Blog design 101: Creating your own Wordpress theme — cre8d design blog

Want to know how to create your own theme using wordpress. cre8d design seems to have everything you need to do it in simple, easy to read steps. If only I had wordpress to work with....

Blog design 101: Creating your own Wordpress theme — cre8d design blog

Technorati tags: blog, wordpress, theme

Becoming a ProBlogger - A story in Many Parts: Blog Tips at ProBlogger

Becoming a ProBlogger - A story in Many Parts: Blog Tips at ProBlogger

Darren Rowse runs problogger.net and he recently put up his life (blogging) story and it's a must read for anyone who wants to make a living blogging. He emphasizes the time it took for him to make money doing this and how long it took for him to create even a part time job out of it.

There are two points I think should be empahasized here. One, it takes a long time to build something up when it comes to making money writing blogs and two, you need to diversify and not be dependent on google to make the money you need to live off of.

It took Darren a year and a half just to build up his blogging business into a part time job. It took him another year to turn it into a full time gig. And as he puts it "I worked insane hours and I started out at a time that was a lot less competitive than it is now."

So if you intend on making a living blogging, then you had better run over and read this post. It's sobering and inspirational at the same time.

Has google found my site?

How can you tell if your site has been indexed by google? It's easy enough. Head on over to google and type your page into the search box (i.e. beginnertips.blogspot.com). Google will come up with a page that shows you your site (if it's been found).

To tell which pages it's found, click on the Find web pages link. This does a search site:beginnertips.blogspot.com. You can then see all the pages google has found.

You can also tell when the last time google's bot came by to visit. Take a look at the cached image.

Tags: google, site, index

E-Mail Icon

Are you looking to show your e-mail, but you're worried about exposing yourself to spam. There are other options (search google) for hiding or cloaking your e-mail, but one way to solve your problem is to create a picture of your e-mail address instead. And if you use gmail, hotmail, msn, yahoo, aol, etc... you can use nexodyne's e-mail icon generator to do so. Here's mine, how about yours?



E-Mail Icon Generator

http://services.nexodyne.com/email/

Technorati Tags: e-mail, icon, blogs, image

Technorati Tags: e-mail, icon, blogs, image

Make Firefox Faster at Forever Geek

If you're not using Firefox, you really should be. Tabbed browsing, speed and security are what you'll get out of it! And now you can go even faster (assuming you have broadband).

Make Firefox Faster at Forever Geek:

try this "power-user" trick to make it download pages faster by allowing multiple connections so it can download more than one file at a time. It's only useful for broadband users, so if you're still on dial-up you can just skip this one for now.

Link popularity checks for your blog

I'm always trying to make sure I'm keeping on top of who's linking to me. The really nice part of Marketleap's Link Popularity Check (the only one of the popularity check's reviewed that I liked) is the comparison of your site to others. It's nice to see that my site is above the limited presence.

A Consuming Experience: Link popularity checks for your blog:

Bloggers are always interested in "Who links to me". Link popularity checkers show how many other sites the main search engines say link to your blog, with links to view the search results listing those sites. Some tools even show how popular your blog is (judged by links to you) compared with major Websites, and with some you can, if you really want to, compare your blog's link popularity with your friends' blogs', or indeed any other particular sites you choose.

This post reviews a few free link popularity check tools, and also there are forms to try checking your own blog's link popularity

Why Bloggers Don't Need SEO | Performancing.com

Now this is something I've never seen before in a recommendation. But it really makes sense when it comes to blogging. If you want more people to come to your blog, then they have to come from somewhere, and hopefully in a positive way.

Why Bloggers Don't Need SEO | Performancing.com:

Blogging, and blogs are all about human referals - I mean, the kind of traffic sent to you from other blogs, as a recommendation, which all links are, though there is such a thing as a negative recommendation of course.

The most valuable link you will ever get is a positive recommendation from an authority blog in your niche - mostly. This means a link in the body of a post, not on a links page, or in a blogroll, but a genuine recommendation, or positive reference to your blog -- preferably to a single post, not the homepage.

With that, you get:

* Traffic - real people, predisposed to liking your blog
* New Feed subscribers - Gold
* More links - Yep, links breed links, and so do Feed subs
* And guess what? You'll also get Search rankings