How I started my blog

Old look

New look

Introduction

I am a freelance software developer and technical writer. I am also the founder of Stardeveloper.com, a website that has articles, tutorials and walkthroughs to help you learn web application development using ASP.NET and JavaServer Pages. At the end of 2009, I decided to start my personal blog where I could talk about some of the things I was working on, in a more informal way, and share some of my insights with fellow developers, bloggers and beginners who want to one day step-up their level to live a free and independent life as a freelance software developer, author and technical writer.

Background

I started by writing my blog posts within a new forum that I created in the forums section on my website. But I soon realized that I needed a separate blogging space. I had to make a decision to either develop my own blogging software or use another one’s. In case you haven’t noticed, all of the background code that serves tutorials, registers users, and allows discussions in the forum, was all designed and developed by me. Like they say, you learn the most when you do it all by yourself.

The forums application does not allow anonymous users to post comments. That was a big limitation in itself. Besides, the layout of the forum gives an impression as if a question has been asked. It is not the same as reading a blog. I had to develop or use a blogging application.

Making money from your blog

I saw a post at Copyblogger about making money from your blog. I commented about the topic in that post. I have copied my comment here so that my users can benefit from it as well:

Hi, I am a developer and have been running my website for last 10 years and generating some revenue from it. I want to share my 2 cents.

This article is spot on when it comes to generating revenue from displaying ads. Lets face it, we hate ads. The more you have them, the more the bounce rate will be for your website. And if you have to put Adsense, then it becomes even worse.

With Adsense, you have to place it, as they call it, above the fold to improve our dismal CTR from say 0.05% to 0.1%. Above the fold means making the visitors see these ads as the first thing on your website. Not only it gives the impression that you are perhaps one of those struggling bloggers trying to make your first $100, it puts off the visitor entirely.

Denial of service attack on Stardeveloper

We had an early morning DOS (Denial of service) attack on Stardeveloper. You can see from the image below how the hits graph took a sharp jump to go North. It happened on Sunday morning December 5th, 2010.

An HTTP module successfully logged the attack. I am considering to block future DOS attacks by developing a separate HTTP module for that.

ASP.NET and JSP show a declining trend

A quick glance at the Google Insights for Search for keywords like ‘ASP.NET’ and ‘JSP’ shows a markedly declining trend. If you add keywords for other web development technologies like ‘PHP’, ‘Perl’ or ‘Ruby’; a similar pattern is observed.

BlackBerry Bold 9700 Review

BlackBerry Bold 9700 is the latest and greatest of the BlackBerry devices to date. Performance and design wise, it has some of the best features that sets it apart from the other BlackBerry devices.

BlackBerry Bold 9000 vs iPhone 3GS

I bought my BlackBerry Bold 9000 in the fall of year 2008. Liked it a lot. Used it for like 14 months. Then sold it just last month. The reason I sold it was because I became obsessed with capacitive touch screen phones like HTC HD2 and Apple’s iPhone 3GS. I now own an Apple iPhone 3GS and have used it for like a month now.

Having been a BlackBerry user that made the switch to Apple’s iPhone, I am in the position to give my opinion on the pros and cons of both devices, and comment on which device I like more.

Read full length articles at Stardeveloper in your RSS reader

RSS feed at Stardeveloper.com has just been modified to publish full length articles. Previously, it was only publishing synopsis (one or two paragraphs) of the article with a link that lead to the article on the website. Now, you can enjoy reading the full length article as soon as it is published on Stardeveloper.com.

The email subscription to this RSS feed is handled by FeedBurner. This change will also apply to email subscriptions. So if you are subscribed to the feed by your email address, you can expect to receive full article delivered in one piece to your email client.

I hope this change will make the content more user friendly for all the readers.

Links:

• Stardeveloper RSS Feed.
• Email subscription to this Feed.

Stardeveloper ASP.NET Newsletter v1.1.2 released.

A minor update has just been released for Stardeveloper ASP.NET Newsletter Software. v1.1.2 adds support for sending emails in any language. This update also includes numerous internal improvements.

Stardeveloper’s Google Page Rank improves to 5/10.

Stardeveloper.com’s page rank stepped up to 5/10 from 4/10 just a few days back where it had stayed for almost full year in 2009. So a bit of encouragement there from Google.

I look forward to making 2010 a really productive year where:

• I publish more articles than in any calendar year before.
• To update existing articles.
• To work on and continue to update the fascinating piece of software that it is; Stardeveloper ASP.NET Newsletter.

Thank you all for your support and good wishes.

Faisal Khan,
Stardeveloper.com

Stardeveloper ASP.NET Newsletter v1.1.1 released.

The popular open source ASP.NET Newsletter has just got a new release. The v1.1.1 fixes bugs in 3 of the files that were shipped in the previous version. This new version is a stable release. If you like the free edition of this software and want to support the development, please move on to purchase the latest version for only $10.00 .