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This one was introduced to me by Scolls, it’s yet another tutorial for creating your very own WordPress theme. You can find it here on Urban Giraffe. This tutorial is a little more detailed than the previous one I had read and it explains everything from location to style to functions. Everything. Which is of course very good, especially for beginners like me which can’t figure out one end from the other. There isn’t too much tech talk in the articles. And I can see that a lot of effort had been put in into creating this tutorial for us.

I think the main reason why I like this tutorial is that it explains clearly step by step the entire theme creation process. The authour doesn’t think that you know everything and he/she strives to give the reader details and explanations so that it gets less confusing as it goes on. Although I have a little understanding on this WordPress theme creation, this tutorial does clear up some doubt I have with WordPress. It even tells you how server-side PHP works! It comes in 4 parts and by the end of the fourth part, you should have nearly everything you need to create your very own theme for WordPress. It starts with how the theme works, then followed by header and footer, next comes the sidebar and finally the content. This very smooth flow of the process makes understanding and working with WordPress much easier.

Oh, the tutorial comes in the downloadable pdf format as well. But you need to pay for it. And you can even purchase a “professional” printed copy of the ebook.

And if you keep on browsing on this blog, you will find a lot of other information on WordPress as well. They have several  articles on  how to make use of WordPress like how to translate into other languages, how to separate comments and pings and so on. I think you will find it interesting to have a read. You can also download various WordPress plugins from their site.  Some of these plugins are pretty useful to have.

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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?

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Being a generous person, I have created a list of free DNS host on the Internet. Anyone looking for a free DNS host should start looking from this list. This comes from my little research on my email server project which I have to either get DNS hosting from my ISP or use a third party DNS host. I choose to use a third party DNS hosting. Why? Because it is more responsive than the DNS hosting from my ISP. I really don’t trust my ISP, especially from the huge number of downtimes they keep having.

Anyway, most DNS host should be reliable. I have tried using several of them and none has failed me yet. Although I have to admit, I have only been using third party DNS hosting (not my webhost’s DNS) for a few months only. Still, I have seen claims of free DNS host having no downtime on their entire network. Not sure whether it is true or not, but I think it is credible enough, since DNS hosting is not really a resource hungry process. However, I have seen a few free DNS host shuting down but this is most likely a commercial decision than anything else.

Is it surprising that you see domain registrars offering webhosting/email hosting, but not many of them offer DNS hosting. I don’t know why. I think that all domain registrars should offer their customers the option of DNS hosting as this makes change of webhost a faster and smoother process. I know that DNS hosting is not really a big money making thing like webhosting and most people don’t care/know about DNS hosting at all, but hey, basics first baby, basics first.

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Yes, I got bored and decided to write an article/guide/walkthrough of how to setup an email server. Well, actually recently I just setup one and I hope to use my experience to help others who are thinking of setting up an email server for their own use or for their company. It’s surprisingly easy to do but there are bits and pieces which need to be resolved first before the server can actually be considered properly setup.

In my opinion, setting up a mail server in your home is not a practical one. Especially if you rely on your emails for communication. It is better to get a “professional” email provider to host your mails for you. But what this is good is for experience. You will learn a lot from actually setting up the mail server then from reading what others do. You can see that there are a lot more than just building a server and installing a few pieces of software. Heck, I learned more in one week on DNS setup than what the learned from about 2 years of being a webmaster. I didn’t even know or cared about PTR or SPF records before, now I know why it is important.

So here it goes, my little article on how to setup an email server.

Please note that this little article is not exhaustive, there may be some holes or errors in it. So please if you find any mistakes or errors, tell me so that I can correct it. And if you have anything to add to this guide, you should also inform me.

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