Change of Website Address

Thank you for your interest in Htike Aung Kyaw’s Blog. I have started writing posts in my leisure time as much as I could since 2014. I tried to start writing a blog back in 2014, February 3rd.

I started out using wordpress.com. I started with the address “https://htikeagkyaw.wordpress.com” and this page still exists. I wrote both in English and Myanmar, using the zawgyi typing system for posts in Myanmar. But after a while, I notice that I could not edit the posts the way I like and there exists some limitations. On the other hand, at that time, I was visiting the Barcamps in Yangon, thus had learned how to use wordpress.org and I really wanted to write my own website. I have tried offline with Xampp တို့ Wamp software. At that era, not to mention Visa Card, Master Card, PayPal, even MPU Card can’t be used properly and were not that popular here in Myanmar. How would I possibly be able to buy Web Hosting and Web Domain? Nah… I couldn’t. (The truth is my salary at that time is not much so I also don’t want to spend that much just to tinker around)

My senior, Ko Soe Aung from Singapore told me that he would like to upgrade the plan from WordPress.com from Basic Plan to Premium Plan for me and I wouldn’t have to pay a cent. But I wasn’t sure enough whether I would commit myself into continue writing the blog. So, regretfully I declined his offer, thanked him and stick to the basic plan. 2014 October, the number of readers increased. Mostly they are the teachers, lecturers and professors as well as my juniors who are attending the Naval Architecture course in Myanmar Maritime University. As usual, the internet connection in Myanmar at that time is Superb! They couldn’t access it, they couldn’t read it. Complaints come. Also, sometimes, ISPs here ban the blogs in WordPress.com due to some political affairs and stuffs. The downtime became more than 60%.

Thus, I decided to start a website using wordpress.org using free domain and free hosting. I chose 000.webhost.com and started the site on 23rd October 2014. I embedded the fonts, so posts in Myanmar Language can now be read even on nearly every devices which do not have the Burmese Language built-in. Everything went well at first. https://htikeagkyaw.com was the site I used. Not available anymore. Theme, Fonts, Posts, etc… everything was A OK! Downtime was rarely seen at first.About 6 months later, as you know what free domains and free hosting are, Ads pops up. The downtime was frequent. I tried to backup the site but there were limitations involved. Not much new posts were published. I neglected this blog from comoj.com for quite sometime and after a year it was discontinued. I was also struggling with life, new job for 8 months and the acceptance from Osaka University to attend the Master’s Program. I act as if I’m too busy even to scratch my back. This is how this site was abandoned. So as I arrived to the East Empire on which the sun never sets… Yes, Japan.

End of September 2015, Arrived Japan. Trying to settling in during the first month. And thus after a month, I settled in. (Settled or not, YOU ARE SETTLED!). Knowing that the blog ceased to exist, I wanted to start again. This time, I bought a hosting. But thinking to buy a domain, I don’t want to spend for that. As you know, hosting fees comes out from my own pockets, I don’t want to spend addition for the domain. I was stingy. Knowing how free hosting can be so problematic and can give a headache, I closed my eyes to buy the paid hosting. Although there isn’t many people who reads my blog anyways, I decided not to buy a domain. I just want to tinker and mess around, kept the posts I wrote and saved my whole life (Exaggerating…) in my own hands. So, I registered a Free Domain at (Cu.cc). https://htikeagkyaw.com became live on 30th October 2015. Although I edited and constructed the site in htikeagkyaw.com the way I liked, as I used the free hosting, I could only backup the posts and pages. The site also has expired by the time I started at the new site, I lost everything such as Themes , Font Embedding, etc. Everything went up in smoke. Some pictures in posts went missing, although posts and pages are left. Here we start again from Zero with the new theme. This time I don’t want to go through the font embedding and also to be able to Search, Sort, Translate Burmese language, I vowed myself to wholly migrate to the Unicode typing system. As nearly all posts I wrote in the past are written using the Zawgyi Typing System (which is the non-standard Myanmar Typing system, used by the majority), Converting them to the Unicode System is not an easy task. From the non-standard system to the standard system migration, much effort had to be put in. Even now there are some posts which are still left to convert. And also, this time I used the Language Plugin and used sub-domains for further progress in translation to  multiple languages. I had studied and tried myself with this process. Slow but now has formed a shape. As a saying “Slow and Steady wins the race”. Or a Burmese Saying “A distance a day, Bagan never runs away.” which means, you’ll get to your destination at some point even if you take a small distance per day but continuously every day. From this the English site “https://htikeagkyaw.com” and the Myanmar site “https://htikeagkyaw.com/my” was created.

While attending in Osaka University, my friend Soe Htut uploads articles related to Dhamma from the Buddhist text which dates from approximately 100BCE, “Milinda Panha (Pali Translation – Question of the King Milinda)”. I have this urge to compile and repost it in Myanmar language with Unicode Typing system. Thus, I created a sub-domain, https://htikeagkyaw.com/dhamma during the school break after the first semester. Probable around April, May 2016. Again school starts, I neglected the blog. SEO, the Search Engine Optimization to make my site appear on Google, Bing Search Engines, I started to try method for SEO. I was already at quite a distance reconstructing this blog. This is only when I realized that cu.cc domains are mostly Spammer and Phishers so Google decided not to show any of the cu.cc domains in its search result. What can be done? You’re using a free domain… This is the downside of it… Bear it!  Now I’m back in Yangon for a while during my school break after second semester. Not much to do around Yangon for me so, I headed back to my blog. As always, using the slow, creeping, lagging and money consuming mobile data plan from Telenor (Super Monitor Lizard Plan :P) I bear myself with slow internet to head back to my blog.

The usual, you never know what free domains will happen after a certain time,  I decided to change to a new domain and this time, dot.tk domain. Although I bagged for a dollar or two with the Large PayPal Donation Button since the domain cu.cc, a year has passed and not a cent came into my account. And thus, again I paid the hosting fees from my pocket and continue to use free domain. There wasn’t any link between htikagkyaw.comoj.com and htikeagkyaw.com and I lost some connections. This time, I’m redirecting the htikeagkyaw.com to htikeagkyaw.com till the cu.cc domain expires. What’s new here is that the domain used now is the top level domain so SSL certificate can be applied. While I was using comoj, my blog was attacked. Multiple User Accounts created per day, probably more than 100 users per day. New ad posts were posted, although not published. Password was being cracked using Brute Force. Luckily, my site didn’t went down. So, this time, I could not let this happen. Leveling up the Security, as much as I could possibly imply.

Now, I’m converting the leftover zawgyi posts to unicode. If possible, translate all post from English to Myanmar and Myanmar to English. Also, I would like to raise the profile of my previous university Myanmar Maritime University (MMU) in anyway I could. Knowing how the university still hasn’t have the official webpage till this time, I do not want to accept this. I would like to write about my university in some way. Although I know Ko Tayoke (Ko Phyai Wai Aung) wrote and unofficial site for the university stating all necessary info, I still want to help in a way. As I have last heard, the university is also now planning to write its official site. Lastly, what I really want is to create a student community like a forum which we had during my days as a student at this university, the mmustudents.ning.com. Where students, alumini, teachers and professors, admins of the uni would discuss about the university, interaction and help between seniors and juniors, complaining the inconveniences of the universities so the the admins could know, discuss about lectures, tutorials, share technical articles, news, what differences does alumni face from theoretical to hands-on (practical) in the work environment and also job opportunities. To create a Portal than a forum. But, one cannot finish this task alone. And also, the non-standard typing system Zawgyi will surely give a hard time. Although we know it is not perfect and there are better and standardized typing systems, Unicode, we people are ingrained with Zawgyi, deep in it’s root. So, let’s just hope time is the key factor here. I became familiar with the Unicode typing system starting last 6 years ago already. Even so, many have chose not to migrate. Waiting to the time when everyone starts to use the Unicode system,…………………………………………….

As for the time being, I have implemented the forum, users can now regiser, groups can now be created. I wanted to make a kind of a Social Networking Platform but as you know, the most important things are time, money and effort. Alone, I don’t think it’s possible. I’ll try my best to steadily fulfill my wish. Hoping and wishing to create a better future for everyone, let me end here…

Htike Aung Kyaw

 

Summary

(2014~2016) Htike Aung Kyaw’s Blog (WordPress.com)   (Rarely Updated, Myanmar (Zawgyi))
(2014~2015) Htike Aung Kyaw’s Blog (Comoj.com) (Not Available Anymore, Bye Bye!)
(2015~2016) Htike Aung Kyaw’s Blog (Cu.cc) (Will End Support in October 2016)
(2016~Now) Htike Aung Kyaw’s Blog (Tk) (Available in English, Myanmar. Can be used as Forum. HTTPS support)