From the monthly archives:
February 2008
Widget Ready Wordpress Themes - Adding More To Your blog
Wordpress blogging just took the next step forward with widget ready wordpress themes! Most wordpress users had become pretty much used to customizing the design and layout of their wordpress blogs, by changing the themes every so often. With so many free themes available on the internet today, it gave the users plenty of options to select from. But widgets have been something different. They have opened the possibilities of customizing the side-bar functionalities to a completely new horizon! Widgets have made it easier than ever before, for the end users, to customize their wordpress themes, without having to learn any kind of programming.
What Are Wordpress Widgets?
Wordpress widgets are nothing but blocks of codes that make it very easy for you to convert the sidebar of your wordpress blog or site, from a simple “drag and drop” menu to a totally hi-fi, sophisticated, multi-functionality equipped “task bar”! With widget ready wordpress themes, you can very quickly modify the design and general layout of the site, without having to know HTML, CSS or PHP. Whether you want to “tweak” some simple visual elements, like the color scheme, fonts, your “banner picture”, or install extra plug-ins to give more functionality to your readers, widget ready themes let you do all that, much faster than before!
There are about a hundred different widgets that can be used with wordpress themes, and they exist under several different classifications, such as photography, sports, music, cookery, pets, income, discussion and so many others. So it becomes very easy to customize your site/blog according to whatever you care about. However, these widgets are compatible with only the newer widget ready wordpress themes. In case you want to use one of the older themes with widgets, some modifications will have to be done to make the theme widget-friendly first.
Customizing Wordpress Themes
Customization of widget ready wordpress themes holds a lot of promise. It isn’t exactly rocket-science to code up a widget, but, never-the-less, it is beyond the PHP skills of most theme designers to allow their widgets to be customized by end users! So if you think you’ve got what it takes to “cook up” these “chunks of code” called widgets, the wordpress community would welcome you with open arms! You can modify basic features, like whether the blog posts show complete entries or just excerpts, or you can change the number of posts listed on your blog index. Even though wordpress is already adding to its vast collection of widgets, for users with all kinds of whims and fancies, there are still hundreds of themes available that can be customized to give completely different widget functionalities to the end users.
However, there are certain things you need to take care of when you are designing your own widget ready wordpress themes. You must make sure that theme can be easily installed on any existing blog or site without much “disturbance” to the content of the site. The theme should also be easily customizable for any blog. Hence it is advisable to first test your theme on a test blog and site, before releasing it to the public, to see if it can support all the miscellaneous widgets and plug-ins that people might want to use on their real blogs and sites.
About the Author
Richard Bulla share his views about Wordpress Theme and its features. For more information on Free Wordpress Theme, please visit www.wordpressthemes.weblogs.us
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Has Your Website Been Google Slapped?
Getting to the top of the search engines has never been easy and the bad news is that it has gotten even harder, especially if you are trying to peak Mt. Google
Recently, with respect to information quality, Google raised the bar even higher with another algorithm tweak that effectively reshuffled (and in some cases evaporated) page rank across thousands of web pages.
Thus if your website’s PR (or that of its inner pages) recently stole quietly away in the middle of the night with nary a goodbye take consolation in the knowledge that you are not alone; this calamity has befallen countless others.
The latest Google algorithm tweak/update has been pretty widespread and non-discriminatory in nature, targeting both new sites and well established veteran sites too.
In the good ole days it used to be that a gray page-rank bar was indicative of a website/web page that had been banned from the Google index but that seems to no longer be the case. Lately it would appear that being grayed-out merely reflects a webpage/website that is under probation (of course in certain cases a gray PR band could actually reflect a banned website/web page).
So what does this all really mean?
Google Web Paradise
Understanding Google’s goals and objectives is fundamental to search-engine optimizing your website effectively and correctly within their guidelines. The first thing you need to appreciate is that online search is a business. Google is Top Dog in the search engine business for two very simple reasons:
1. Google returns the most accurate results for any given search query.
2. Of all the search engines, Google has the fastest retrieval rate for almost all queries.
Being number one for both the above listed parameters obviously has major advantages; it ensures that more people flock to use your search engine and, as has been proven time and time again, where the crowds gather the advertisers hover not far behind.
Advertisers want to get the best bang for their buck so they will naturally tend to spend their dollars where they can get the greatest percentage of targeted and relevant eyeballs; which means advertising on the major search engines (of which surprise, surprise) Google is the leader!
Google’s domination of online search is a tangential derivation of the saying “The Richer Get Richer,” because as Google gets better and leaves the other search engines floundering in their dust, more and more people (and advertisers) will naturally tend to gravitate to them!
The New SEO Horizon
The first thing that should be understood is that the debate about the existence of the Google Sandbox has been laid to rest once and for all. It exists and has become even more expansive as well as having gotten more rigid!
As of January 2005, Google had over 100,000 servers with which to store data in its cache index. The cache index is where Google stores a copy of every page that the googlebot crawls on the internet.
Those web pages that eventually make it into the Google Primary Index (the index that displays the resulting listings in response to a query) are the pages that have been evaluated as most relevant and qualified for that particular query.
Web pages or websites that Google evaluates to be comprised of largely duplicate material that is already in its index are relegated to the supplemental index (the backburner). The supplemental index contains web pages and/or websites that Google considers, for all intents and purposes, to be irrelevant.
In other words you do not want your website to end up in the supplemental index because nobody will ever get to see it!
In 2006 Google suffered a very major server-overload crisis. Since then they have acquired several more servers, but this new algorithm tweak/update tends to suggest that they are leaning much more towards the principle of efficiency-and-quality versus volume-and-quantity.
In essence it appears that Google is adopting an approach geared towards maximizing efficiency of storage and organization of data. This by its very nature means restricting the amount of content that gets crawled, cached and eventually indexed (i.e., saves server space) as opposed to trying to accommodate every single piece of data that is drifting across the internet.
This certainly may go some distance explaining the zeal and passion with which they executed operation “gray band” that affected thousands of websites and web pages.
Recovering From Being G-Slapped
If your website/web pages have recently been demoted (loss of page rank) or now shamefully display a grayed-out PR bar where once a shimmering green existed, then your website has indeed been Google slapped!
So where do you go from there?
There’s a saying that states “understanding the nature of the beast is the first step in divining its true intent” (which is just a fancy way of saying: if you know what makes something tick then you’ll be better able to predict its future actions.”
Keeping that in mind, it is possible to deduce the following aspects from the May 2007 Google update:
1. A gray PR band will be the norm for all new websites and web pages; in other words think “probation period.” The length of time the PR bar remains grayed-out for any particular website/web page is dependent upon a number of factors which include:
a) How unique the content on a web page is. Pages that boast highly original and unique content will tend to be released from the gray zone quicker.
b) A web page that has a lot of unique traffic will have a shorter probation period (note that the origin of that traffic is something the search engines factor in to rule out sneaky play by individuals attempting to game the search engines).
c) Links! Links! Links! Yes, when it comes to SEO it is impossible to ignore the link factor. A page that “naturally” acquires a good number of topically related links will experience a shorter probation period.
d) Greater link activity will increase the importance of the destination page whereby such a web page will tend to attain higher PR quicker. This makes sense because a hyperactive links denotes popularity (websites that are popular are so because people find them useful).
e) The amount of time people spend on your site is also an important parameter that the search engines take into account. People tend to spend more time on websites that they find useful and the search engines can determine that fact through the use of sophisticated tracking scripts.
Bottom line: It is becoming increasingly difficult to game the search engines (the use of blackhat techniques) as their algorithms get smarter and more sophisticated.
The May 2007 Google update amply illustrates that Google is aggressively gunning for its vision of Web Paradise which by necessity means smacking down hard on websites that offer little useful function to that vision!
Simply put, if you wish your website to advance up the SERPs you need to make it user oriented. Visitor use and appreciation of a website appears to be the single strongest factor in determining that website’s eventual position on the SERPs in Google’s brave new Web Paradise!
Internet Marketing Online
About the Author
Ba Kiwanuka is the webmaster of http://www.internetbusinessmart.com
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Template vs Custom Web Site
There are many opinions out there on if a template based web site is any good. Well, the answer is or course it is. Buying a template and creating a web site can save thousands of dollars. Looking through the web you will find that there that there are millions of places to find templates to create a new web site.
Now, the real question should be can you create a web site from a template that will ultimately make you money. The answer again, of course, but this is where the average business owner should let a professional do their job. Customizing a template to meet your needs and optimizing it to be search engine friendly can take quite a bit of coding and experience. Anybody can create a web site but the average Joe has no chance verses an experienced web designer of creating a fully functional web site.
A huge myth out there is that a web site needs to be a “custom design” to be worth anything. Every template you find is a “custom design” but you are only getting a bare bones web site that must be filled with your own rich content. Some of the advantages are that the lay out and navigation are done, the template comes loaded with pictures you can use, sometimes you’ll even luck into flash headers or menus.
Just remember that customizing a template will usually cut your web site cost at least in half. Now, on to custom web site designs, here you will find that you have complete control over the look and feel of your new web site. You ultimately have control over everything, but these freedoms do not come cheap. A custom web site can cost anywhere from 1500.00 to 3500.00 so do your research. We have all heard horror stories from a friend about someone paying 3500.00 for web site that is a piece of crap.
So how do you know who to buy from or what to buy? Like I said before, do your research. Creating a custom web site takes a lot of planning and information so be prepared to spend a little time with your designer. When it is all said and done though, with a custom web site design you know that your company or business will have a unique design, fresh and original that no body else has. This is a huge plus considering how many web sites are out there. When considering whether to buy a template or a custom design here are a few key factors to consider.
Budget : What is your budget? How much can you really spend on this new web site Time: How much time do you have to get this project complete? Return on Investment: Depending on which route you take, will the new web site be worth it? Goal: What is the purpose of getting a new web site? Are you only providing information to potential clients or an interactive fully automated on line store?
These are just a couple things to consider but at least you have a couple starting points to decide Template vs Custom Web Site.
About the Author
Andrew Braudway Freelance web designer http://www.agbdesign.com
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Web Design Wisdom
If reading big thick books just isn’t your thing, see if you can master some of the idiosyncrasies of Flash with ready made website templates. By now most of you already know that website templates can save you a lot of time and effort, but did you know they can also be wonderful as a gentle introduction to the world of web design? Think about it, by having access to the website templates source files we’re actually being given the opportunity to be taught and inspired by the combine efforts of many very skilled developers.
This is perfect for designing reusable apps such as pre-loaders, image galleries and contact forms where’s with the website templates you don’t need to reinvent the wheel anymore. CSS templates can be used to study two to three column layouts and style rules, which you can later apply to any project. Another good example are scalable layouts templates, commonly knows as liquid templates or stretched templates, with one of these ready made liquid templates you’ll be able to master the art of getting around varied screen sizes and resolutions. My personal favorite templates are XML Flash templates because of their unique feature which allows the content to be loaded onto the Flash templates via any text file – a function to keep handy if your ever around Flash.
Yeah, you could spend hundreds of hour reading tutorials on all sorts of topics by rhetorical experts peddling everything from color schemes to grid design, however most of that is either to technical or just isn’t practical in the real world where clients demand more professionalism. The great thing about premium templates is that they are created by professional web designers using the latest technology. In other words these ready-made website templates are made by people that understand typography, layout things like that; skills one could only wish to achieve after years of practice as a graphics designer and or programmer.
Where were website templates 10 years ago, when I first got into Flash? Anyway, these are just some of the benefits of website templates, I’m sure there are many more so please feel free to leave me your thoughts, comments and or experiences you may have had using templates. Also, mustn’t forget to mention that most premium templates shops will even give you a website template free so you can evaluate the quality of the product and try your skill before you buy.
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