Play Online Poker

At least for a couple of hours

What a surprise I’ve got this morning when I’ve tried to logon at Entrecard.
When the page reloaded, it said: You have been banned, please contact support at entrecard.com.
That’s it, no reason why they’ve banned me or whatever.

I immediately opened a new mail and asked them what the reason behind this is.
And then the waiting game started. There’s the time difference between Belgium and America of at least 6 hours. So it was night at the time my mail departed.
Will they reply quickly? Are they awake already? Or will they leave me in the dark?
Well, until know I didn’t receive any answer at all, but the good news is that I can login again at Entrecard.

As I’ve stated in my mail to Entrecard, I think it has something to do with the recent changes they’ve made to the system. And probably my account slipped through the maze and accidently got banned.

By now all of you Entrecarders had a chance to take a view at the new Entrecard Credit system and I’m wondering what you’re thinking about it.

My first impression is that the previous system was better. I don’t see the advantage of doubling the price to advertise every time. To me it seems that this will only be a big advantage for the ‘big blogs’.
I can understand that they don’t want to see their precious space being ‘sold’ for peanuts. But now you need a lot of EC’s if you want to advertise on JonChow.com for example.

That brings me to the question, is it still worth it then? Last time I advertised on JohnChow, I’ve paid 248 EC for it and it got me 44 drops. If you want to advertise on it today with the new system, it costs 16248EC for 1 day !!! 
On the Entrecard blog, they say that at first there will be an initial craziness for advertising, but it will get to normal figures over a couple of days. I’m anxious to see this happen.

What do you think about this? You feel the same way about it or have another opinion?

In February I’ve implemented my Top Commentator counter in my sidebar. But it was never my intention to leave it with the implementation alone. No, I wanted to reward my Top commentator of the month.

First of all the top commentator will win a 1 month 125x125 adspot in my rightbar.
Secondly I will share some linklove by making a little review of their blog or site.

Top commentator for March was Dot Com Guru Shanker Bakshi
When I visited his blog, my first reaction (because of his banner) was this must be a good Poker Player

I’m always curious where my readers come from, this time it took me to India. Shankar was wondering how to earn some money and started surfing. When he came by John Chow’s site he decided to do the same and started to make money online via his blog. And a new Dot Com Guru was born.

Before he started blogging he did some radio and television shows, what could mean that a celebrity visited my blog

His blog is nicely made, with a design that isn’t that catchy, but because of it, is very nice to look at. It isn’t overcrowded like many other sites.

One post I liked, is his Pagerank explanation post.
Another post what made me think was his ‘how to stay happy’ post. A nice post about how you can take another look at a situation when you’re feeling a bit down. It reminded me about a story about a guy that one day started to only reply ‘yes’ to every question. He stopped saying no and he came out being much happier than before.

Overall I like Shankar’s site and I certainly will pay him a visit every now and then.

Another thing about my Top Commentator reward is that I’ll mail the winner with the message that and what they’ve won. Also I included some questions I would like them to answer, so I could include these in the ‘Top commentator of the month’ post.
Here are the questions and the answers from Shankar:

When did you first start thinking about blogging and why?
I start blogging after reading some of the best top posts of John Chow. The impression I got from his writing was so great that I instantly decide that I must start blogging and establish my self in blogsphere.
When did you actually start blogging?
It was 29th August 2007 when I first publish my post on Google blogger, later on I shifted my blog to my own domain name with WordPress Publishing software.
Did you used a layout template for your blog or did made one yourself?
Initially I tested many WordPress themes then I settled with Glorious Future theme created by The Great Sadish, though I had customized it a lot according to my need and preference. 
Do you blog on more than 1 blog or do you put all your attention to one blog?
At present I am concentrating on my one blog; I do have another website for my audio visual productions work.
What do you like about blogging?
It’s a great platform where you can express yourself freely; the smart thing about this is that you get instant reactions of your readers in form of comments and discussions.
You have any particular recurring topics (for example my Stumbling Friday posts) you post about or do you blog about anything that comes into your mind?
Yes I write Rambling posts every fortnight with the title “The Miscellaneous Ramblings of a dot Com Guru”. Make money online is my blog niche but yes mostly I write what ever comes in my mind and which can help my readers in any manner.
Do you use any social media like Digg, StumbleUpon, Technorati, MyBlogLog, others?
These social media sites play a great role in bringing your blog before more and more people, bloggers use them as SEO Tool. I do use them and frequently submit my blog to other social media sits like blogfriends and Facebook. Technorati help getting up there by showing various blog reaction and authorities.
Why should people visit your site?
Believe me it’s a great site to visit J , new bloggers can learn a lot from visiting my site.
What’s the best advice you can give to other bloggers?
Content is the king, don’t blog only for money blog for your own pleasure, it will definitely take you there, but yes do market your blog among various social media sites. 
 
If you could start over once again, should you do something different?
It took lots of my time to set my blog voice and niche, initially I write about so many topics, even about sports Bollywood and Hollywood but now my blog has its own personality and voice. If I have to start over once again first I would like to make my mind very clear that about what topic I would be comfortable to write. 
If you would ask me one question, what question do I have to answer then?
What you would like to do with your 1 million dollars, how near or how far you are from that big challenge of earning 1 Million dollars?

My answer to his question: This is all explained if you click on the ‘What’ link in the menu above.
And how far am I at the moment, well still very very very far. When I started out I just hoped to earn the money back for my hosting, this I did already and I can pay the hosting for the next years also, so I’m getting closer with every dollar I earn

PS Shankar, I’ve added you to my Linkpage.

Stumbling Friday – Useful links for every web designer

Today was my lucky day, not only did I win big today at our daily Texas Hold’em Poker game we play at noon at work, but the site I Stumbled upon today came by very handy.
Especially because I’m working on a redesign of another site.

It shows useful links for every web designer.
With the links he also gives a short explanation about the link and what you can do with it.
A couple of them I did know, but there are definitely new sites in it, that will be added to my already big favorites list.

That concludes this week’s Stumbling Friday.

As I expected with the poor stumble last week, the post itself didn’t get any comments. Too bad, as you could have gotten your site or blog or post stumbled by me.
Well never mind, you’ll get a new chance for it with this post until next Stumbling Friday’s post.

Now I’m going to check out my top commentator for March his blog and make a review about it.
This is one of the prizes you’ll win for being my top commentator of the month.

At the moment I’m working on a new design for another site I’ve made.
And because of the design I’ve made for that site, the footer had to stick to the bottom all the time.
You can do it with javascript, but here’s a way to do it with some simple CSS.
To do this, you have to make sure you’ll have the following structure within your “body” tags.

open div container
  div header
  div content
  div footer
close div header

The CSS file looks like this:
html,body {
margin:0 auto; /* to center align */
width:960px;
padding:0;
height:100%; /*Required*/
}

#container {
min-height:100%; /*Required*/
position:relative; /*Required*/
}

#header {
background:#fff;
}

#content {
padding:15px;
padding-bottom:60px; /*Required, Height of the footer */
}

#footer {
position:absolute;
bottom:0; /*Required*/
width:100%;
height:55px; /*Required, Height of the footer */
}

What does this do?
Firstly we give the html and body tags a height of 100%.
Then we make sure the container that encapsulates any other div has a minimum height of 100% and we give it a relative position.
Because of the relative position of the container we can put something in it with an absolute position, like the footer in this example.
Give the footer a ‘bottom:0’ to stick it to the bottom of the relative position.
Define the height of the footer and also define it in the ‘content’ tag with the use of ‘padding-bottom’. Set it at the same height as your footer-height.

Voila, that’s it.

Now you can put all the stuff you want between your content div without the worry that your footer isn’t positioned right. It will stick to the bottom. Try it by resizing your window.

Hopefully this tip it will be of any use.

I’ve just mailed my March’s top commentator some questions to answer and the rewards he has won by commenting on my blog.

For those who don’t know about my Top Commentator rewards, here’s a little recap.
As a top commentator you’ll receive:

• 1 month 125x125 adspot on my blog
• A blog review with a couple of linkbacks to your blog
• The chance to answer my questions about how you came up blogging, …

You can always check out my ‘Top commentator of February’ post for an example.

Now I’m only waiting for a reply on my mail to post my 2nd Top commentator of the month reward post.

As for you, maybe you will become my Top Commentator of April and receive the same rewards as mentioned above?