CMS

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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One of the key characteristics of Web 2.0 is participation, collaboration and moderation through the use of web applications. Web 2.0 sites derive their power from the human connections and network effects from this characteristic that is made possible, and grow in effectiveness the more people use them.

The idea of “participation, collaboration and moderation” can take many forms. If you look back history, bulletin boards are one form, online forums are another, online multiplayer games, content management systems (e.g. Wikis, Joomla), dating sites and classifieds as well. If not for features that enable multiple users to create their own space within a website via registering accounts or at least leave a message (like a comment in a blog), the communication culture would have been one-way (from the webmaster to the visitors) and remain stuck in 1.0.

Why would a webmaster want to go Web 2.0? We learned that social networkers want to expand their personal network of online friends. On the other hand, the webmaster desires to build up a core group of active participants who unconsciously help to sustain the ‘liveliness’ and therefore the longevity of the website and its agenda or interests while the overall database of users expand. In this manner, a lot of the effort that goes into building the database (or list) becomes very much hands-off for the webmaster. There’s leverage. This is also where moderation comes in.

The role of the webmaster naturally becomes that of the moderator, whose job is to maintain some semblance of order (but not to the point of creating a restrictive environment) and general site maintenance. It gets better when the webmaster can promote participants into moderators themselves, and more and more s/he becomes the “silent puppetmaster” behind the scene without doing much. It may not be easy, but the whole mindset of being a moderator is to gain confidence in just “letting it be” and letting his/her site runs by itself.

Now that the webmaster’s motivation is addressed, s/he must find ways to avoid competition by finding new twists to contribute to the Web 2.0 bandwagon. Much as new sites keep popping up in recent months, somehow no 2 sites are made the same and they certainly enjoy a good amount of traffic anyway. It would be better when you can boil down social networking to the context of a specific niche, like a site to exchange Mexican recipes or talk about Ferrari car accessories or business opportunities in Central Asia. You can better target the type of people you are looking for and it also gives them a sharper sense of purpose to engage with and within your site.

At the end of the day, social networking is all about sharing valuable content and making friends. The successful Web 2.0 webmaster is one who knows how to tap on this human desire to the fullest and consistently encourages such a desire to grow within the culture of the social network he has created by offering further privileges for more prominent members. Really, there’s no better way for them to build up credibility and make their personalities known than to be consistently ‘alive’ and ‘happening’ on the Net. From the SEO standpoint of view, you can also accumulate more backlinks and subsequently more traffic to your social networking site.

About the Author

Nelson Tan is the webmaster behind Internet Mastery Center. Download $347 worth of FREE Internet Marketing gifts at Internet Mastery Center.

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Foamers.net introduces two new Template products designed for Joomla! and Mambo CMS (Content Managements Systems). The first thing you need to know is that Joomla/Mambo is an easy to install, simple to manage, and reliable PHP/MySQL-based content management systems for publishing content on the world wide web and intranets. They have all the major functionality you would want from a CMS, including a user-friendly templates system and over five thousand Plugins, Components and Modules combined.

What’s a Plugin? Plugins are distributed under the terms of the GNU/GPL License for the purpose of enhancing functionality and customization. Meaning, you get to reap the rewards and it doesn’t cost anything. The Mamboassistance’s e-commerce solution for Joomla!/Mambo, for example, allows you to sell your products and services directly, while utilizing the full order tracking capabilities of osCommerce.

Which one to choose? Choosing which of the two is right for you depends on what best meets your needs and those of your clients. If you haven’t made up your mind yet, visit http://www.opensourcecms.com/ this will assist you in determining what suits you best. The latter is an open-source demo site where you can actually try out various content management systems without breaking anything, you crazy nut.

Once the code is uploaded and unpacked, its time for a little design work. The base installation of Joomla!/Mambo is surprisingly attractive, yet your probably not going to want to leave it at this. You then have three choices. You can use the drop-down menus from the admin-panel by shifting box positions, altering colors and fixing text specifications etc. The other is to get creative with the code and design your own template however, this could result in a rear but serious hair pulling disorder know as Trichotillomania. Seriously, it ain’t pretty! Or, you can simply buy a template.

Actually, I would like to invite you view our list of available downloads currently featuring a free sample Joomla! and Mambo templates. In addition to the free downloads you’ll also find various .swf demo movies (tutorials) on editing Joomla templates. Naturally, the templates designed for both of these systems are of the most premium design. And feature a fresh and friendly Web 2.0 style, which corresponds well with our Web 2.0 perception of style (e.g. simplicity, central layout, enriched typography, brighter color surfaces) and dozens of other design elements commonly linked with our entire line of ready-built web site templates.

All in all if you want the freedom to make changes to layout and to customize certain pages/menus/text appearance without having to spend a ton of money. Try a content management system like Joomla/Mambo in combination with these premium website templates and receive an amazing design at an affordable price! So whether you are a small businesses on a budget or a complex corporate entity Joomla/Mambo can enable you to drive every page without any prior HTML knowledge whatsoever.

About the Author:
Dave Collado is the Senior Design Consultant at www.foamers.net who provides quality website templates customization, Flash templates customization, CSS templates, web design tutorials, and many other web design and web hosting services. This article may be republished providing it remains fully intact.

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