A WordPress.com Blog VS Self-Hosting Website: My Experience

A few posts back, I was writing about how I was going to create my official writer’s website as I’m starting my after-undergrad life as a freelance writer, sort of.

Since then (although it was only a few weeks/days ago), things have changed.

Well, I did launch a website.

But it’s not exactly a freelance writing website. After getting insightful feedback from the surveys I had posted, I realised that people were currently more interested in a Students’ Survival Guide than a freelance writing blog. And looking at my experience, I had way more valuable stories to share in the ‘student’ category. After all, I had only just started freelancing, while I had been a University student for 3 years!

After days of thinking and brainstorming, I finally made the leap and bought my very first domain: dkwaye.com

Here’s An Opportunity For You To Get Your Writing Out There

BIG ANNOUNCEMENT:

I have decided to re-open my blog to guest posts.

A few years ago, (oh my, this blog is almost 5 years old! I feel so old!) I am not sure if it was a WordPress trend or simply a general blogging trend, but other bloggers or writers would email me about a request to guest post here, on An Evil Nymph’s Blog. Moreover, if I remember correctly, other bloggers on WordPress were also allowing guest posts on their blog and maybe they are still doing it.

Anyway, I cannot exactly recall how I decided to dive in, but I ended up accepting the guest blogging requests and further adding in my contact page that I welcomed guest posts.

But, what is a guest post exactly? 

In brief, anyone who wants to guest post on your blog is someone who wants to write an article for your blog, so as to get more exposure as a writer and reach a new audience. They usually request to have links to their website, which I usually include in their bio at the end of the post. And that is all… at least, here on WordPress.com, our free blogosphere.

Common Misconception about my Writing Major | Medium | Happy Birthday Evil Nymph’s Blog!

My second year of university started this Monday. Second year is when it is time for us to choose our major, to specialise in a particular field of study…

Read more…

I started writing this post in the middle of today’s psychology lecture (guilty! But only for a few seconds, the time it took me to write two sentences) and I was planning to finish it on WordPress back home tonight, but then, something happened.

Medium happened.

I might have been on WordPress only for around 3 years, but I have actually been blogging a little longer than that, since I also had a Blogger before…

Wait, I JUST REALISED SOMETHING. Okay I am not going to edit this post, this is my trail of thoughts written down live… 

An Evil Nymph’s Blog is now officially 4 years old!!! (1st August) OMG. Happy birthday, little blog. And I’m sorry for neglecting you since I came in Malaysia, and I’m sorry in advance for what I am going to write in the next few paragraphs…

Discovering Japanese Snacks! (Part 2)

I’m on my last week of exams and I’m able to squeeze in some time to finally announce that I ended up eating all of my Japanese snacks! Therefore, here’s PART 2 of ‘Discovering Japanese snacks!’, which involved buying lots of Japanese sweets and try them out, because eating has become one of my dominant hobbies here in Malaysia. 😉

If you haven’t read Part 1 and want to go through it before scrolling through this post, click HERE to have a look!

Here we go for my mini reviews of the last 4 Japanese snacks:

1. Lotte Koalas March Cookies

Classic Japanese’s definition of cookies, filled with mouth-melting chocolate. This definitely reminded me of my childhood favourite: Hello Panda! I love how the cookie part was crunchy and actually quite easy to break due to its surprising thinness, but without being too soft. It was cooked just right. The chocolate was as enjoyable as one would on biting on any Hello Panda cookie.

Discovering Japanese Snacks! (Part 1)

It might be because the NBC series Hannibal has started, that makes me want to indulge in exclusive fancy/expensive foods (last year was berries). (Because Japanese foods are pricey in Malaysia T.T except the Daiso quality ones haha).

It might also be because I want to explore another dominant aspect of Japanese culture, knowing that I’m still especially completely in love with Japanese food, and the fact that the more I dived into the semester, the less time and thought I put into cooking, so I only ended up repeating the same easy recipes I had learnt (busy and heavy university life, guys).

Anyway, on one evening, about one hour before the shops would close, I had a crazy Japanese snacks shopping spree!

(If you are on a budget, like me actually oops, don’t do this at home, unless you’re in Japan, I guess? Or unless you don’t mind spending your savings on food.)

Oh I bought all of this just in time for the exams period 🙂

The stores I went to were the famously Japanese shop, Shojikiya, and the typical AEON supermarket.

By the time this post is going to be published, I would have tried all of them and therefore, now, I am going to review every one of them down below!

Instagram As My Micro-blogging Platform?!

As expected, I did not keep blogging regularly.Unless you considered at least one post per month to be regular and consistent, I guess. Oh well, life. School is making me crazy at the moment.

Then, today, something peculiar crossed my mind as I uploaded my latest Instagram post, which is this one by the way:

#Volunteering at Bangsa Ria, an organization for people with special needs, has been one of the most challenging experiences I’ve had. It wasn’t easy; it wasn’t all roses.
But it was worth it.
As one of the #MUVP groups, we hope we’ve made a difference as little as it might have been.
This is a #handcrafted#rose made by the BR members, which I bought today as an additional contribution and just because. It’s so #beautiful 🙂
#charity #foragoodcause #art #nature #monashmalaysia

Okay, I might sound stupid, but this was the first time that I realised that all this time I was actually micro-blogging on Instagram.

The Past, Who We Are and Other Thoughts

It feels like it’s been ages since I last posted on this blog.

This was mainly because I’ve been doing a lot of thinking (which eventually also includes writing, reading and watching anime/TV series ^^).

Three months’ school holiday is way too long, although it’s been filled with seeing new horizons, since I’m in a foreign country, but at some point it pretty much fucks your mind, especially if you’re living on your own. You start getting all deeply philosophical and start questioning every aspect of life.

Or is it just me?

I’d like to share a few of those haunting thoughts that have been following me for a while… and hopefully read your comments afterwards:

1. On Mirrors

I don’t know if I’ve talked about this here but I moved to a cheaper residence at the start of the year and among the furniture available in my room there was no sign of a mirror! Don’t get me wrong, I’m not your vain narcissist typical girl, but I enjoy making up outfits in front of a tall mirror and… well I simply have this ‘strong liking’ for mirrors. Therefore the mirror chase was on! My friend also joined me because she happened to want a mirror as well (peer influence XD). We were of course looking for the cheap options so we looked a little everywhere and took our time before we finally settled on those specific budget-friendly-but-nice-quality mirrors…

Anyway, this whole ‘chase’, that lasted about a month, made me think of something very peculiar about mirrors. It all started when my friend taught me how to know the difference in quality in the glass of the mirror (quite simple actually: just look into both mirrors one after the one and check for any ‘deformities’ in terms of how your body is being reflected… If your head is way bigger than your body you obviously know it’s not a good mirror…). She thus wouldn’t choose a mirror because it didn’t reflect her ‘normally’ i.e. the way she thinks her body is.

This was when the discussion started and my thoughts started to grow.

But how does she know how she is? If one thinks about it, no one can see oneself, except through reflecting glass, like a mirror, but if my friend just proved me that the mirrors can be flawed, then in truth, one can definitely never see oneself.

It’s Never Too Late… For A Selfie!

It’s never too late for a new blog post either!

For those of you who love to participate in the Weekly Photo Challenge as much as I do you may notice how the title relates to the fact that I haven’t been blogging for two weeks but I really want to remedy to that by still giving a shot at one of the challenges I missed which was ‘Selfie’.

1st take:

You can actually find this photo on my Instagram. Follow me @dkwaye !

The Blogger’s Block

You’ve heard about the writer’s block, the artist’s. Well, here I’m going to talk to you about the blogger’s. Because, yes, bloggers can have this sudden drain of inspiration for new posts and thus are unable to go further into their blogging journey.

And I think that’s exactly what’s been hitting me these last few days.

 

(Here’s a random photo I took recently to make this post more colourful hehe)

Sometimes we just get caught up with other things as life gets in the way…

The Story Of My Very First Art Exhibition

Saturday 14th September 2013.

I was really nervous. Especially that they would not only be exhibiting my painting, but also my portfolio and the idea of so many people going through my drawings just freaked me out. I’m very sensible about my art and although I should think about that, I can’t help but wonder whether people like what they see or not.

At the CCEF, there are two categories of art courses: one is the adult one, from 14 years old and up, like the one I got myself into, and the second is for the smaller ones, the children one.

On the day of the exhibition, the works of the younger ones were hung on the wall outside in the common corridor while ours were waiting for us in the exhibition room.

The cocktail party wouldn’t begin before 16.30 but together with my parents I arrived at 16.20. I had more than enough time to admire the children’s drawings, all so filled with talent 🙂 The children’s group was already present and waiting as well, By 16.30 my friends came and soon the director of the Centre let us in the exhibition room. My friends and I waited a little, allowing the children to go first and finally went in…

(I tried the panorama option, so as to get the whole room all together)

And there they were, all of our works, paintings, on the walls, shining in artificial light.

Without wasting a single moment, parents and friends all urged us, the masters of our masterpieces to pose next to our work so that they would capture this moment with their cameras 😉 That moment was actually so funny because we were just… lost in all this jungle of people staring at our work, taking photos… taking space as well. And the room wasn’t that big. But we finally made it to get to the front:

Wanna Go To My Very First Art Exhibition??

It’s tomorrow! And then my works will remain exhibited during a week, I believe. All the details are in this week’s video 🙂

Afterwards, I’ll make sure to tell you what happened and how it went, so stay tuned 😉

An Evil Nymph.

Celebrating A Masterpiece: An Evil Nymph’s Blog’s 2nd Year Anniversary!

01.08.13:

An Evil Nymph’s Blog is proud to celebrated it’s 2nd year anniversary! 😀

I also wanted to merge this week’s photo challenge, which is masterpiece, in this post, but instead of submitting a photo, I’m simply submitting a masterpiece I’ve been working on for 2 years exactly, yes you guessed it, my masterpiece is this blog!

10 Seconds Of Advice On Life! + The Visual Artist Tag!

I uploaded two new videos this past week. And the two of them are sort of collaboration videos.

The first one is:

‘Error: Account Suspended’ – What!? What do I do now??

I’m so sorry for being MIA on WordPress, but I had two issues I had to deal with:

1. Mock exams! 

Yeah, I’m currently in exams mode since last Wednesday thus I’ve been busy in the real world.

2. My WordPress account had been suspended!

In fact, that’s what I thought. When I tried to log in to WordPress lately it kept on saying: ‘Error: Account Suspended’. I totally panicked!!!

I took a deep breath and tried again. And again. And again. And it still showed ‘Error: Account Suspended’. However my blog was still live, so it didn’t make sense. Usually when WordPress suspends an account it also suspends the blog and mainly the blog because the latter had surely violated a Term of Use…