The Power of Retail

Ok, so there’s been a lot of breaks, false starts, meanderings and so on out here. I started this blog to write about retail, consumerism, marketing, trends and so on, and I’ve really not been keeping to the topics for quite some time now. The thing is that I’d like to broaden the scope, but since I don’t really have the flexibility of changing the name of the blog, I have to mostly stick to these topics. In a way, it makes it easier as I know I only have to focus on these topics, but sometimes reading about something of the same topic again and again can get boring as well. Let’s see where this takes us.

It’s been a while since I blogged and I must admit that even though I have missed it, it certainly was nice to take a break…that too a technology free break (as I wrote about earlier) and so was able to enjoy my vacation a lot more. Since I usually travel with my laptop, I end up working even on vacation, which defeats its entire purpose, right? This time, I decided to take a complete break, so did not work at all during my vacation. I did log on occasionally to check my mail and post new pics onto Flickr but that was it.

It was great and I must follow the same rules next time as well

So, I’m off on a slight break for the next couple of weeks. I will continue to work but at a slightly more relaxed pace. It will be nice to just focus on work alone without any other household responsibilities as such, which end up taking so much of one’s time. It’ll also be nice to catch up with the family after quite a long time. Even though we live in the same country, it’s been ages since I last spent time with my parents and in-laws.

I’ve been blogging since August 2004 on of travels and travails, a blog I started when we moved to Bangalore from Providence, RI. After having lived in the US for several years, on and off for college and work, I found Bangalore to be the perfect place to live in India. In a weird way, it was very cosmopolitan and very American, with so many of its professionals working for US companies and the maximum amount of expats in any city in India (this was then, now I believe it is Hyderabad with the maximum expats).

We’ve been living in Bombay for the past two years now and my blogs have quadrupled since then. I started Weaver in July 2005 and The world around us in July 2006, when blogspot had been banned by the Indian government. The Power of Retail is my first blog that is not powered by a free hosting service, and is totally mine.

It’s taken me too long to get this off the ground, but I do want to make this my primary professional blog, and keep of travels and travails as my personal blog, Weaver as my technology/telecom/innovation/trends blog and The world around us as my local retail blog.

Well, I managed to set up the FTP server, and download some more interesting themes, thanks to the great support forums at BlueHost. This one is called Green Marinee and has been designed by Ian Main, an Australian web designer. It’s a brand new template and I like its bold and fresh look.

If you’re considering getting your own hosting system, it should definitely be BlueHost, which already has over 240,000 domains. I signed up for two years of web hosting and got a free domain registration thrown in. This was my first attempt at setting up a website and the support team at BlueHost is simply outstanding. My mails to them were answered within a couple of hours, always with precise and direct answers. I loved their one click Fantastico set up for WordPress and all of their support pages.

I’m waiting for WordPress to add additional plugins so I can download them, so far I only have Akismet and Dolly, which is of no technical use, but I still adore. Since I have another WordPress site, I am already familiar with all the basic WP issues, except that there are limited options in this version of WP. The free version of WordPress is loaded with themes, plugins and options, and until I get the hang of more complicated website handling, my site is going to be pretty simple.