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Bob Martin was Clear
Introduction
I’m Alex, the new kid on the block. My actual name is Alexander Mooney but Alex for short is alright by me. I’m not really new but I’ve been lurking in the shadows for quite some time now, few years to be exact. Although I’ve only just joined the LiP team so I’ve only just started working on a bunch of things behind the scenes, the kind of things most people don’t talk about and the exact thing Bob told me not to talk about. Well, me being me I’ve decided to go ahead and let a few things out of the bag.
For starters, I’m going to be the tech guy here on LiP. Anything that has to do with the website I’ll have gone over at one point or another and either optimized or totally changed. Sorry if your the kind of person that hates change because I’m here to take you out of your comfort zone.
About Me
A little background about me! I’ve been living in the Philippines since I was 16 years old. Now that I’m heading toward 27 I’ve found myself back in the US. I’ve grown up in the US, grown even more in the Philippine but these are discussions for another time. I mean how interesting can an American living in the Philippines through his college years be? I mean endless partying and a buffet of Filipinas Filipino food; what could possibly be so fascinating? Sure I have a story, most people do but I’ll limit this post to my new role here on LiP.
So what does being the tech guy mean? It means I spend too much time at home in front of my computer. I’ll be doing an entire revamp of the Live in the Philippines site as you know it. Pretty much every single aspect of the website is getting redone and there are a lot of little surprises too. Not really surprises because I’m going to be divulging them to you here in this post.
Bob and I are Making Changes
So here is what’s going on besides the redesign. A brand new forum is going up. Yea it might not be exciting right now but when you need some important information and you crawl back to the forum looking for it you’ll be thanking us. We are going to have a whole bunch of free information there all organized and ready for your consumption. Things like marriage, Philippine visas, US visas, cultural information and tons of other good stuff!
A LiP Store!
Another thing we are doing is integrating a dedicated store here on LiP. If you want to send your girlfriend, boyfriend, mistress or whatever a gift in the Philippines we’ll be here for you. What else? Well, now we’ve got a dedicated team to help with processing visas. Not Philippine visas (those are easy) but US visas for your loved one/s. We’ll be helping you bring your wife/husband and their children to the USA. Why? So you can make some money retire and move back to the Philippines of course! In short, a lot of new features are going to be added to the site. A lot of things we’ll be able to help expats or people who are looking to either move to the Philippines or those of you who just like bouncing back and forth.
Bob did Say NO
Now back to the title of this article. Bob did actually tell me no. We had talked it over and he said he didn’t want to give too much away. He said if my article were to let out too much of what we were planning that he simply wouldn’t post it. Problem is I’m the tech guy so technically If you’re reading this then 10 to 1 I posted it without him knowing & even worse without his permission!
He might delete this he might not but show some support if you like my articles by commenting below and on Facebook. Would like to know what kind of things you’d like me to write about in my future articles. Feel free to comment if you don’t like my articles as well because I’ve always got time to run through the comments and delete the negative ones LOL.
If your going to tell a story, you need to tell both sides, negative and positive
Definitely agree with you there Bruce!
Thank you for the article. I have been wondering about how to search for a subject on LiP. I have a subject that I am sure has been addressed, but I wondered how to find it without sending Bob an email. I get about 150 a day average, I cannot imagine how many he gets to sort through.
I look forward to seeing what you do, but remember when I was a computer expert, it was 1981!
Thanks
Hi LeRoy. Down at the bottom of the home page ther eis a Search box. Also on the sidebar of all of the inside pages on the site. Hope this helps.
Definitely. Bob is right, under the newsletter there is a search box there which will search through all the different posts on the site.
Hi Alex,
My name is Barry Alexander, really! a US Citizen and a permanent resident in Davao.
I like your article, and the things I would love you to write on is How and What you are improving and developing LIP. The techniques you are using etc. I have been leaving here in the PI for many years and of course, married to a Filipina Asawa. I like your boldness and believe it will be an excellent quality in improving LIP.
Unless a keyword in an article is “tagged”, the article that contains the keyword being searched is not going to show of course, unless LiP searches are linked to Google search. Is it possible to link LiP searches to Google?
Another thing, Alex, is it possible to increase the comment count displayed on the right margin from the current 10 to 20 without sacrificing content? Comments scroll down fast during the day In the Philippines, when most of is in the U.S. are sleeping. By the time we wake up in the morning, many of the comments disappear from view.
Sorry, John. There will no longer be comments on the sidebar. I know you would not like that! 🙂 Easy to solve.. just subscribe to the comments and you will get emails.
I’m very sorry to hear that, Bob. The Recent Comments column is the very first thing I look at when I open LiP. Sometimes the comments are more interesting than the article itself. LOL Now that it will no longer be a part of the revamped site, I guess I will have to go through
the current articles to see the latest comments. I am a bit apprehensive about subscribing to the comments, as this would flood my already flooded email even more. I will give it more thought. Thanks for the heads up, Bob.
There are still comments, John. Just no list of recent comments. The last time this was a major debate on the site you were the only one who was strongly in favor of having that feature. It has come to the point where I have to use that real estate for other purposes. Sorry to disappoint you. I will say, the new commenting system is going to be chock full of features.
Hey John! Thanks for the comment. Technically speaking the current search on LiP doesn’t strictly use tags to generate results. For example if you search for “How to get a Philippine visa” You’ll get results with the tags but you’ll also get a post such as “How to get a Philippine Driver’s License” since it does a partial match on the post title as well. I’ll give you a dirty trick that you can use as well though. If you open up your web browser and clear the address bar, you can type in “site:liveinthephilippines.com Whatever You Are Searching For”… Read more »
Thanks for the tip, Alex. I do do a straight Google search without limiting it to LiP as a last resort when I couldn’t find what I was looking for using LiP search. Reader comment that contains the keyword comes up which leads me to the article.