Every SSS Member have a right to have his or her SSS ID as a proof of identification of membership to the said government agency. Years ago, the issuance of SSS ID was discontinued and was replaced by UM ID. Unified Multipurpose (UM) ID still carries the same purpose of SSS ID such as:

To facilitate SSS member identification.

Get rid or clean the SSS Database through one-to-one matching with the biometric information embedded in the ID.

Deter fraud among its members due to unique information contained in the card which allows for direct validation with the data.

Enable self-service transactions such as loan application, issuing of SSS Numbers and receiving/viewing Member’s reports.

Note: For the purpose of our discussion, we still use the SSS ID instead of UM ID.

The New UM ID / SSS ID carries several Identification numbers. It is officially recognized by other agencies such as Pag Ibig (HDMF), Philhealth (PHIC) and GSIS. Though, those Identification Numbers cannot be found written on the face or back of the ID, it is encoded in magnetic stripe that cannot be seen by a naked eye.

When we first wrote about applying for an SSS ID, we heard a lot of feedbacks that there were a lot of confusion and it was really unorganized in the sense that several SSS Members who already applied for their SSS ID waited for like half year (five to eight months) before their SSS ID be delivered to their home addresses. The reason was never disclosed to us and we never had a chance to confirm it. We wasn’t planning at all to know! :)

Well, those days are over. You can now easily apply for your SSS ID! As I have experienced, I got my SSS ID in just one month and seven days. Not bad right? I don’t really need it actually, it just so happen that I was accompanying a friend to apply for an SSS Loan then I instantly decided to apply for my SSS ID.

Requirements for SSS ID

Remember the rule, “No ID, No Entry”? Your SSS ID application will not go through if you don’t have at least two valid IDs to present. You can pick from the list of valid ID on the list below:

• Passport including those issued by foreign governments
• Driver’s license
• Professional Regulations Commission (PRC) ID
• National Bureau of Investigation (NBI) clearance
• Police clearance
• Postal ID
• Voter’s ID
• Tax Identification Number (TIN)
• Barangay certification
• Government Service Insurance System (GSIS) e-Card
• Senior Citizen card
• Overseas Workers Welfare Administration (OWWA) ID
• Overseas Filipino Worker (OFW) ID
• Seaman’s book
• Government office and GOCC ID (e.g., AFP, HDMF IDs)
• Certification from the National Council for the Welfare of Disabled Persons (NCWDP)
• Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD) certification
• Integrated Bar of the Philippines (IBP) ID
• Company IDs issued by private entities or institutions registered with or supervised or regulated either by the BSP, SEC or IC.
• Valid photo-bearing school ID duly signed by the principal or head of the school (for non-voting/minor age students).

Once you secured the required two valid IDs, fill up the SSS E6 (Application for Social Security ID) Form.
You can download the SSS E6 (Application for Social Security ID) Form here and fill it out or you can just ask the guard or any SSS Personnel for the SSS E6 application form.

In my case, the guard stationed at the door is in charge of the forms to be given to the applicants. He asked me to present two valid IDs before he gave me the SSS E6. One applicant was denied of entering the SSS premises because he failed to present the valid ID. The guard was very strict with the two (2) Valid ID requirement.
I immediately filled out the SSS E6 and fall in line. They have seats for the applicants and wait for the queue line to move.

Before I forget, It is also mandatory to have at least one SSS Premium Contribution before they allow you to get or apply for SSS ID. We’ll now move to the next step.

How much does it cost?

SSS ID or UM ID is totally free of charge, IF and ONLY IF this is your first time of issuance.

If you don’t fall in the category of “FIRST TIME” applicants of SSS ID, you are required to pay P300 for the SSS ID replacement fee. You can read more about the replacement SSS ID card.

Where to apply for SSS ID?

You can apply for your SSS ID in SSS Offices and Branches that offers SSS ID Photo Capturing Facility. Some SSS Branches don’t have the facility to take photos of the SSS Member who applies for an SSS ID. So instead of guessing where to apply your SSS ID, you can call their SSS Hotline and ask where you can apply for SSS ID.

You can reach them at 920-6446 to 55, Mondays to Fridays 24 hours a day.

What to expect?

Assuming you already in the right SSS Branch and now waiting for your turn. This will be the events you will expect to happen:

• The SSS officer will validate you SSS ID application. He or She will encode the Personal Information you have written on the application form. Double check it once he/she is done encoding.
• Proceed to the Photo capturing Facility. It’s really a no brainer step actually, you just need to sit and relax and have you photo taken.

The Photographer in charge will now instruct you some important information (since this would be the last step in applying for SSS ID). Make sure to listen carefully.

Take note that the SSS ID will be mailed to your Home Address. Make sure that you wrote your home address correctly. He will also mention when you will receive your SSS ID. I got mine for one month and seven days.

Before leaving the premises, make sure that you have the claim stub or Acknowledgement Receipt. The claim stub is the last portion of the SSS E6 application. That will be the proof that your SSS ID have been processed and waiting for release.

Final Thoughts.

So if you haven’t apply for you SSS ID, maybe it’s time to take a shot at this one. For those who still don’t have SSS ID, FYI, this serves as a Valid ID and serves many purposes.
Do you have unique experienced when you get your SSS ID? Maybe problems or issues encountered? Share it with us!

I was really a fan of online banking transaction. As much as possible, I prefer all my transactions done through online. Before, I use my BPI Express Online account to pay our Meralco bill [link here], MWSS and my credit cards bills. I even do my fund transfers to my close family members with their online banking facility.

• Pay Utility and Credit Card bills
• Transfer fund from my payroll account to savings
• Loading my mobile phone

But months ago, I left my employer and moved to a new one. It just so happen that my new employer’s exclusive bank for its payroll is Banco De Oro. From the moment I got my ATM card, I immediately signed up for a BDO Online Banking Account. I was glad I already got my BDO Online Banking account because I know my previous BPI ATM (Payroll) account will be closed and I will not be able to do the online banking that I usually do.

Enrolling my BDO Payroll account to their BDO Online Banking account took me (approximately) 10 minutes to finish. The last step which is to activate your online banking account through ATM machine totally depends on you. In my case, there are no people waiting in line to withdraw in the BDO ATM machine so I got my Online Bank Account activated in a jiffy.
To enroll your BDO Bank Account to their Online Banking Facility, you need to visit BDO Online Banking Website (https://online.bdo.com.ph).

On the left portion of the screen, click on the “Enroll Now!” button.

The “Electronic Banking Terms and Conditions of Use” page will be presented to you. You have a choice to read the entire thing or you can simply check the “I have read, fully understood and agreed with the Terms and Conditions.” statement and click the Submit Button.

Right from there, the Online Enrollment Form will be displayed and requires you to fill it out. You are required to:

• Choose the type of your account you will be enrolling (Credit Cards or Deposit Accounts).
• Select what channels you prefer (Online, Phone or Mobile banking).
• Assign your personal User ID and Password.
• Select two (2) Challenge (Security) Questions and its answers, and lastly;
• Your mobile phone number and email address.

Enter the validation code correctly and submit the Online Enrollment form.

If your Online Enrollment is successful, you will be then directed to the BDO Quick Acknowledgement Page.

It will display some confidential information about your BDO Bank Account. It also confirms your successful enrollment on their Online banking and requires you to perform the last step. Take note of the ATM Activation Code. In this case, my (actual) ATM Activation Code is 499745. Take note of that.

If you missed that, you can also check your email address for the same confirmation email regarding your enrollment as a back-up copy.

An instruction will be provided to you how you can activate your online banking enrollment.

What it says is, you need to go to any BDO ATM, select “Other Services” then choose “Activate Electronic Banking” and key in your ATM Activation Code.

You will be given a deadline of Forty Five (45) banking days to perform the Online Banking ATM Activation step.

Once performed, your BDO Online Banking account will be available for viewing. You can now check your balance, make a fund transfer transaction, buy a load for your mobile phone and pay your bills online.

So far, I have met my goal in sharing my BDO Online Banking Account experience.

For me, I highly suggest that you do this online thingy. It saves a lot of time and avoids delay in your banking transaction. It also provides you 24/7 banking service which is really convenient.

Stay tuned for my next article on how to make a fund transfer using your BDO Online Banking Account. But for now, that’s it for me! Do you have any thoughts on my article? Share it with me!

We thought this would be a very easy task. With just a sprinkle of PHP magic and a little bit of Google Search, we already have our own Random Post Display on our Sidebar. But we’re wrong. The problem with the Random Post PHP code we found was it ruins the website’s Comment system. To elaborate what happened: When a user reads one of our blog post (e.g. Blog post # 1) and comments on it, his comments will be displayed to blog post # 2. Totally weird! We decided to remove temporarily the Random Post Display and try to work on the broken PHP Code.

After few hours fixing the code, we arrived to the new and improved Random Post Display without installing a WordPress Plug in.

The Code

Copy and paste the code below in your WordPress Theme File. You need to paste the codes where you want to see the Random post in action.

<ul class="RandomPost">
<?php
global $post;
$tmp_post = $post;
$args = array( 'numberposts' => 5, 'orderby' => 'rand', 'post_status' => 'publish', 'offset' => 1);
$rand_posts = get_posts( $args );
foreach( $rand_posts as $post ) : ?>
    <li><h2><a href="<?php the_permalink(); ?>"><?php the_title(); ?></a></h2><p><?php the_excerpt(); ?>
    </p></li>
<?php endforeach; ?>
</ul>
<?php $post = $tmp_post; // reset the $post to the original ?>

• Numberpost – how many post you would like to be displayed?
• Orderby – since this is a Random Post, we will assign “rand” to randomly select from the list of our blog post.
• Post_status – selects only the blog post which is on Publish status.
• Offset – number of post to displace or pass over.

Your random post display will appear with no formatting or probably depends on your WordPress Theme’s default CSS formatting. You can modify the look and feel of your Random Post display by writing new CSS styles.

Adding the Post Thumbnail in your Random Post Display

To be more appealing to the audience, we decided that our random post display will display its featured image. At this point, we need to add another few set of codes in our Function.php file.

add_theme_support('post-thumbnails');
add_image_size( 'custom-post-thumbnail', 80, 65  ); // assign any class name, width, height

This will enable you to assign the featured image in every post you want to publish. In this case, we need to integrate the featured image in the Random post display. What we need to do is modify the codes above and add this code:

<?php the_post_thumbnail( 'custom-post-thumbnail' ); ?>

Final Random Post with Post Thumbnail Display

We modified the codes to be more suitable for our needs? Feel free to make some changes and apply your own css styles.

<ul class="RandomPost">
	<?php
	global $post;
	$tmp_post = $post;
	$args = array( 'numberposts' => 7, 'orderby' => 'rand', 'post_status' => 'publish', 'offset' => 1);
	$rand_posts = get_posts( $args );
	foreach( $rand_posts as $post ) : ?>
	    <li>
		<a class="img-random" href="<?php the_permalink(); ?>" alt="<?php the_title(); ?>" title="<?php the_title(); ?>"><?php the_post_thumbnail( 'custom-post-thumbnail' ); ?></a>
		<h1><a href="<?php the_permalink(); ?>" alt="<?php the_title(); ?>" title="<?php the_title(); ?>"><?php the_title(); ?></a></h1>
		</li>
	<?php endforeach; ?>
</ul>
	<?php $post = $tmp_post; // reset the $post to the original ?>

Final Words.

While this is a solution that will favor many, many would still argue that it is easier to use a WordPress plug in. I agree on that. But in our case, we’re only beginners on WordPress world and we really want to expand our knowledge in PHP so instead of using a plug in we decided to make our own.

So what do you think of our WordPress Random Post with Thumbnail Display?

As part of my series blog, Excel Tutorials. I will first share to you the list of Microsoft Excel Shortcuts.

Microsoft Excel is constantly evolving beyond its previous version, with more great features being added every time Microsoft Excel gets updated.

For those of us who have been working with Microsoft Excel for a while, the chances are that we all have experienced periods of looking for easier way to do the task by just pushing a keyboard button, instead of using the mouse.

One of the great things about Excel is that you can easily maneuver by maximizing the potential of your keyboard by simply pushing the right keys to do a specific task.

The following lists contain CTRL combination shortcut keys, function keys, and some other common shortcut keys, along with descriptions of their functionality.

So! Here is the list of Microsoft Excel Keyboard Shortcuts that you should know!

CTRL combination shortcut keys

To give you a better understanding on how to use the Excel shortcuts, let’s use the first on the list. In my first example below, to switch between worksheet tabs (from left to right), push the CTRL key and Page Up (PgUp). The plus sign (+) simply means AND.

Function keys

Other Useful Shortcut Keys

Instead of depending on the mouse the whole time, try to use the Excel Keyboard Shortcuts. It will make you faster doing you’re excel work! Have a great day!

Source: Go Media Office photos by Pete Maric

Eight months ago, when our Nuffnang earnings reached the P2,000 Nuffnang Earnings threshold, (honestly) we just ignored it. We were not excited at all. We didn’t pay any attention at this and had no plans on withdrawing our Nuffnang earnings at that moment. We said that it was too early that time to have that small amount, let it grow for the mean time. We felt that it was too small for us to celebrate our hard work. Let it stay there for quite some time. It was our long term goal is to “rob” Nuffnang with a P100K revenue from them. But we all know that was hard to reach.

Then  there comes the regular financial crisis. It hit every one of us. It took us few minutes to decide that we should pull the trigger on our Nuffnang Earnings.

Everyone agreed to pocket each and everyone’s share. So here we are now, talking about how we withdraw our Nuffnang Earnings.

How I withdraw that Nuffnang Earnings

The method on withdrawing our nuffnang earnings isn’t rocket science. It’s also not some wildly colorful secret that you’ve not been told. It is one thing though, and I’d like to share it with you.

What will happen here is (first) you open your Nuffnang Account. On your dashboard, click on the Earnings. It will display all the advertiser loaded by Nuffnang to your account. You can also see how much you earned on each Advertiser.

Once you’ve reached the Nuffnang Earnings Threshold, a button Cash Out will appear at the bottom of the Earnings page. Click on it.

Now, this is the part where you write the Payee Name (which is you, the owner of Nuffnang Account), your address and your Postal/Zip Code. The purspose of this (I guess) is by default, Nuffnang will send your Nuffnang Earnings Cheque through snail mail. We abide that, I (as the owner of Nuffnang Account) carefully filled up what the required fields needed. But there’s a work around for that, I don’t want my Nuffnang Earnings to be mailed to me. It’s too risky and I have no trust on Postal Service System of our country. I’ve been hearing stories how the Postal Office Personnel intentionally opened their mails or packages and steal anything valuable.

Anyway, I’ll discuss more of this as we move along.

After complete the process in Nuffnang website. I opened my twitter account and send a tweet to Nuffang Philippines and ask:

Is it possible to have my Nuffnang earnings to be deposited in my Bank?

I waited for a few minutes and they replied to my tweet and said:

Yes, please send an email to accounting.ph@nuffnang.com with your bank details.

I instantly composed an email to my outlook stating all my Bank details and sent it right away. I received a confirmation email from Same Plotado (Nuffnang Accounting Personnel) confirming that she received my email and take note of the bank details. My Nuffnang earnings will be available after thirty (30) days and be deposited in my personal Bank Account.

It was my weekly tradition to check my BPI Express Online account, and after almost a month of waiting, a wild Cheque deposit appears on the list of my transaction (See Image Below). It was a Local Cheque Deposit with a description of “Bonifacio High Street Express”. Knowing that the Nuffnang Philippines Headquarters is in Global City Taguig and Bonifacio High Street is just a few steps away, I am really sure that that cheque deposit came from Nuffnang. Consider also the amount, it’s almost the same after deducting the bank charges.

I never contacted Nuffnang again to confirm if that was my Nuffnang Earnings because I am 100% sure already. You can also view your Nuffnang Dasboard (under Earnings page), you can see there if it’s still in “Unpaid” or “Paid” status.

Well guys, I hope you learned on this very simple and common sense tutorial. Thank you and have a great day ahead! :)