Foreign Perspectives

Archive for the ‘Commentary’ Category

How to get started is something that stops many people from running a blog to begin with or pushes them onto the relative deadend of one of the blogging sites.

However, it doesn’t need to be like that because it’s really quite easy to start a blog with your own domain and can cost as little as $45/£25 per year. Going down this route gives you a LOT more control over your blog.

Won’t it be terribly complicated? No, it’s pretty simple really and there’s a series on how to do it over on MumsFinance.com so I’ll not run through all the details here. The basic steps are:

1. register a domain;
2. sign up with a hosting service;
3. install the blogging software;
4. start writing your blog

You might think that step 3 is going to be very complex but it’s described in easy steps in the series.

To be fair, that’ll get you a very basic looking blog but it’s best to start simple. Once you’re happy that everything is working fine you can look around for different themes (the appearence) for your blog but it’s not essential to do that and many blogs run with the simple default theme.

Google’s widespread dropping to zero of the pagerank of sites that accepted payment for links has kicked off quite a debate on the issue on various sites including their own webmaster blog.

For technical reasons, they would much prefer that all links between sites on the Internet are purely for altruistic reasons with no payment or other persuasion used. That was, to some extent, the case when Google Inc started up and when the initial university research project that led to the creation of Google Inc began but that’s eons ago in Internet time.

As we all know, the Internet is full of commercial sites these days with numerous sites selling everything from books to bookings for holidays. With this in mind many personal sites are approached by commercial ones asking for a link and offering money for it. Sure, there are commercial sites that ask for a link with no money on offer, but they don’t usually get too far unless they particularly stand out from the crowd in some way.

And then there are various types of directories that abound these days. I have a particular interest in the accommodation directories in that I run several of them myself. Much as I never considered these as selling links (and my sites don’t) it would seem that in Google’s eyes even the likes of Gites de France is selling links. After all, they charge something like EUR 1000 per year for a listing and isn’t that just selling a link?

Sure, GdF and the many other accommodation listings sites have a lot of text around that link but at the end of the day, how is that different from a blog that accepts sponsored posts?

As usual when there’s a Spanish holiday, we were pretty much completely full over the last couple of days and yet nobody took a breakfast!

In some ways that suits us as it gives us a bit of a break from the need to get up very early to do the breakfasts.

But why don’t they take them though? They certainly take breakfasts in hotels in Spain so why don’t they take them in France? Although it’s hard to give a definitive answer I suspect that it has a lot to do with the absolutely pathetic excuse for a breakfast that you get in most French establishments although funnily enough the price is the same or even higher than for breakfasts in the Spanish equivalent and in Spain you get a very full breakfast for that money.

So, it’s probably down to the French not really “doing” breakfast as a proper meal.

1and1 have something of a reputation of making it difficult to transfer domains away from them and rightly so as no matter how much you look around their website, you’ll not find how to do it.

It’s actually fairly easy once you find the site that you need to do it from.

1. login to your 1and1 account and unlock the domains that you want to transfer (you’ll find the unlock option on clicking the info tab on your domain management screen);
2. it’s a good idea to change the name servers at this point to point to those of your new hosting service and, of course, to upload your site to it’s new location if you’ve not done that already;
3. if you’re using whois privacy you’ll need to disable that before proceeding; 
4. register the domain with your new registrar and acknowlodge the request when you receive the e-mail (this is sent to the e-mail address recorded for your domain so check that it’s correct by looking up the domain on whois);
5. go to the 1and1 contracts site and cancel the parts of the contract referring to the domains that you want to transfer (set the cancellation options to “as soon as possible” and “on “change provider”;
6. acknowledge the e-mail that 1and1 will now send you.

OK, so it’s a bit convuluted but once you know the address of the 1and1 contracts site at least you can do it.

How long does it take? It’ll take you about 15 minutes to work through all that plus a few minutes per additional domain. The transfer itself can take anything from a few hours to several days.

Normally speaking you need to book travel well in advance to get the bargain prices but that’s strictly true only for the very peak of the peak periods and outside that there are often unexpected bargains around if you know where and how to look.

What about the location? Well, if you’re not especially set on a particular destination then you can get really serious bargains. For instance, everyone who goes to Denmark goes to Copenhagen but what about Aarhus? It’s equally cute but often a lot cheaper than it’s more famous neighbour. For that matter, what about a city break not to the “Ryanair city” but to the city that the plane actually lands in? For instance, their “Barcelona” is actually Girona. Not as famous nor as large as Barcelona but there’s still enough to satisfy a short citybreak.

Flights prices are the most volatile and therefore they need the most work to really save money. Thinking of a weekend break? Well, lots of people do so the thing to do to save money is to book what they’re not. On a typical route, people will be flying a little more in one direction on some days than in others. Weekend breaks to Paris are very popular for instance therefore the flight prices on Friday evenings and Saturday mornings from London to Paris are high as they are coming back from Paris on the Sunday evening. The key here is to book a trip that’s less popular such as a week in Paris but starting on Sunday evening and finishing on Friday night ie the opposite of what most people do.

Hotels are easier to deal with in most cases as hotel reservation systems aren’t nearly so sophisticated as those of the airlines. This means that the prices are, in general, more stable and there’s a lot less load management going on behind the scenes. However, that doesn’t mean that there’s no load management going on, just that it’s less visible. So, you may be able to get a lower price by booking via one of the last minute booking sites (no, not LastMinute.com: in spite of the name, they’re not really geared up to truly last minute travel). Likewise doing what other people aren’t is a sure way to save money so in city break destinations, stay a little further out and you’ll find the prices a lot lower.

Insurance? Most people buy whatever policy the airline or travel agent is selling. This generates a lot of commission but rarely gets you a good deal. Much better instead to get an annual policy so you’re all set for those unplanned short breaks.

Anyway, give a bit of thought to your next short notice break and you may find that it can be had a whole lot cheaper than you expected.