Finished the anchors feature yesterday. Today I am researching the competition and probably will start adding either video editing features and a video resume feature or more resume formats. I am waiting for feedback from the feedback forms on the builder pages (BuildsResumes.com, ReallyFreeResumeBuilder.com, BuildsResumes.us) before embarking on any new features that I'm not sure about (since to add unnecessary features is possibly the greatest waste of a developer's time.)
As for promoting the sites, I may create 1 minute resume advice videos to put on YouTube, and of course there is advertising and convincing other sites to link to me.

Working on Anchors Feature

Having added the "Add Remove Employer Here" feature, my next project is to get anchors working properly, to save users from having to scroll down the page every time they add something. Hopefully I will finish that today, and I can then start work on adding video features to the profile page and more resume formats.

Adding Add/Subtract Employer Feature

Today I will add a feature that lets users add and remove an employer between other employers.

Note: I did install WAMP (http://www.wampserver.com/en/) and it works like a charm. I wholeheartedly recommend it for anyone developing in Windows Vista.

3 Sites

I now have 3 sites marketed to 3 audiences: http://www.buildsresumes.com, http://www.reallyfreeresumebuilder.com, and http://www.buildsresumes.us.

Working on buildsresume.com

I have been working on buildsresume.com. What has been holding back has been getting PHP to talk to MySQL in Windows Vista. Its almost hilarious how difficult it has been to get it configured. After what seemed like half an hour of reading different posts and trial and error on my own machine, I found a mention of a guide that shows how to do it, but the link didn't work... so I finally downloaded WAMP, but haven't tried installing it yet. WAMP, is a lifesaver that supposedly works in Vista. I hadn't tried installing it before since I was afraid it might break my installation of PHP, Apache and MySQL that were already working (except that PHP couldn't talk to MySQL.)

Experiences with PongoResume.com

Pongo was supposed to be free. I signed in under the "free trial" option; I started entering my resume. I thought "this looks great, I'm so glad I used this site." I went to download my resume: "Subscribe for downloading priviliges and more" blah blah blah. Only $9.95 / month or $59.95 / year! As if I would pay that! I tried to copy and paste... no such luck, the resume builder uses Flash 9 with copy and paste disabled.
Final Conclusion: a resume lobster trap.

Registered New Domain

Today I registered 5 new domain names. The main one will be buildsresumes.com. That is the new address for my site, and I also created a new look for it. I also registered
builds-resumes.com,
buildsresumes.us,
builds-resumes.us,
buildsresume.com.

Eventually I will specially market the ones with .us extensions to non-United States citizens who are applying to jobs in the U.S.A (like me.)

I registered the new domains because people had trouble remembering thereallyfreeresumebuilder.com. I told 3 people about it, and each person had a difficult time getting it right, so I knew I needed a better domain name (and I think I got quite a deal, since some premium domains that sell for $1,200 aren't that different from my new ones with .com extensions.)

Note: This is taken directly from my notes on 23 August 2007
This information inspired me to create The REALLY Free Resume Builder.

Name of Company:	Cost to export resume:	Must create account
Theresumebuilder.com a.k.a Thehawkesgroup.com	$14.95/year	Yes
e-resume.us	Don't say	Yes
howtowritearesume.net (builder beta)	Free	No
Buggy: won't let me add job + crashed once.
resumeimproved.com	Don't say	Yes
pongoresume.com	~$10 / month	Yes
program: Sarmsoft.com Resume Builder 4.0 Shareware/24.95
emurse.com	Free	Yes
10minuteresume: SAME AS PONGO