another antenna to mess with.

(DVD Disc Case and Cover design for the Live It Now Disc)

The DVD Disc Case and Cover design for the Live It Now Disc (seen above) was the first one I did and it was followed by the DVD Disc Case and Cover design for the Free Audio Download Disc. The client didn’t have any specific instructions for the design except maybe for the text on it and logo on the Live It Now Case and Disc. I was free to design the Case and Cover anyway I want.{adinserter Adcode03}

I submitted both designs and, fortunately, the client liked both of them and didn’t ask for any revisions or changes at all. I wish all clients are like that because, too many revisions can really drag a project to a crawl. There are even times when the revised design will look totally different like it was a whole new design after being revised numerous times.

(DVD Disc Case and Cover design for the Free Audio Download Disc)

Don’t get me wrong, revisions are okay but if there are too many things to revise in a particular design then it would be better, faster and more efficient to simply ask for a new design than to try to fix a design with hundreds of revisions.

Anyway, creating designs for things like these can be interesting. I have no idea how to do them but I still do them regardless. If I need to find out how or need to learn something then there is no better teacher than the World Wide Web.

Aspiring designers can also enhance their skills through art classes online.

The first DVD Disc Cover Design I made was for Investwell Marketing. As you can see from the design above, the design bleeds off the edge of the Disc but none of those will show when the design is printed on Disc. The client also got the Photoshop file of the design so they will be able to remove guides and edit the design if they feel like it.

The second DVD Disc Cover Design was for Live It Now. As you can see from the design below, the design is very simple and has lots of white space because the client requested it that way, simple and has lots of white space. Again, the client also received the Photoshop file of the design so they will be edit it as well.

Thanks to Google and the DVD Disc Cover Template that I downloaded I was able to do this job for the client. Fortunately, the client was happy with the designs and I’m also looking forward to receiving more DVD Disc Cover Designs from him.

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Again, if you need to create your own DVD Disc Cover Designs then don’t hesitate to download the DVD Disc Cover Template here.