Yes, now you can and do it easily. I had attempted to create my own wordpress theme previously, but I couldn’t do it successfully. Too many parts and complications and I am not an experienced designer. Worse, my PHP (which Wordpress is based on) skills suck to the core and beyond. So this led to all sort of problems and confusion when I attempted to create my theme. But now I have discovered a tutorial which makes designing your very own blog much easier than ever. You don’t need to go to different sources for information. You can read everything you need in order to create your theme on just one site!
You can view the tutorial here: How to write your own wordpress theme. After reading the simple tutorial and getting the basics of theme design, I feel much more confident to create my own theme rather than rip from others which I have been doing all along. This tutorial deals with the basics and allows you to quickly and easily figure out which parts and code goes where. And it is very well-written so you should be able to follow it with any major problems. However, this is for the beginner and doesn’t include any CSS tutorial (which actually is the main way you will style your wordpress blog). So, you will definitely need some CSS experience. I am still brushing up on my CSS coding skills but I should have at least a little of the basics on CSS.
I will start my next attempt to create my next theme soon. I hope that it will work out fine. I am looking at simple and minimalist kind of theme. Very likely with a few lite colours, very little graphics and simple borders and lines. I find that such themes are much more pleasing to the eye and they usually loads faster due to the lack of bandwidth intensive graphics. What do you think?
Take a look at this very well-designed website – baekdal.com. Nice huh? They have used very matching colours and it’s sort of neat. I will explain later what I mean by “sort of”. And the layout of the blog is just great. This site shows how well a simple layout can create a very beautiful website. You can also see that it’s all about borders and lines (and of course nice photos/graphics). I usually like blogs with smaller fonts, because nowadays with big LCD monitors, small fonts shouldn’t be a problem for most. Anyway, this blog has rather big fonts, which I don’t find it appropriate considering that the blog title itself isn’t that big. Actually the post title itself is bigger than the actual blog title! I am not a snicker for tradition, but this feels a bit weird to me. Or maybe I am just too old fashioned.
And with such large fonts, this blog has crammed a lot of content into it’s main page. Yes, I have to agree, it is sure very neat. And it still looks neat even after you scroll and scroll right to the bottom. The thing is that the main page has more than 30 blog posts and articles! That’s a hell lot of content in one page. Sure, they use snipplets, but won’t it look better if they have only like 10 to 15 articles on the main page rather than 40 articles all stuffed into one page? In my opinion, that is just too much for a single page. Although I believe it is rather good for SEO since Search Engine Crawlers will bound to crawl those juicy links.
Anyway, kudos to a well-designed blog. You may be wondering why I am blogging about beautiful looking blogs these days. Well, if you have been reading this blog you will know why – I am doing research, hoping to get ideas and inspiration to create a very “professional looking” website for my company. If you are a web design professional and willing to do it for free, please contact me. Yes, I am that cheapskate.
I am using Avira’s Antivir as my antivirus software. It’s the personal edition and thus it is free. And I think it’s very good especially since it uses very little resource (unlike some other very famous antivirus software which I shall not mention here). My PC isn’t exactly high end, so not having a resource hog antivirus software is a real time saver for me. However, I seem to face some problem with Antivir recently. It’s very slow when you try to update it’s virus definition. I am not saying that it is downloading like 20kbps or something, but it is actually downloading at 1.3kbps! Yes, that’s lower than dial-up. And worse of all, sometimes it will just fail after you tried for 30 minutes or so. Got me all fed up and pissed.
Yes, it’s free. Yes, I am not paying a single cent for using their software. But I think they should at least provide some sort of speeds for their virus definitions. I mean, we are talking about viruses here. It is not some sort of game patch! It’s an pretty important piece of protection for your PC. In fact, I think it’s the most important piece of software you should have. And allowing home users to use their free software is kind of like advertising for your product. If home users feel that Antivir is good, they will recommend it for office use. I think everyone knows that this is where the money is – from corporations and businesses.
If you are going to bash me for being a cheapskate and someone who doesn’t appreciate what others had done for you, please don’t. While I agree with you that they have developed a solid (and free) piece of software, I think they should at least try to work out a solution instead of just saying “their servers are overloaded”. There are a lot of sources out there willing to act as mirrors and we could use those mirrors to update our virus definitions instead. This will also help reduce the load on Avira’s own servers. It’s a win-win situation for all.
Again, I would like to stress that this company did not pay me to “promote” their site. I stumbled across this site when I was doing some research and trying to steal some ideas for some of my other projects. So here it is – hickdesign. Well, this company is based in the UK and they do some pretty nice looking graphics and logos. If only I could afford to hire them and let them design me a solid logo which everyone will remember and recognize. You can browse through some of their work and you will be amazed at their logos and icons. You know the logo for Firefox (looks like some fox whose tail is on fire), it’s designed by them!
The main thing that attracts me to this site is the way it is designed. It’s made up of simple shapes (CSS based) with clear and very beautiful graphics. Nothing super fanciful and they don’t have any flash or whatever. Just good placement of their graphics making it extremely pleasing to the eye. And what a superb colour theme and combination they have too! I think the way they present their site in such a way that it feels simple, yet complicated enough to impress me. The designers certainly have some skill and might I add, taste. I always wondered the amount of patience and hardwork to create such a masterpiece. And just think of the amount of time needed to create those little icons and graphics! If only I have the skill and the patience to do that.
They also do web designing for their clients as well. I visited some of their sample clients’ sites and I am again impressed by what they have done. They seemed to take a lot of pride in doing their website which is rather rare at this age and time. And by seeing what they have done, it has sort of inspired me to re-do some of my other projects. I really hope I get a better result. If you find any nice looking websites or blogs, please let us know so that I can err…..get inspired by it.
Favicons are those little graphics which you can see on your browser. If you are using Firefox, you can see it directly on the left of your URL bar. So like when you browse to this blog, you can find the flag icon on the URL address bar. Yes, it’s that icon. For Internet Explorer and depending on which version you are using, you can find them on either when you click on your favourites or for Internet Explorer 7, you will find them exactly like on Firefox. Yes, everyone like Favicons. They are great. Why? Well because they look great on your Firefox and on Internet Explorer’s favourites. Other than that, I am not too sure why it is great.
Oh, if you are thinking of setting up a favicon for your website, you must realize that Internet Explorer is a bit flaky when it comes to favicons. You need the 16×16 version with 256 colours icon. If your icon has different versions in it, it will not appear in Internet Explorer 7! It will work without problems in Firefox, but somehow Microsoft is too lazy to do anything about it and we are left with some problems. A lot of online sites which help generate favicons for their visitors still had 32×32 version of the favicon and too often they would ask why can’t they see their favicons in Internet Explorer 7. Well, just strip that version out and it would work fine.
To create a favicon which works for all versions, you need to create a 16×16 pixel image and make sure it has 256 colours. After you have that image, you need to change it to an “icon”. It’s not as simple as renaming the file as “.ico”. You need a graphics editing software to do it. You can try Irfanview. Just open the image file and then save as “.ico”. Or you can just use those online favicon generators like Chami.
And if you are thinking of setting up your very favicon for your Wordpress blog, well, it’s very simple. Just upload the favicon file (favicon.ico) to your webserver document html root, and then download the header.php from your template folder. Then with a text editor, you need to do some minor changes to it. In between the <head> and </head> tag, add this code to it:
<link rel=”shortcut icon” href=”favicon.ico” mce_href=”favicon.ico” >
If you want the favicon to appear on every page of your blog, then use this code instead:
<link rel=”shortcut icon” href=”<?php echo get_settings(’home’); ?>/favicon.ico” >
Upload it back to where you have downloaded it from and overwrite the old file. That’s it! You are on your way to looking good like my blog.
What do you know, I have decided to add some small graphics to this blog! Pretty exciting stuff. They are little different colour bricks type of graphics which is supposed to be very matching colours. Some people had complained that this blog is a bit dull and isn’t all that exciting in the looks department. So, being someone who listens to my visitors’ comments, I decided to change all that by adding some more eye candy. As you can see there is a little logo next to all the titles, including the page and blog post titles. The logo looks like some French or Croatian flag or something. And the graphics themselves take up very little space so I needn’t waste much bandwidth. I know it’s not much, but this is all that I can do. If only I had paid more attention during class, I perhaps could have done a little better. But then I didn’t, so this is as good as it gets for me. Or maybe I should hire some professional to re-design the blog for me? Na, I don’t have the money for that. Heck, I don’t even have enough money for beer.
So what do you guys think of these little add-ons? Good enough to attract visitors? I think I will be adding a much bigger logo soon. This way, nobody will forget my logo once they saw it. It’s a good way to make people remember my blog. Hey, this is what I call a smart marketing move. It could even be more effective than SEO! I don’t want my blog to be easily forgettable. It’s has to be unique. So what is more unique than to have a extremely large logo right smack in the middle of the blog? Next to come – favicons! Yes, those little images on your URL address bar.
Oh, if you are wondering what I am using to design that flag graphics, I am using Banner Maker Pro. It’s a pretty easy to use software which is supposed to help create logos for you. I find that although it is not powerful and lack certain features, it’s good enough if you are looking for a fast, simple to use logo designer without complicated and time consuming tutorials. It took me all but 10 minutes to design the 2 different types of flags. However, if you are looking for something more impressive in features, you will not find it in Banner Maker Pro. Try Corel’s PaintShop or AdobeIllustrator. But you will have to be prepared to pay a large sum for it.
Surprisingly, I finally found time to do this change. It is to change the way the title is created for each blog post. If you had paid attention previously to my blog, you will realize that the blog title comes first then followed by the archive and then the blog post title. So let’s say my blog title is “Happy Bloggers’ Blog” and my blog post title is “Top Ten Ways to Create a Happy Blog”, the title shown on your browser will be “Happy Bloggers’ Blog >Blog Archive >Top Ten Ways to Create a Happy Blog”. Well, if you know a little about Search Engine Optimization (SEO), you will know that this is not optimal. Definitely not good for SEO purposes since the beginning title of your blog post is not your actual title, it’s the title of your blog! And this goes for all your blog posts as well. I also discovered that this little “thing” can really hurt you in your rankings, since the title tag is one of the most important on-site optimization techniques you can ever have.
So I found this little nice plugin for Wordpress – Optimal Title. Cheesy title aside, this is a very simple but useful mod for your wordpress blog. It actually moves the position of the separator to after the title rather than before. All you need to do is to upload this plugin and then activate it. After which you just need to edit headers.php to reflect the plugin and change how your blog title appears. You can do that in 5 minutes and you will see the results very soon. And best of all, the latest version will work on all Wordpress releases. You needn’t worry about that anymore, and upgrades should be no problems.
Well, I will wait a while and see how this plugin will help me blog since I just did it today. I just hope that my blog will be able to handle the bandwidth needed for the crowd of visitors that I expect to come. Who knows, one day, my blog will be number one in nearly every term in the Search Engines? One can dream right?
If you live in Singapore and you are quite active online, I am sure you have heard of a little greedy company called Odex by now. Yes, that’s the Singapore company going around “suing” everyone they can lay their hands on for downloading illegal anime from the P2P networks. It looks like we have our very own little Rambus right here in Singapore! What they do is to get the IP addresses of downloaders from some sort of tracker in the US, then go to Singnet and other ISPs and get the actual physical address of those IP addresses, after which they send threatening letters to those addresses. Yes, this is now the latest breed of Singapore Entrepreneurs. All you have to do is to sue or threaten.
I am actually quite ashamed of these people. They are lacking integrity. I mean using the law (or the lack of it) to get cash if your business is not doing well is kind of low, even for a Singaporean businessman.
Nowadays you don’t have to think of a great idea to start a business. Heck, you don’t even need to do anything innovative. Just buy old unwanted stuff that nobody wants and try to sell them. And if nobody buys them, blame it on illegal downloaders and threaten them for cash. So now if your business is not doing well, this gives all of you “businessman” something to consider. Just threaten others with heavy fines and jail times! What’s easier than that. You may even make more money than from legitimate businesses. Think of this, if you send 1,000 letters, telling them to pay you S$5000 each or else and since most will pay since they don’t want any more problems, that would be S$5 million dollars in the bank at the cost of a few pieces of paper and the services of a photocopier shop. I mean, sure you need to get the IP addresses first, that may cost you a bit. But hey you could do even better, start your very own Bittorrent software and trace the IP addresses yourself.
I think I will start a software company myself selling old outdated software for the DOS operating system and try to market it to the dumb ass Singaporeans. And if Singaporeans don’t buy, I will claim that our prices is already so low and with that, it means that it is not the software I am selling is crap but there are a lot of people illegally downloading software. I will then start to send threatening letters to households telling them to pay me S$5000 or else I will raid their homes. And just when you thought that Singaporeans do not have any entrepreneurial spirit, they surprise you completely.
I don’t want to shock you guys or anything, but it’s true. I hardly get any money from Adsense (the little advertisements at the bottom of the top post)! Yes, this super high traffic blog with superbly written blogs and articles doesn’t get any money from it’s advertisements! I am not lying to you at all. And if I don’t get any money from that super rich Google, I get very grumpy when I get no love. You have no idea how grumpy I get. Sometimes I bite off the heads of rabbits and bunnies that comes along my path.
So, to save all those cute little furry animals, what can I do to ease this grumpiness I have? I can take a long holiday to some beach in Hawaii or maybe a trip down to Bali? But then again, how do I find money to finance these trips? How about I try other advertising companies? That would be a better choice for me right? I mean, if I don’t have money, I can’t spend it at all. So being a very nice guy, I have complied a lits of known advertisers (usually Per-per click kind of system). They are arranged in no particular order.
1. Quigo’s Adsonar For Publishers -Maybe a more exclusive group to get into, they have few publishers. I think they should pay somewhat better than Adsense but you need to hit a certain figure each month for them to keep you on board. Well, that’s what I heard anyway.
2. Clickstor – This is a very adsense type of system. So if you are familiar with adsense, getting used to Clickstor shouldn’t be a problem. I had heard good things about Clickstor but you still need to be aware of these advertisement businesses.
3. AdBrite – Another one of those adsense styled web services. You get text and graphic banner ads. It seemed that AdBrite has quite an array of publishers and advertisers in their fold.
4. Targetpoint – Seemed to have quite a number of options for publishers like Adpoint (normal content relevant advertisements), Exitpoint (very likely advertisement pop-ups when someone leaves your site), Imagepoint (visual ads) and Underpoint (pop-up ads which everyone hates).
5. Bidvertiser – Looks like Adsense styled advertisers are all the rage on the Internet these days. So you now have Bidvertiser. What is great about Bidvertiser is that they will pay you through cheque monthly even if you only US$10.
6. Chitika – Slightly different contextual advertiser. They offer different ways for you to get money from them like eminimalls (sort of like an online shop in your own website), related products unit (should be like an contextual ad), ShopLinc (just like a product endorsement) among others. Good for Chitika to think of new ideas to help improve the crappy online advertisement industry.
7. AdEngage – Claims to pay publishers 75% of all the income generated from them selling ads. But how do we know how much the company is making from selling ads in the first place?
I am pretty sure there are many other online advertisement businesses like Yahoo VPN and so on, but we are interested in only the less famous ones. If you find out that is good or at least reputable enough, then give us a heads up on it. We are always looking at good alternatives to Google Adsense. Or if you have any experience with these companies, we would very much like to hear about it. Please share it with the rest of us.
I thought I was too old to get attacked by pimples, but it happened. One side of my face was attacked by pimples, and it left a lot of little red spots which looked absolutely ugly. Man, pimples suck. I look like a 15 year old kid who just reached puberty. And worse of all, there is a big one right on my nose. It looked more like a boil. It first started like all normal pimples – small, but then it suddenly grew and grew and now it’s like the only thing on my face. I had to apply those brownish lotion on my face and now, at least my face look like a human face. And sadly, I enjoy squeezing my pimples. I don’t know why. I find that pimples are meant to be squeezed. I guess it should be the thrill of feeling a exploding pimple and the yellowish puss rushing out, sort of like a volcano. Queer? Yes, I am, especially with that blemish on my face. Seriously, who isn’t?
You know the real trick in tackling the pimple problem? Just plain water. Once in a while, I will wash my face with soap but mainly I will just wash with water. And your hands should be very clean when you touch your face. If you overwash with soap or cleanser, you will find that your face will generate even more oil to compensate and that would make your skin problem worse. Just frequent washing with plain water is enough. And drink a lot of fluids. I find eating fruits and vegetables would also help.
How did it happen? I am not sure but I think it is most likely caused by a dirty pillow because only one side of my face is affected badly by it. Perhaps it is due to something I ate recently? Or maybe because I never bath for a month now? Whatever it was, I hope that it would never happen again. If it happens too often, it could spell the end of my social life. Or maybe I will just attract 15 year old girls?
