Wordpress 2.5 upgrade is not for the faint of heart

I am Blog Almighty and I have several blogs of which one of them has been running on 2.5 for some time now and there hasn’t been any major troubles going on though I’m still observing under the process of observing if there would be some back-end effects for the front end seems to have no problems at all. Rumor has it that this upgrade would kill some plugins though none of what I have been using was affected.Anyway, if you’re planning to upgrade your Wordpress versions, I suggest you do it first on a test blog. Why, because no one can make sure what would happen after you do and things get really messy if you’re not prepared. For most forum threads that I’ve been reading, I see a lot of people whining about a few bugs, their plugins not working and the inside pages of their gallery is not displaying correctly.

Well, I have already blogged about my WP2.5 upgrade here and I’ve already said that the upgrade, aside from the WP Gallery, there really isn’t any major inclusions that would make be jump for joy. And for the WP Gallery, it’s not working properly on my Mimbo theme so I made a few hacks and tweaks on the WP include files as what I’ve seen on one of the WP forum threads. Usually, the WP Gallery should work as this, but mine is working as this through the courtesy of Lightview Plus plugin.

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Bloglines: Another tool for blasting The Great Firewall of China

Having been in China for almost two years, I had experienced several websites and domains being blocked by the Great Firewall of China. From time to time, popular websites like Youtube, Wordpress, Blogger, and Feedburner will be blocked by China’s IP filtering and preventing everyone from surfing those sites from within the China portals. As of writing this entry, domains like *.wordpress.com, *.blogspot.com and those domains hosted by wordpress.com and blogger are inaccessible. Pity me for I can’t visit my favorite bloggers. I could using proxy servers but not only it prevents me from leaving a comment, it also prevents the images from loading properly. Worse, my computer gets infected with virus and spywares.

But I am the Blog Almighty, ruler of the cyberworld. Not even the Great Firewall of China could stop me from monitoring feeds from my minions. The deities from Bloglines have manifested their interest to support my undertakings. Having your feeds delivered to my Bloglines reader, I could continue to watch over your actions.

Bloglines is a free web-based service which gathers news feeds, blogs and other rich web content. However, most bloggers are still unfamiliar with the workarounds in this web-based feed reader. Some have made their first attempts but did not continue because they got confused after submitting a site for feed gathering.

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EntreCard requirement for Blog Almighty is Heavenly high?

In just a few days after completing the fixes with our new domain – Blog Almighty, we registered for Entrecard and placed a widget at the lower part of our sidebar. Just minutes later, we were bombarded with massive email notice for EC approvals. WOW!

However, recently we noticed the sudden drop in EC droppers. As a matter of fact, there were none, nil, zilch, nada. So we expected a sudden drop in the required EC credits for dropping on our widget but here’s what we found.

Lo and behold! A mighty 2,048 EC credits to advertise on our blog.

And yeah! We really wanted to think we’re that popular. But we’d like to call the attention of Entrecard here.

PayPal Bank Codes in the Philippines

As you are reading this, I assume that you already got you PayPal accounts approved. Otherwise, you may want to read my previous post on getting your PayPal accounts approved using Union Bank EON Card.

Once you’re account is approved, I suggest you register a PayPal affiliate bank account because EON card is a “card” and when you choose to “transfer funds to your card,” you will be charged US$5.00. Moreover, as indicated under the terms and conditions from Union Bank:

1. Personal Accounts – You can only accept payments monthly and up to 5 credit or debit card payments annually with your Personal account.
2. Premier Accounts – This account allows you to accept credit or debit card payments for only 3.4% plus $0.30 USD per transaction.

In doing so, you would be required to enter your bank name along with the corresponding bank code as follows:

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Get your Paypal account verified with Union Bank EON Debit Card

For PayPal users in the Philippines, you might be having a lot of confusions, fears and misconceptions about having your PayPal account verified so you could lift your sending and withdrawing of funds accounts. Yes, indeed this is already possible but you have to follow all the process properly to avoid getting rejected in the end.

Actually I have a bank account and a check card from one US-based bank. When I registered with PayPal, I tried to get verified with these cards and bank account. However, due to my poor reading comprehension, I wasn’t able to follow the right instructions so the verification process was denied. Worse, the accounts were forever banned from PayPal so I had to get another credit card.

Fortunately, I heard the buzzes from the entire blogosphere saying that Paypal had already expanded their country of coverage so Philippines is now part of the PayPal domains. Then it was said that EON debit cards from Union Bank could be used to get your PayPal accounts verified. And here’s how we did got verified.
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