Phil Benwell - Internet Student

University Clearing

Phil Benwell — Thu, 28 Aug 2008 23:06:07 +0000

Its that time of year again when students have got their grades and have been accepted to the Uni of their choice. But what happens when you don’t quite get the grades you needed for that dream place.

Thats when clearing 2008 kicks in. Clearing is where you phone around the different Universities looking for a place on the course of your choice, any way to get into the Uni you want and to progress to the course you ideally want. This sometime might mean taking a slightly different course for a year, a few modules that are differnt or travelling that little bit further.

University of Bedfordshire - Clearing 2008 is currently under way (starting 14 August) and will continue on until the middle of September. Could Bedfordshire be the place for you? Why not try them on 0800 013 0925.

New Theme

Phil Benwell — Thu, 28 Aug 2008 21:59:00 +0000

Well it didn’t take too long for me to decide on a theme I liked. I was looking though lots of different ones and came across this one. What do you think?

I’m lucky that it actually brought back a few more features on the web site too. I’ll have to go through and tidy things up and add in the items that are still missing but getting the blog back up and running hasn’t been as much hassle as I first imagined.

Phew!

Looking for hosting?

Phil Benwell — Thu, 28 Aug 2008 12:08:50 +0000

Choosing your web hosting is one of the first things you will do when you want to get a web site up and running, you may be in a rush to get your site up and over look how important a decision this is. One slight hiccup with your host can mean disaster for your site. I’ve recently been looking around at the different web hosting packages that are available from the different companies, some offer free sites, others offer free Google Adwords vouchers. So which one is best?

Whilst browsing I came across a site called web hosting rating. Its a sort of price comparison site for web hosting. As soon as you get on the site you can see the top 10 hosting companies compared side by side along with their monthly price, bandwidth allowance and disk space available for you to use. The best part of it is at the end there is a link to a page that gives you much more information about the hosting plan so you can check to make sure it meets your requirements and at the bottom are the customer reviews. Trust me if someone had had a bad experience with a web host you’d be able to find out about it in one of these reviews.

The reason I stuck around on this site is that they offer a lot more than just the web hosting reviews but they also have a section for web hosting awards where they reward the best web host in a range of fields including email, budget hosting, blog hosting and loads more categories. The section I spent the most time in was the articles section which is full of web hosting tutorials. I spent a good 15 minutes reading through an introduction to ruby on rails and also picked up a few pointers in the article called tips for choosing a domain name.

All in all this site offers a great free service that I’d recommend people searching to either pick a web host or to swap web hosting look into.

The new wordpress

Phil Benwell — Thu, 28 Aug 2008 11:50:10 +0000

Because I have had problems with the site over the last couple of days I’ve had to head over to wordpress to re-get the installation files. When I loaded them up I noticed a big difference straight away. The version I currently have on is 2.6.1 and although it looks better than the previous version I had on, it is taking some getting used to.

Rather than just typing the tags, I have to type them and then “add” them. These seems a little unnecessary. I haven’t really looked into the list of advanced options. The publish button has moved and I think the main page looks a bit cluttered, or maybe thats my blog that is cluttered.

Does anyone have any tips?

Setting Up a Business

Phil Benwell — Wed, 27 Aug 2008 14:38:34 +0000

I’ve recently been looking into setting up my own business to cater for some of the freelance work I am planning on doing. I hope to gain clients mainly via the web and my new web site once I have sorted that out. I know I will probably have to do a bit of free work to build a portfolio to start with but then really want to spread the word. I started looking into business cards and didn’t realise how much variation there was now. You can get matt laminated business cards, rounded corner business cards and even ones with sections cut out. You have quite a choice. Anyway I decided business cards would be a good way to go as I can carry them around with me and often end up having conversations with people out and about and always think, if only my site was done I could tell them to have a look. This way I could give them the url and my phone number at the same time.

This lead me to thinking about how I would write to potential clients or send out information, would I do it web only, via email only. Probably not, people who use the internet that much probably already have web sites or at least know someone who knows someone who can get them a web site. So I looked a little further and found that you can get great printing deals on items like scored and folded brochures and printed letterheads. You can get pretty much anything you need, now all I need to do is working on saving up a little capital before making the transition.

Back in action

Phil Benwell — Wed, 27 Aug 2008 14:17:37 +0000

Well its taken a few days but I am back in action.

Although I didn’t see eye to eye with the hosting company on every issue they have, in my eyes, done a decent job of resolving the issue and getting the account back active. Asked me what they were like while my site was still down and I’d have probably had a different opinion of them.

Water under the bridge now, and I guess the very basic look means two things -

I need to write a blog post about how to back up a wordpress blog (after I have found out how to, properly).
I get to look at loading up a different template.

Its good to be back!

Rate your web hosting

Phil Benwell — Wed, 27 Aug 2008 14:13:04 +0000

Finding a great web host is one of the most important parts of having a web site up on the internet. Whether this be a personal site or a business site, the hosting of the site is the more crucial part. If something goes wrong there then things are only going to get worse.

Hosting companies can be judged on % up time, but for me getting a review or comments from people using the service is the best way to go. Over at webhostingrating.com they have given hosting rating’s to a number of hosts and these can be seen on the site. They also have a top 10 table which compares the price (a very important part for most of us), space given and traffic capacity to is it easy to see which ones meet your requirements. There are also links to reviews which are very handy indeed.

Not only does the site offer fantastic reviews of the different web hosting services but their article section is crammed with useful information like the Understanding Ruby on Rails article I found whilst browsing through.

Earning as a blogger

Phil Benwell — Thu, 21 Aug 2008 13:13:20 +0000

Initially this blog was set up as a sort of side project to my studies in web design and my uni course. I adapted the blog to be a sort of self resource of material I covered in different module in uni and used it to advance my skills and learn more about blogging and the wordpress cms. As I spent time on the internet looking into different things to do with blogging, one theme was always not far away. Earning money from blogging. This combined with a little SEO and Internet Marketing caught my attention. I am a student at the end of the day.

In the past few months since breaking up from Uni I have been trying a few different ways to earn money on this blog and a couple of others I have. One thing I thought would be a huge problem was not having google page rank. Although this mind have hindered the amount slightly I found that it is still possible to earn money from a PR 0 blog. So here’s how I’ve done:

Money Earned from my blogs: $523.18
Money Earned Online (not from sites): $200+ (round about $200)

That’s over $700. I started my blog in February which makes an average of over $100 per month. Less was obviously earned at the beginning and more in the more recent months. Now this is no amount to get overly excited about, I would need more than that per month before I could even consider doing it full time. But there is hope.

I have a few other new ideas that I’m hoping will start to earn money in a more unconventional way and will look to try new ideas. If you have any suggestions or questions just ask below.

Sproutwell anyone?

Phil Benwell — Wed, 20 Aug 2008 14:05:15 +0000

I’ve just found this clip that is hosted on youtube. I will have to learn some animation or at least a little more about creating videos and get some stuff up myself as it is a great method to attract potential customers to your web site. Anyway I enjoyed this episode of the spoutwells, I loved the dog, Fido I think it is. I really like the look of the dog and it was this that got me to watch the video. I also liked the “human control” comment. I can think of plenty of people I know they could have a word with.

The sproutwells look like your average fruit and veg family but something is a miss, packages keep turning up at their door. Something to do with Freshfunds.com

Great contest!

Phil Benwell — Wed, 20 Aug 2008 09:48:29 +0000

Following the success of my last contest win and the free advertising from I want a Volkswagen Bus I have come across the following competition at one of my regular daily visits - Geek Mom Mashup. The prize this time is advertising on all of the following sites.

Now thats one great prize, why not head on over and enter the contest yourself?