HeadsetOptions Web Design, SEO, WordPress, Etcetra

Ever wondered what operating system is powering the rotating images within a digital picture frame? If you think about it, all it takes is a few lines of code and you can make images rotate as in a JavaScript slideshow or the rotating header on our current site.

I was shopping around for a DPF, and found Sony DPF-D70 review on digital picture frame reviews, a site powered by WordPress. In reading some of it’s features, it occurred to me that there is a lot for me to learn from it. For example, it has a feature that allows the images to resize to fit the aspect ratio of the …

eMagazine is a back to the basic theme with emphasis on visual presentation and with plenty of room for future development. This version 0.8 is fixed width and with 2 fixed right sidebars. Future version will have options to move sidebars to the left (or on both sides of content) and other advance functions such as touchless CSS edits, content placement and Javascript tabber.

Just like our other free premium advanced WordPress themes, including the most recent PointSpace and WExp, this (beta) theme does the job as is and works will all versions of WordPress up to 2.5.x.

Here are a few features of this early version:

Adding a category called Featured (with a capital F) activates the featured post option.
Both sidebars are widget ready.
Posts and sidebar are adsense styled - easily add your adsense code located in separate files.
Search engine optimized - use without worry of duplicate posts or rearranging title tags.
XHTML validated.
CSS 3 validated (will show opacity error in CSS 2.1).

Using images in place of text can be tempting especially since an image can offer you more visually than just text does. However, most of us end up using text for the simple reason that Google and Yahoo’s search engines are not able to read your images effectively (even with alt text?). Here’s a quick, simple, tried and tested SEO friendly CSS only Javascript free fix for one such scenario; replacing your navigation menu text with SEO friendly images:

Let’s start with making our images that will be used in place of menu text, in this example I am using images 30px tall and of varying width. I make two images for each menu item, one for mouse-over or hover and second for all other conditions.

If your site gets any traffic at all, chances are your RSS feed is scraped and misused by some one trying to score on SERP for the work you have toiled on. This very blog is constantly ripped by sploggers who have no regards to intellectual property rights or just plain simple dumb to realize they are stealing. Here are three sites where you can find the entire content of our blog scraped/ripped/stolen and posted as their own. Of course I did not link to them because I really don’t want you to visit them:

myblogmix.com (this m^*&*0 f$%*r even uses one of our themes on his splog!)
frenzygraphics.com
urlfan.com

How do you stop them?
Jonathan Bailey, a security expert (Plagiarism Today) who also writes on Blog Herald, lists 6 steps to identify and fight content theft. We religiously followed the suggestions for months now (that post on BH was from last November), but none worked thus far. Google is yet to acknowledged our letters (used his cease and desist letter templates, which is a good source, thanks!). I even took solace in thinking maybe they have a backlog or that they will eventually write back, but nothing really happened.

For good SEO, it is preferential to open your comment authors URI in a new page. Why you might ask? Google and other search engines track sites you visit, they can tell what that site contains (obviously), how long you stayed there and where you went next. The intended use of this information is to find if the sites you visited were relevant to your search keyword and/or if all the sites you visit are related. That could also work against you if your site get a lot of spammers commenting on it. Here’s how.

Let’s say you get a comment on your site that look legit, so you want …

Here’s another absolutely Free Magazine Style Theme! This theme is not only full functional, it’s also completely customizable, all without touching any code.

So what features come standard with this magazine WordPress theme
The theme includes all the cool functions we have come to expect from any paid premium theme, only now you can have it for free, here’s the short list:

Advance edit options allows users to edit the style without learning or knowing CSS. You can even change the header image without touching a line of code, all from the options page….

Why pay for a Magazine WordPress Theme when you can get one for free? Introducing The Box, the all-inclusive magazine style WordPress theme that has all the cool features of a premium theme straight out of “the box”. Best of all, it is absolutely Free!
Ola Hedin of Blyerts.com pointed out an IE 6 issue that was fixed on 05/06/2008 at 9:48 PM EST. Thanks Ola
The theme includes among other functions advance edit options, featured-regular post option, second level, conditional and dropdown menus, tabbed JavaScript interface, widget ready sidebars and is pre-styled for Google Adsense and coded to be search engine friendly (optimized).
Demo and Download
Click …

As this tutorial runs longer than we initially anticipated, we will break section 3 further into three sub-sections.
In our ongoing exercise to learn the nuts and bolts of a magazine style WordPress theme, we examine what has become by far the most ignored part of a theme design, the navigation menu.

As important as they are, they are often found floating in the header or worse the sidebar and almost never used to its fullest as rightfully should. Today we will change that. We are dedicating three sections just to discuss navigation menus, its varied uses, and the various methods of using it. So why wait, let’s get started.
Why …

Let me say it for the millionth time “content is king” and we all know that, don’t we?

Since content is the most important part of a site, your WordPress powered theme must emphasis on its presentation. Most cookie cutter themes come with a post list that runs based on the time your posts were published, in other words a chronological list of posts irrespective of its importance. Let’s face it, not all posts are created equal. Some posts are special, some are important and then some not quite so. Why then should all posts get the same treatment?

Magazine styled themes do a fine job of addressing this by introducing the featured …

Let’s face it, WordPress is not just a BMS like some might want you to believe, if used right, the full potential of the worlds best CMS can power sites big and small alike. One recent trend among high content high traffic sites is the switch to magazine styled or premium themes to aid in maximizing content exposure. But most all premium themes are paid and require customization irrespective off. In situations where you already run a well established site with custom design and need to add functionalities of magazine styled premium themes without switching or paying for a new theme, you are at the right place.

So how are magazine …