Are you wondering when the website was last updated?
Every week I do changes on website, often small changes such as correcting typos or change page titles for search engine optimization.
However, certain pages of website remained unchanged since few years ago, because they are perfect and there is nothing to update.
If you think that a specific page needs update or have ideas for new content, please leave a comment!
Even if the website use WordPress platform with posts like a blog, it runs like my old website (2009-2012) with static HTML pages. I update regularly by adding more info in existing posts rather than publishing new posts, and the post date is manipulated so the 1st page display 10 most important posts rather than 10 most recent posts, like on real blogs.
This page shows only major updates on website or major activities in my life.
Note: you will NOT see any significant updates on website itself. The website is simply complete, traffic is rising slowly, business works well, is not needed to add more pages. I spent most of time updating the products that I am selling via website, the databases, as well as pages that needs periodical update, like List of BTO projects every 3 months.
2019
Nothing major this year, I spent my time in dozens small projects and does not worth mentioning all them here.
Because Google Fusion Tables announced closure on 3 December 2019, in May 2019 I started looking for alternatives and decided that ZeeMaps is the best, I paid subscription in October 2019 and recreated Map of HDB Blocks, Map of Condos, and others.
2018
February-March: a large amount of time spent expanding European car databases to include commercial vehicles.
March-June: spent about 100 hours drawing Ploiesti city map in AutoCAD, hoping to sell map for 100 euro, but it turned a waste of time with very few people interested to purchase.
May: I created a very detailed database of Hong Kong housing, at request of 2 customers. I also split former “Hong Kong floor plans” page into 5 separate pages and made Housing in Hong Kong a category like Housing in Singapore.
August-September: spent over 100 hours improving Singapore HDB Database and Map of HDB blocks, counted number of floors for 95% of blocks and linked floor plans for 50% of old blocks and brochures for additional 20% blocks, the recent ones.
August: I bought a laptop of older generation purposely to install Windows XP and The Sims 2, I really miss this game and it do not work properly on Windows 7 or newer, such as Windows 10 that I use in my desktop computer. Over next months I build several new houses in The Sims 2 after 5 years of break, and also posted additional articles about The Sims 1, 2, and 3 in www.teoalida.com/thesims.
I also use laptop to run overnight web scraping projects, because desktop computer being in bedroom cause bad sleep if I leave it running.
2017
January: a variety of small projects, databases and AutoCAD design
February: I worked most of time at main yearly update for European car database.
March: I worked most of time at main yearly update for American car database.
April: A variety of small projects including apartment statistics in my city
May: I worked most of time to expand European car database into 1970s.
June: new project: Australian car database, and a variety of small projects.
July: I worked most of time to expand European car database into 1970s.
August: updates for European and American car database.
September: a variety of small projects, but also a large work at HDB Database.
November: updated website theme to Graphene 2.0 launched in October. Finally I have a responsive website that looks good on both computers and mobile phones.
New section: Web design articles
For those who did not visited website in the past, see screenshots how it was looking BEFORE October 2017.
2016
After the 2015 year was mostly dedicated to Excel databases, the 2016 year may be dedicated to architecture.
Since January 2016 I re-started the “Virtual City” hobby, designing floor plans and 3D models for artistic purposes, after 4 year of little activity. But I no longer enjoy designing houses for customers, is hard too convince people to pay for services.
As January 2016:
Apartment Design page have 27 paragraphs, 43 black floor plans (old style), 27 colorful floor plans (new style), 46 3D renders.
House Design page have 30 paragraphs, 18 black floor plans (old style), 36 colorful floor plans (new style), 28 3D renders.
January-February: a variety of small projects in architecture and databases.
March: most of days spent expanding European Car Database.
April-May: a variety of small projects, database and gaming.
June: a large update for HDB Database.
August: an update for European Car Database, also improved World city database and published purchase buttons for first time (instead of “contact me if you are interested in the FULL database”)
September: most of time I spent learning about data scraping.
November: Skyscrapers Database page renamed into Buildings Database,because original skyscrapers database did not got any customer and now I got a customer asking me to create database of all buildings from USA listed on Emporis, a job that took about 2 weeks.
2015
Starting from November 2014 some personal/family problems reduced the time available for business, and left me with psychological trauma. I re-started working full-time since June.
January: more sample plans in House Design page. And I’m gonna take a break for few months, I will NOT post update the page with more house designs because each update pushed up the page in Google search results, and I was getting too many customers for my available time.
March: moved to a Virtual Private Server… bye bye Shared Server which started causing errors “508 Resource Limit is Reached” due to rising traffic. The drawback… I am paying 4x more $$ for hosting.
March to May: most of day spending to expand European Car Database.
June: large amount of work done at HDB Database, completing also the number of units for every block.
July: some new floorplans and 3D models in House Design and Apartment design pages. The Apartment Design remained unchanged since 2 years ago, period in which I concentrate on houses. For the first time I posted apartment plans in the new colorful style invented in 2014.
August: I created the first ever database for Indian car market available for purchase. I learned to scrap data from websites and this was my first web scraping project.
July-October: intensive work at Car Models & Engine Database, expanding it from 20 to 45 columns, once launched in September it doubled my monthly income.
November: the American car database, I updated it for the first time since original launch in 2014, better to say I recreated from scratch the database. I also started a new hobby: Skyscrapers Database, making an Excel table with 15000+ buildings over 100 meters from all over the world, thanks to web scraping abilities learned in August.
December: main yearly update for European car databases, remember that European database is manually-made (no web scraping).
Other updates
- (UNDECIDED) Redesign of Architecture & Design section into a separate sub-website and post every house/apartment project on a separate page, instead of 20 projects on each House Design and Apartment Design pages (this was suggested by website visitors, but I DISAGREE. I am already experiencing this system on The Sims section, and I got mainly NEGATIVE results).
- (UNDECIDED) Split the https://www.teoalida.com/world/hongkongfloorplans/ page into separate pages for public housing, private housing, statistics, etc… and put them under a separate category as I have for Singapore (this risk to confuse visitors regarding where I live).
- Gradually move the images to my own server – half of images moved during June 2013 and the rest in the following months, moving up to 10 images per week to keep a constant supply of new content, which supposedly increase Google ranking (I am no longer hosted on Webs.com FREE hosting with limited bandwidth, instead I am paying for a hosting service with UNLIMITED bandwidth, so why I keep image hosted on third-party websites like Imageshack and Photobucket!!??)
November 2014
- I resumed working at HDB Database of blocks… after 4 years of pause, after I came in conclusion that there is some market potential, professionals interested in purchasing such database.
October 2014
- Main yearly update for Car Database undergoing!
August 2014
- HDB Floor Plans – Most images re-made, using floor plans from March 2012 SBF instead of the old floor plans with cream background taken from October 2009 SBF plus floor plans collected from random forums. About 15 images removed (least-clicked floor plans), image thumbnails created, page size reduced with 60%, from 20 MB to 8 MB. This was necessary job, because of the rising website traffic, people were occasionally getting error messages “Resource limit reached”.
July 2014
- New Section: www.teoalida.com/design/miscellaneous (later renamed to Database Works), to put in it the Music Database (currently in OFF-TOPIC section), plus few other works done during last years that I am planning to publish on website, such as Screen Resolutions study.
June 2014
- 5 more floor plans in House Plans page, 3 old floor plans removed.
- The “services and prices”, previously being at bottom page, plus a summary at top of page, were regrouped and placed at middle of page just below the first house project…. hope that by this way I will reduce the number of time-wasters, people contacting me without being interested in my services and people who thinks that I offer unlimited free services.
May 2014
- Website template enlarged from 1000 to 1200 pixels wide and fonts from 10 to 12 pt, although I am afraid that is too early to do this change, 3% of visitors still use 1024×768 screen, 99% of websites are designed for these screens. Main column enlarged from 680 to 840 pixels wide, so I can add two 400px photos or three 256px photos.
- I spent over 50 hours improving and redesigning The Palace, which was dating back from 2009 and was still considered most impressive piece of art done by me. I will use it to promote my graphic design & 3D modeling services.
- 9 new floor plans in House Plans page. All fture floor plans will use white/gray background instead of black (due to surveys done along website visitors), plus some additional changes in drawing style, line thickness, font sizes, dimensions in meters instead of millimeters, etc.
April 2014
- New page: SBF Launches (a minor thing)
- Added “The megalithic projects of Nicolae Ceausescu” in Architecture of Europe page.
January 2014
- Posted “Philippines Townhouses” in House Design page, the first project including 3D design since 1 more year ago. This because during 2013 I dedicated most of my free time to develop Car Database instead of architecture hobby projects. Beside hobby projects, the customers are usually interested in 2D drawings only.
- HDB Floor Plans page reoptimized, parts of page deleted.
- Half of funny chats pages removed.
- Google penalty was lifted on 10 Jan 2014 after doing a number of changes removal of keyword-stuffed ALT tags which I suspect that it have caused this penalty. Soon I was re-penalized twice, until March.
October 2013
- Main yearly update for Car Database is undergoing!
- Google penalized my website, aka suddenly drop in ranking and traffic felt down from 600 to 150 daily visitors, since 12 October 2013. For moment I though that I did nothing wrong, but after asking for help in a forum and via few SEO experts, I realized that over time I made numerous mistakes in maintaining this website. I fixed several possible causes of penalty.
- Until I realize what was the EXACT cause of penalty, I’m gonna put ON HOLD some of the planned website updates and changes.
September 2013
- More images moved to own server, including all from The Sims subwebsite.
August 2013
- 90% of images were moved to own server, except the ones in The Sims subwebsite and Funny chats (unessential stuff)
- Added 3 more house plans.
July 2013
- ~100 images, the floor plans of HDB renamed with correct range of year built instead of year when they were designed first time. Uploaded to my own server instead of Photobucket.
- Most images of Architecture & Design section moved to own server instead of Photobucket and Imageshack.
- Chatting with website visitors reposted under About Me section, combining parts of the About Me page with half of Chatting with website visitors page that was under FUN / Useless / Offtopic stuff section, while other half (review and comparison) has been split into separate page Live chat comparison and the 3 funny chats moved in Funny Chats section.
June 2013
- New page: design/hdbflats (HDB floor plans in AutoCAD), after 2 people asked me to convert HDB images to vectorial drawing, I decided to promote this service for everyone.
- 1 more project in Apartment Design, 3 more projects in House Design.
May 2013
- Nothing major, just few new stuff in FUN section.
April 2013
- Car Database has been converted into a separate sub-website, URL remained the same. The page layout has been totally changed, thanks for numerous suggestions from website visitors, plus personal monitoring of visitor behavior.
- My customers / business partners’ activity slowed down, I am quite FREE… so I am going again in The Sims 2 and 3. Few new stuff posted in www.teoalida.com/thesims
March 2013
- New page: Interior Design which I planned since 2011 but I did not had enough training so I let it for later.. I posted now after several praises from website visitors.
- Further updating of Car Database and extension to 1980s.
February 2013
- The Sims 2 section, instead of being a category , now is a separate subwebsite, URL remained the same: www.teoalida.com/thesims. The decision was taken after I notice that most visitors are not interested in the rest of website, in fact most are not even browsing more The Sims posts than the landing one. The new website should facilitate navigation between different posts of my favorite game.
- I am in doubt if I should do the same for Car Database.
- For the first time I compiled car databases for North America market in attempt to expand my business to rest of world.
- Then, my life should get back to normal… back in architecture. 2 more floor plans posted in House Design.
January 2013
– For the first time in last 4 years, architecture & studying real estate is no longer the main activity in my life! I am working full-time in Excel for Car Database. However, this is just temporary…
– Car Models Database expanded from 1174 to ~1350 models, Car Versions Database expanded to 12000 models.
December 2012
- The last section of my website, the Architecture & Design portfolio has been moved to the new website.
- teoalida.webs.com will be not closed, but it will no longer serve as personal website to present my works!
- BIG update for Car Database: I bought a collection of german AutoKatalog magazines and I updated “The BIG Car Database” after 4 years of hiatus, model count raised from 7866 to 10754 and later renamed to “Car Versions Database”.
- North Korea page expanded until doubled in size.
- House Design got 2 new sample houses.
November 2012
- Singapore section (that contribute with most of website traffic, about 60-70%) transferred to new website on 2 November, friday night to minimize visitors confusion that last 3-4 days, as traffic is lower over weekend.
- BTO list and DBSS list list are now two separate pages, as people voted, analysis of Shrinking HDB flat sizes and of Will prices drop? are now on own page instead of HDB Floor plans page, HDB Records also on own page instead of HDB Statistics page, Most Beautiful HDB / Condo / House split in 3 pages. With other words, 8 pages have been converted into 15 pages!
- EC list updated with under construction condos. HDB Statistics updated after Annual Report 2012 has been released on 15 November.
October 2012
- New page: www.teoalida.com/design/miscellaneous (this was the LAST new thing added to the former website).
- Remaining gaming pages has been transferred to new website.
- Housing around the World section transferred to new website on 25 October. On Hong Kong I added Living in Hong Kong, also I expanded info about America, Malaysia, and Romania.
- Singapore HDB Floor Plans updated with 4 floor plans from mainstream types that were missed, corrected the year range for some blocks.
September 2012
- My new, secretly-developed website works well, I made public announcement on 24 September. Rest of The Sims 2 content transferred to new website, former The Sims 2 page deleted.
August 2012
Started what will be my future personal website: www.teoalida.com using WordPress platform on a professional hosting service, to replace the website under Webs.com.
I start testing the WordPress platform by posting The Sims 2 stuff, before transferring more serious content, because in case something goes wrong and I have to turn website offline for reinstall, to lose gaming visitors instead of architecture customers. I have no reason to speed up the transferring the content, my business works well with the Webs.com website.
New page: teoalida.webs.com/aboutme.htm containing the history of my life and website purpose, placed at top of page, rather than the (uninteresting) biography that was in the former About Teoalida page. Both Biography and Website purpose were on INDEX (HOME) page since 6 months ago.
Hong Kong page was split, two new pages created: HongKongFloorplans.htm and HongKongStatistics.htm, similar with what I have for Singapore (beside the main Hong Kong page under World menu.
Although I don’t know if was a good decision to create so many pages. 75% of visitors do not browse other pages than the landing page. Singapore HDB Floorplans page gets 100 daily visitors of which 90% are locals, while Hong Kong page gets max 5 daily visitors, of which 80% are foreigners. Possible reason: Hong Kong being dominated by 95% chinese, they don’t bother to learn english, they type in chinese when search on Google. Without having a page in chinese I can’t get many visitors.
July 2012
GREAT NEWS: got a partnership with some people for AutoCAD-related work, which means MONEY!!
Bad news: I rarely have time to design new houses and apartments buildings for fun and artistic purposes, as well to play games.
But, if you want to work and design something for you, feel free to contact me!
Big update for teoalida.webs.com/thesims2.htm, as I played it a lot during june and now I updating the page by posting one new house per week.
For Singapore section I added offer to sell PDF brochures, as well as preview screenshots of HDB Database and HDB Resale Transactions, maybe someone will be interested to buy them? Also I added 3 more floor plans.
June 2012
BIG updates!
I finished splitting the Housing around the World page, 9 new pages created (except for Hong Kong that I mixed with existing Hong Kong page with floor plans, resulting a messy page, I will decide later how clean it). China and Philippines pages were also expanded.
Singapore HDB Floorplans got text updates and 2 more floor plans. Currently are 90 floor plans and 42 photos.
I added 2 more houses in House Design page.
Nothing new in Apartment Design but I am still working at something that will be my greatest project!
In Car Database I added a 7th file: Automobile Production.
I kept playing The Sims 2 and updated its page once again with new info.
After doing the Housing around the World update, I am experimenting again a drop-down navigation bar placed at top of page, together with the sidebar’s expanded navigation bar.
Also I added flags on sidebar list of countries studied by me.
Webs.com introduced drop-down menus in 2010, I implemented them on my website on the right side, but it was a bad experience, 9 of 10 people did not click a page which have subpages (once the menus with subpages appear, visitors click the subpages only).
At the current experiment. I added empty header pages and put all real pages as submenu items.
May 2012
I expanded the sidebar’s navigation bar to include links to every paragraph of teoalida.webs.com/housingaroundtheworld.htm page. I do not know if was a good idea, I am curious to see the effect on visitor behavior, before splitting the page in separate pages for each country/region.
Also South Korea and Brazil sections were expanded with more text and new photos, thanks of big love for these countries and intensive studying.
Sorry for lack of updates or delay in updates in Games section!
My favorite games are still GAMES and I don’t want to waste my life playing games.
Past week I was bored so I made a perfect city in Caesar 3 and built 2 more lots in The Sims 2, also expanded the tips and tricks section.
Facebook dilemma:
In March 2012 I left myself this comment in Singapore page: Every several days I get a bunch of visitors coming from Facebook. Can someone tell me how I can find the Facebook page from where they are coming, or if you came here from Facebook, give me the exact link? I am curious how visitors promote my website!
Someone replied: If only there is a facebook like button… i will happily click that button.
My reply: I don’t understand how a Facebook button may help me. People simply posted the page URL on Facebook.
That was a misunderstanding, he was referring at Facebook’s LIKE button.
I do not really use Facebook. All what I have is a profile made to register my name, no photos in it. I don’t want to have public photos of me. Most of my friends use Facebook to exchange photos. I do not understand how to promote a website using Facebook.
Someone told me to create a Facebook PAGE, that would not be related with my Facebook PROFILE where is supposed to have personal photos. I did, and posted a Like button on Singapore HDB Floor Plans page (most visited page of my website). Got 3 likes. But still, some visitors were still able to find my Facebook profile.
In March I started the Blog application of Webs.com, to post website updates. I have noticed that Blog posts come with Facebook LIKE and other social media buttons added automatically. I just copied the source code of these buttons on all pages of my website. I noticed that HDB Floor plans page already got 60 likes (people posting manually URL on facebook, in the lack of LIKE button. NO Facebook page was necessary!
April 2012
I updated the Hong Kong page: XLS file updated with new developments, 2 new floorplan links added, removed the “More photos SOON” that I forgot to remove 1 year ago after I added all best photos. Also corrected numerous spelling mistakes.
I did a full update for my Car Database. Added 10 more brands in Models List, added asian and american brands in the Database (which originally had only European cars), expanding it from 500 models to 1100 models. New preview files are posted, full files available for sale! First sale done next month!
I finally reached 5000 songs in my Music Database, by adding 1000 songs over LAST 2.5 YEARS!! What a snail I am! (better to say, I know that it is one of the most USELESS things made by me, so do not dedicate much time for it). I posted the new version of table on a dedicated page MusicDatabase.htm (previously, it was posted on teoalida.webs.com/aboutteoalida.htm (biography page), hard to be found).
March 2012
Webs FREE accounts give me 500 MB monthly bandwidth. In January I exceeded bandwidth with 5%, in February with 8%, now as 8th March I exceeded bandwidth once again with 31% and Webs.com don’t care about suspending my website (bandwidth reset date is 8th each month).
I will expand Singapore HDB page and add new stuff in the next days! This time I really want to see my website suspended, to buy extra bandwidth and restore it immediately!
Update May 2012: seems that Webs.com suspend websites when they exceed bandwidth with 100% aka using 1000 MB of 500 MB. I got suspended on 7 May so I upgraded the bandwidth in May, bought 1 GB monthly bandwidth with 1000 Webs Credits accumulated over past months.
URLs of Singapore-related pages changed, for example HDB%20Statistics%20-%20BTO%20&%20DBSS%20list.htm renamed as hdbbtodbsslist.htm. Main page about Singapore also renamed from Singapore.htm in SingaporeHDBFloorPlans.htm. I put redirect pages on old URLs.
The reason for that long and bad-looking URL was the low webdesign knowledge one year ago, the List of BTO projects was intended an annex, was uploaded like a FILE, like the HDB Statistics .XLS file, I made the BTO list by copying the Excel table in Word and from Word saving as HTML, then opened with Notepad and cleaned it of unnecessary html codes, set a descriptive file name then uploaded it, spaces being converted in %20.
Later I realized that I can use TITLE attribute to set a descriptive name, and the file name can be short.
New projects
One of my biggest artistic design projects, the European Housing was finished and posted today 24th March in both Apartment Design and House Design pages. Including full-detailed 3D designs!
I got addicted to Malaysia and now posted 2 more house plans inspired from them. Plus “A different Terraced house” designed in january and never posted.
Caesar 3 page updated. I wasted some of my life and remade 2 cities, Excel file updated and text rewritten.
January 2012
I had a poll on sidebar:
What theme do you prefer? White text on dark background / Black text on light background
Voting result was 5-0 for changing into black text on light background. So as january 2012 I installed the new theme. My original theme with blue background is no longer!
My personal reason for changing theme was not the colors, but the old template was narrow as 780 pixels. The current template is 1000 pixel wide.
Now, do I should change the AutoCAD floor plans too to white? Black is the default background color in AutoCAD!
Website traffic re-exceeded 100 daily visitors, thanks to November 2011 revamp.
I also found accidentally a LIVE CHAT software to add on website and talk with visitors! This proved very effective way to make new friends, get feedback from website visitors, understand what people are looking for and do necessary improvements on website… which boosted website visitors and later leaded into conversion to customers!
November 2011
I did a full revamp of my website during october and november.
Countries and Cities page has been renamed as Housing around the World.htm and more countries added.
Singapore HDB page has been expanded, added more floor plans as well as a list of SERS sites and HUDC projects.
Added new projects in Teoalida’s Housing.htm.
I re-started to play The Sims 2 after 3 years of inactivity, I added 2 new houses, plus First apartment block and a decorative Condominium, as well as Tips & Tricks.
The former page http://teoalida.webs.com/games.htm page containing NFS and GTA was deleted, I made new separate pages Need for Speed and Grand Theft Auto, as well as little page Beetle Crazy Cup, but most important I started a BIG Caesar3 page on 15 october 2011.
In the future I will add a Age of Empires page, another favorite game!
