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Wordpress Theme Design Purchased

Jay — Tue, 08 Dec 2009 13:37:56 +0000

So, recently I decided to just go purchase a Wordpress theme design from Theme Forest just because I felt like it would be handy for some of my future sites. And although, they have tons of incredible Wordpress themes for a pretty cheap price (most ranging from $5 to $40), I just went with my gut and purchased one that just stood out to me.

I spent a lot of time just going through the entire collection of themes and I saw so many that just caught my attention. But I was basically thinking how I would use these themes and how it would help me with some of my sites. Well, after a long deliberation by myself, I finally just picked one.

The Wordpress theme I chose is called “BlueLight” and it’s a pretty professional looking theme that is just amazing. Plus, for the price of using it, I have to say it’s definitely worth it. Check out the screenshot of the theme below:

If you guys can’t judge it just by the screenshot, check out the live preview here.

I probably won’t be using this new theme on DatMoney because the layout wouldn’t suit my ads the way I would like. But the reason why I bought it is because I’m sure I will be using it on a future site. Who knows, I may just use it on an existing site and just replace everything. But unfortunately, this amazing theme will not be displayed on DatMoney.

Feel free to check out the wide selection of themes at Theme Forest to see if you would enjoy any.

Why did I purchase a Wordpress theme when I’m working on designing my own? As you guys already know, I have been designing my own WP theme from scratch but it takes a lot of time. And it seems as though I’m my own worst critic when it comes to, well, just about anything I seem to make.

On top of that, I’m just a rookie learning the ropes of designing an entire Wordpress theme. Shoot, I haven’t even gotten to all the coding. But if I do manage to design a theme that I actually like, I think I’m going to outsource the coding part because I found someone that does it for a decent price. Though, eventually I will want to learn all the coding by myself simply because I want to learn as much as I can while I’m doing this internet entrepreneur stuff.

Anyways, what do you guys think of the BlueLight theme I purchased? Or have you checked out any other themes you like? Feel free to share!

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Designing Your Own Wordpress Theme Update – Design Done!

Jay — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 16:00:41 +0000

A few weeks ago, I mentioned that I was testing out designing my own Wordpress theme and I was going to start from scratch. Well, I went with a very basic design just to get the feel for how it was going to turn out and I finally got a chance to finish up the mock design.

Check out my basic three-column Wordpress mock-up design theme (feel free to click on the image to see the large image):

I mentioned this in my previous post but as you can see from the screenshot, I used Photoshop to design my theme. One of the annoying parts that I kept running into is the fact that I was alternating between two different versions of Photoshop.

Why in the hell would I be doing something to annoy myself? Well, I didn’t do it on purpose and I try to work on it when I have opportunities. And with that said, I have Photoshop CS at home but another computer I use only has Photoshop 7. They work just the same except the fact that there are less features in 7 than there is in CS. And some of the control settings are different as well.

Again, the design is very basic only because I wanted to see how hard the next steps are going to be. I didn’t bother putting anything fancy within the design, no images or anything.

The next steps are basically having to slice up the design and then code it with CSS and HTML.

I’ve done design work before but never created a theme or template from scratch. I think the design part is somewhat the easier portion and now we will see how the slicing goes. I have never had to slice much or anything besides slicing myself a piece of cake or something equivalent.

So, that’s a quick update on how designing my own Wordpress theme is going. Once I finish everything with this theme and get the hang of designing, slicing and coding then I’ll start to make some better designs that you guys might be interested in using.

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Designing Your Own Wordpress Theme Is Hard

Designing Your Own Wordpress Theme Is Hard

Jay — Wed, 07 Oct 2009 19:04:37 +0000

I have officially started but can I just say designing your own Wordpress theme is actually pretty hard. I mean, I knew it wasn’t going to be easy or anything but it takes a lot of work. There are a few major steps and I’m not even close to being done with the first part – the design portion of it.

Last week I asked you guys, Do You Prefer One, Two, Three or Four Column Blog Templates? I was asking because I kind of wanted you guys’ opinions on what I should do with my first Wordpress theme that I’m designing. After looking through the comments, it seems as though the majority favors three column templates with two columns coming in at a close second.

A few liked one column and someone (or a couple) mentioned a four column template. Well, I went with the majority and started my first design as a three column template.

Right now, it doesn’t look like anything special. You can check out the screenshot below on the beginning portion of my first Wordpress design. (Click on the image to see the full size)

Like I said, it doesn’t look like anything special right now. Matter of fact, the final design probably won’t look anything like what you see from the screenshot. I’m just going over some tutorials just to get the feel on how a typical Wordpress theme design is supposed to be like. Once I get all of that down, I’m going to change things to get it how I want it to be.

As you can see from the screenshot, I’m using Photoshop to design my Wordpress theme. This is probably the best program to use to design just about anything. This is the same program I use to design my banner designs. And if you ask any designer (no matter if they design websites, blog templates, logos, mascots, whatever), I bet you they will tell you Photoshop is the main program they use.

You know what the sad part is? The design portion is supposed to be the easy part of creating your own Wordpress theme. The next few steps after you finish designing the layout is to slice it all up so you can have all the pieces to put together when you code it. The coding is the final step and I believe its going to be the hardest for me because I’m an amateur when it comes to CSS.

I know a lot of HTML already and see a lot of similarities but its different. I mean, if it was the same, then one wouldn’t be called “CSS” and the other “HTML”.

For the record, “CSS” stands for “Cascading Style Sheets” and “HTML” stands for “Hyper Text Markup Language”. Or at least that’s what I think it means.

So, this is just a quick update on designing my own Wordpress theme from scratch. And can I just say that it’s very time consuming!

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Do You Prefer One, Two, Three or Four Column Blog Templates?

Jay — Tue, 29 Sep 2009 20:34:33 +0000

If you guys read my last DatMoney Weekly Updates post and you should know I’m dipping my feet into designing my own Wordpress themes. So, I have a very simple question, do you prefer one, two, three or four column blog templates? And while we’re discussing this, what exactly do you look or in a blog theme?

How Many Columns Do you Like on Your Blog?

Personally, I’m a three column blog template type of blogger. I like it because I usually have a lot of things on the sidebar and I don’t really want my readers to have to scroll down too much to see everything else on the sidebar. Although, I have been testing out two and four column templates as well just to see how they look but so far, I still prefer the three column templates.

If you had to pick on how many columns your blog template has, what would your number be? Does it even matter to you? And while we’re on the subject, what else do you look for when you’re picking your blog template?

What I Look for in a Blog Template

I think when it comes down to it, I get a little too picky for my own good. But here are a few things that I look for in a blog template.

Header - I like a blog template that has a header that runs across the top of the blog with an option of having the entire header being your logo or half of it as your logo and an ad spot or even a search option.

3 Columns - Like I mentioned, I tend to favor three column but particularly the main content area on the left hand side and the two other sidebar columns on the right side. The reason why is simply the fact that we read from left to right (most of us) and I like when people are looking at my content first and then everything else on the right after.

Ad Spots - I need a blog template that has options for ad spots. Of course, we can add ads really anywhere we want but I wouldn’t want to do extra work. Plus, most of us create blogs with the opportunity to monetize it and if there’s no ad spots, you’re limiting yourself.

The 125×125 spots have been pretty popular but I don’t need it. I just want something that would give me an option to put at least a few ads on every page including the main index.

Easy Navigation - I try to look at blog templates that are easy to navigate through because if I can do it easily, I know visitors that come to my site will do the same thing. Plus, the whole purpose is to keep them on your site as long as you can, right? I like a navigational menu right below the header as well as some easy navigational options on the sidebar and maybe the footer. But the footer isn’t as important to me.

Search Bar - I don’t know about you guys but I use search bars all the time when I’m trying to find something specific on a blog. I hate it when people don’t have search bars and I have to look for a particular post I liked to not even find it and just leave.

What Do You Look for?

I’m sure I’m missing a few but those are the ones that stick out in my head when I was looking for a new blog template for DatMoney. What do you guys look for? I’m going to try to take some of this information when I’m designing my first Wordpress theme. Practice makes perfect so I just wanted to know what you guys like so I can design a few samples and you guys will be able to use it for free when I’m finished.

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Free Blogger Template: Mainstream

Jay — Sun, 09 Aug 2009 16:22:20 +0000

As you guys know, I’m trying to keep up with adding Free Blogger Template Download so you guys can enjoy them. The most recent Blogger template converted from Wordpress is a Woo Theme titled “Mainstream.”

As most of you guys already know, Woo Themes are premium themes for Wordpress. They are definitely popular especially the fact that these themes stand out from the rest.

But if you have a Blogger account, you can get this premium Woo theme for free. Just visit my Free Blogger Template Download page where I continue to update with new free Blogger themes or just download it below:

Click here to download the Mainstream Blogger Template

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Free Blogger Template Download

Jay — Mon, 20 Jul 2009 15:05:55 +0000

I partnered up with WordpresstoBlogger so now we’ll have a Free Blogger Template Download section for those of you guys looking for nice Blogger templates. Well, maybe not an entire section but I will continue to update this post with new free Blogger template for download.

And don’t worry, I’ll write up a quick blog post every once in a while when there are new ones out.

I decided that I’d go back to my roots because I originally started on Blogger.com and I remember when I first started, there wasn’t a lot of nice custom layouts and templates like there were for Wordpress. I was slightly jealous and felt a little restricted. That was just one of the many reasons why I switched over to a self-hosted Wordpress blog, personally.

But nowadays, there are so many designers that can convert any Wordpress template to Blogger.

So, now Blogger blog owners don’t have to feel left out anymore. You can get all these beautiful Wordpress templates for Blogger. Matter of fact, I’ll be using some of these ones myself as well because I still have a few blogs from Blogger.com.

And just to start, here are a bunch of free Blogger Templates for download that were originally Wordpress ones. Yes, converting from Wordpress to Blogger will continue to be done and if you check with WordpresstoBlogger, they’ll be able to do it for you for amount the same price as a domain name. (Well, depending on where you buy your domains at )

But don’t worry, you probably won’t have to spend a dime. There are plenty of free Blogger template download available. Check out the few below:

Blue Cosmo

Click here to download the Blue Cosmo Blogger template.

iBlog2

Click here to download the iBlog2 Blogger Template.

Smells Like Facebook

Click here to download the Smells like Facebook Blogger Template.

SoulVision

Click here to download SoulVision Blogger Template.

Click here to download the Mainstream Blogger Template

Click here to download the Publicizer Blogger Template

Click here to download the fourWPTP Blogger template.

Click here to download the FashionPress Blogger Template

Click here to download the GrayYel Blogger template

Click here to download the Moneyblog Blogger Template

There will be more to come on this post so make sure you check back or feel free to subscribe to my RSS feeds to stay updated. You can subscribe simply by entering in your e-mail address below:

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Working on New Sites with Revolution WP Themes

Jay — Tue, 05 May 2009 15:16:46 +0000

Remember when the Revolution WP themes were free? Well, I hope you guys all took advantage of downloading those prior to it going back to premium. I think it was towards the end of 2008 where the big buzz was the fact that all the Revolution WP themes were available for download for free but the catch was you was paying for the support.

All that changed in 2009 because all those themes are back to premium and you need to pay for them. But as I was looking around, it seems that if you downloaded it already when it was free, you are still available to use it (with no support, of course).

If I am wrong, someone please let me know.

But I was bringing a friend into the online money making world and we came up with a killer idea, killer domain name that is extremely brandable, killer plan, low competition and now we’re pretty much set to get things rolling.

There have been good things and bad things while working with others on joint ventures and I’ll probably post that at some other time. I’m actually hoping to get those posts out this week.

But anyways, we decided that we would use the Revolution themes to experiment with because it would make our site look professional and we kind of wanted a setup like Crack.com where we could have plenty of different options right on the homepage.

Plus, if you guys remember when we sold ListLunatic.com, that was a Revolution theme too. So, why change success and things that work, right?

A lot of people that I know have downloaded the Revolution themes before when it was free but of course, not many of us are css and html savvy. I think a lot of people postponed even attempting to use it simply because they didn’t know how to change anything to make it custom to what they want. Well, there are plenty of useful articles that I have found to support Revolution themes for customizing but the main one you need to know is:

Set Up Your Blog with Revolution Magazine Theme

Forest is definitely knowledgable when it comes to design work with websites and I’m sure you guys remember him being part of our team that sold ListLunatic.com… matter of fact, he was the one that made that killer header for that site.

But this is your opportunity to try out the Revolution WP theme that you downloaded months and months ago when it was free.

What are you waiting for… try it out!

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I Will Design Your Header for Your NEW Blog FREE!

Jay — Wed, 18 Mar 2009 14:26:26 +0000

As you guys are aware, I was Designing Blog Headers for FREE but I had a requirement on them. Of course, I will still have the requirement except I’ll be changing one thing: I will design your blog header for your NEW blog as well!

Now before you guys all jump the gun and not fully read this post, I will still require do-follow sitewide backlinks on your blogs footer as long as you use my custom header. (I’ll send you the exact writing after you guys contact me and we work it out). We’ll get that part out of the way in the beginning because a lot of people tend to not read past the first paragraph or two. Matter of fact, some people just read the post title and try to contact me and I have to deny them.

Now the difference between this time and last time is the blog requirements. Previously, I was requesting that you guys have at least 100+ posts or if you didn’t quite have 100, you needed a Pagerank of some sort.

I felt that was pretty challenging for some and unfair as well. I mean, people could take months to get to that point. And I know how it feels.

This time around, I’m going to be changing that a little bit. Your blog just needs to be at least one month old but you have to have been actively updating it. Now, I’m not saying you needed to update it every single day but say you have been actively updating like 4-5 times a week since you started the blog, that’s good enough.

My main concern is you would need to prove to me in some way that you have been, and will continue to, keep the blog updated regularly.

Here are some of the new custom headers examples I have made for people:

So, feel free to contact me if you are interested. Please include your blog information (URL, the age of the blog, how many posts, etc) and what you’re looking for within your header design.

Anyways, I hope you guys take advantage of this.

Please note: I may not be able to get to everybody’s header design depending on how many people contact me. I will try to get to all of them but I cannot guarantee that.

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Update: Designing Your Blog Headers For FREE

Jay — Mon, 16 Feb 2009 16:39:37 +0000

It looks like the day I posted that I would design your blog header for free, a lot of people jumped on that opportunity and I was hit me tons of e-mails (which I’m still trying to respond to so please be patient). I just wanted to toss out a few updates because it looks like some people didn’t read the first post, and I just wanted to add a couple of things as well.

1) I will only design blog headers for free in exchange for a do-follow link or two in your footer. Someone brought this to my attention when I went to check and it was no-follow links. Well, I’m trying to build some do-follow backlinks, not necessarily getting my design work out there.

If you do not support do-follow links on your footer, unfortunately, I’ll be passing on the opportunity to design your blog header for free.

2) If your blog does not meet the requirements or if it’s brand new, you do not qualify for a free blog header. I mentioned that new blogs would not be eligible for this and I requested that people have at least 100+ posts. And if you have close to 100 but have a Google Pagerank, I would consider it.

For some reason a lot of people are proposing things to me for their brand new blogs but the whole purpose of this little project is simply to build some backlinks. And although, I may still design new blog headers for people, I can’t guarantee I’ll get to all of them.

Like I said, I’m putting those with 100+ posts first and then moving down the list.

3) Multiple blog header requests will be taken. A couple of people asked if I would design a free blog header for various websites they own and my answer was “if they meet the requirements, then YES!” So, if you have multiple blogs that have 100+ posts, Pagerank, or whatever, then I will in fact design those as well.

4) I will do adult sites and select others. In the first post, I mentioned that I did not want to design adult, illegal, hate, spam, etc type sites but I will. The only catch is the fact that they will not be my first priority and if I can’t get to it then you’ll understand why.

5) Please at least read the post before contacting me. Can you guys please read the post before contacting me? It looks like people are contacting me without bothering with skimming the post at all. I know there are tons of people out there that do that (especially for contests), they read “free” and that’s all that matters to them.

I bolded the main things you needed to know, at least look at those before contacting me.

Anyways, that’s just a quick update on getting your blog header designed for free by me. Let me know if you have additional questions and I will answer them!

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I Will Design Your Blog Header For FREE!

Jay — Wed, 11 Feb 2009 16:00:59 +0000

Yes, you’ve read correctly, I will design your blog header absolutely free of charge! Nope, I’m not smoking anything, I’m not drunk and I’m not about to do this just for anybody.

I’m sure for those you guys that have used my services before, you obviously know what kind of designs I’m capable of doing. And if you need some examples, feel free to check out my banner designs page. But since I haven’t updated it with new designs for quite sometime, I figured I’d just post a few of the headers that I have done on here.

Header Examples:

I guess you guys can be the judge on if it’s worth it to you or not. I mean, you’re not losing much especially since you’re not paying a single dime out of your pockets.

So, what’s the catch exactly?

Ahhh… yes… the catch… right… well, there are just a couple of minor catches I do require but it’s nothing too drastic or anything so you don’t have to worry. I would require a simple do-follow link or two on the footer of your blog.

See, that’s not too bad! The links are out of the way so it’s not distracting anyone. Plus, you probably already have a link or two on your footer from your blogs designer. This is basically the same thing except there will be a link next to your blog designer’s link like “Custom Blog Header by DatMoney.com” or something on those lines.

And just as long as you continue to use my custom header, the link should stay there as well to give me credit.

I don’t foresee too many people jumping on this opportunity but in the extreme case that everyone decides to bombard me because they read “free” in the post title; I will have to put some sort of requirement and restriction.

If your blog has over 100 total posts and gets updated regularly (meaning it’s not a dead blog) then you will have first preference. And if you are close to 100+ posts but you have a Pagerank, then I will consider you as well.

I’d like to mention again that the links should be do-follow.

Oh, before I forget, please no adult, illegal, hate, spam, etc type sites!

This offer doesn’t last forever as I’ll only take requests through February 22nd, 2009.

Please contact me with your blog URL, size of the header, anything specific you want in the design, etc if you’d be interested in getting a free custom header designed by me.

Did I mention FREE?!?!