A little while back, I was wondering on the best way to build a website. I promised to set up one for an organization but I know my own limits. I do have a personal website but unfortunately, it’s only one page, because I keep messing up my code even though I was only copying them for the other pages so I didn’t do anything much with the website. I did, however, asked a friend how much he charges to help me build a few more pages and he quoted me a price that I thought was too exorbitant and not worth the money.

So when I talked to a few people for suggestions, they told me to build a WordPress-powered website. It’s just a matter of finding the right kind of template and doing away with stuff like Comments and Archives.

Once I found a template and bought a domain name, setting it up was easy, just like installing a WordPress blog, like I have done numerous times before.

I am glad that I was told that I would be better able to handle my web content using WordPress engine. Now I think that I am going to revamp my personal website, install WordPress and customize a theme to make it look like a website instead of blog-like. Yahoo!

As you know, I am always on the lookout for ways to make money online. It’s a great way to supplement my income. Even so, I am only interested in making money online with the least work involved so you can be sure that I was so happy when told of Wikirefs, which stands for Wiki Referrals which pays us money for every friend we refer. However, the quantum of payment is not stated.

Anyway, WikiRefs is currently holding a Wikirefs special contest where every 100th person who signs up with Wikirefs will receive US$5 bonus instantly! It’s like a mini jackpot because signing up will require US$1. You still will gain US$4, if you are the lucky one!

Minimum payment threshold is only US$1 and members could opt to be paid by PayPal or AlertPay, two of the most popular online payment systems.

To be frank, for referral systems like these, the best thing is if you are in early so that you won’t even up getting replies from friends that they have already signed up when you attempt to refer them. That could be very disheartening, right? So register with Wikirefs early and start referring friends and family. Luck thing that they are not particular about the rule for one member per IP address so you can get all your family members to register under you!

Although I own quite a string of domain names, most of them are dot coms, two are dot nets and one is dot org. Well, I think that soon, we will be seeing some really special domain name suffixes. That is, if there are people who would be willing to pay up to US$20,000 to apply for one.

I bet there will always be people who would be willing to pay this amount of money. To many companies who are looking for branding, US$20,000 may even be “cheap”. I was just telling my mother that many people trade in domain names and domain names are relatively cheap investments.

Remember the old days when getting a dot com would cost us almost an arm? I think that once the novelty has worn off, getting a personalized domain name would be as cheap as getting a dot com right now. Let’s just keep our fingers cross that when the time comes, our preferred suffixes would still be available!

A few short years ago, I was a forum junkie. I practically spent every minute of my online time in a forum. The forum wasn’t that interesting, now that I think of that, and I wasted a lot of time there for nothing except for some great friendships!

Today, I was told of a forum that members could actually win some cash. Sure, I do know of some forums that reward their members but no way am I going to hang around those forums for just a cent or two.

Arbune.Com, though, is entirely different. They award cash prizes as much as US$50 for the member who had the most interesting topic, based on the highest number of replies. The member who managed to refer the most friends would also win some cold hard cash.

You may think that you would rather earn a few cents here and there in a forum rather than have the odd chance of winning only if you are the “best” but don’t you think this is more challenging? Members make their own chances.

As an Arbune.com member, you also have the opportunity to post free ads. This just reminds me of the time I was banned from a forum for life after posting an ad. Arbune.com may be fairly new but I think that it’s a good opportunity to join a forum early and grow with it.

Check out Arbune.com. It’d be easy to win some cash since there are still not that many members! LOL

So submission for Google’s Project 10^100 (Project 10 to the 100th) is closed on Monday. Did you manage to put in an idea? The winning ideas, up to five of them, would receive funding from a pool of US$10 million. This means that if the judges decide that only one project is worthy to be implemented, the winner will receive the whole amount. If they select five ideas to fulfill, that’s Google’s maximum, each project will only receive a maximum of US$2 million in funding.

I am a little surprised that Project 10^100 only received 150,000 submissions worldwide in total considering that the website of Project 10^100 received approximately 2.5 million unique visitors in the past month. I guess many people were curious about it, checked to see if they have an idea to submit and totally forgot about it, or failed to come up with an idea. I, myself, sent out the link to the website to a few friends.

Google will be short listing the 150,000 entries into 100 which will be posted online on their Project 10^100 website at http://www.project10tothe100.com/ on 27th January, 2009. Web users will then vote for the best ideas. I wonder if we would only be able to vote once per Gmail account, or whatever. I mean, there would be crazy people setting up hundreds, if not thousands of accounts just so that they could vote for their own project, you know?

Twenty ideas with the top votes will be put forward to a panel of yet to be named judges who would then select up to five “best” ideas that would positively impact the world population the most.

If you have read a couple of my posts last week, you would know that I wanted to build a charity website. I asked a few friends for help because I have very slight knowledge of building a conventional website, despite having one myself.

Well, everyone was reluctant to help, even though it’s a charity, non-profit website. Well, I don’t blame them. Who would want to spend time doing something that wouldn’t turn a profit, right?

However, even though they were not willing to help me with the website, they did advise that I should build a WordPress powered website. Since I am already familiar with WordPress, it should be a whole lot easier for me to build and maintain. According to them, it would be like setting up a blog, which I have done many times over, and it is just a matter of finding a WordPress theme that would suit my needs.

I took up their suggestion and voila, I really did “build” a website in just minutes. LOL I don’t know if you would consider that “cheating” but I was damn happy that I need not have to beg for help, which I would have to do if I were to build a conventional website.