BlogMunch

weekends Wordpress Themes

It’s time for another weekends WordPress themes recommendations. This week’s themes are all very beautiful with excellent use of color. So enjoy.

Peace. A Zen-like calm design. I especially like the bamboo header. Suitable for personal journals.

Modicus. A minimalist 3 column theme with a tinge of designer touch. Good for all those who like lots of white space.

Humidor. Previously listed in Smashing Magazine’s “50 Beautiful CSS-Based Web-Designs in 2006?. Evan decided to redesign evaneckard.com and make Humidor available for download. Lucky for us.

Gotham Nights. Also from Evan of evaneckard.com. This is his latest theme. I like the multi-color layered header that doesn’t affect the readability of the whole theme.

Deliciously Blue. This guy just love blue. His previous designs Inspirationally Blue and Even Tastier Blue just confirms that. This is a nice 2 column theme with bottom bar. I guess it is now very popular trend to add a bottom bar for more navigation without cluttering the theme.

If you are interested in building your own theme, David also introduced some tools for theme building for WordPress.

I hope you like my recommendations this week. What do you think of the screenshots? Does it make the page load longer? I just think having screenshots will show you what the theme look like before you head over to the creator’s site to download. Okay, until next week.

Technorati Tags: wordpress theme

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On Holiday!!!

Hi readers,

From my announcement, you would have known I will be going for a holiday for 2 weeks starting from……..NOW (GMT +8 0800hrs). Flying on a airplane…

I will be going to China with my wife and 2 kids to visit my in-laws. I will be mostly relaxing and doing nothing.

That doesn’t mean I will not be posting on this blog. I will still be surfing the net (apparently better than sex) and posting about interesting stuff I find.

So stay tuned or alternatively subscribe to the Blogmunch Feed to keep up to date.

David Airey - $4,000 blog anniversary prize draw

Wow, $4,000 worth of prizes. A giveaway with one of the largest prize worth that I have seen on the internet. Super wide variety too. There are prizes for custom logo, custom theme design paid hosting, blog review and even free cash.

Now that’s what I call a good prize draw.
What is it about?

To celebrate his 1 year anniversary for his blog, David Airey decided to pull out all stops and piled up a variety of prizes to thank his readers. To enter the draw, you just have to write a blog entry on the prize giveaway before Wednesday, September 26th 2007. Prize winners will be announced on the 1st October, 2007.

What are the prizes?

The prize structure is separated in Gold, Silver and Bronze plus various bonus prizes. Just to mention a few to wet your lips:

1. Logo design from David Airey
2. Custom WordPress theme design from Nate Whitehill
3. $60 of books from Amazon courtesy of Darren Rowse
4. Behringer Podcastudio USB Podcasting Kit by Fraser’s Affiliate Marketing Blog
5. Blog makeover from Charles Jordan of The Queer Chef
6. Signed copy of Blogging Tips by Lorelle VanFossen
7. One hour SEO consultation with Lyndon Antcliff of Cornwall
8. Website critique from Randa Clay of Randa Clay Design
9. 2GB USB storage key from Jamie Clague at Terinea Weblog
10. $25 via PayPal from Gayla McCord of Mom Gadget (Free cash, Wow!)

And there are more than this. For the full range of prizes, check it out here.

So what are you waiting for? Head on over to David Airey dot com to enter the draw.

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Another super list from Smashing Magazine

It is getting very, VERY hard not to blog about Smashing Magazine every single day. How do they come out with so much stuff?
Anyway, I have to recommend this list of super wallpaper sites from them. Every site have very high quality wallpaper for your desktop.

I might as well start a parody site for Smashing Magazine like JohnCow.com or The Secret Diary of Steve Jobs.

Wait! That might be a good idea… <going off to search if it is done already>

The benefits of keeping a "how to" folder

I have forgotten where I have read this about keeping a “how to” folder for everything. Even the simplest jobs. Especially the simplest job. From then on, I have always write down every “how to” for new things I have learn.

What is a “how to” file?

It is basically a set of instructions to tell yourself how to do a job, task or project you have just done or learnt. Why do you need to write it down? Have you encountered times when you know you have done this modifications before, yet cannot seem to remember how to do it now? Well, that’s the usefulness of “how to” files.

A few examples will be:

1. How to use keyboard shortcuts in Google reader?
2. How to add adsense code into you blog template?
3. How to find use google alert to find new topics for blogging?
4. How to add a rss button to the redoable wordpress theme?

The key is to be specific. Look at the difference between

How to make a favicon?

and

How to use degraeve.com to design a favicon?

What’s the difference?

In the first example, you may write general instructions to make a favicon. But the second example will have a set of instructions specific to degraeve.com app to design a favicon. So the next time, you can follow the instructions and head straight to the source. This way, you can save time and start immediately.

You can also apply this to you everyday task, like “How to pack a child’s suitcase?”

Write it down and update when you have better ways of doing things. Soon you will have the instruction manual of your life.

(sidenote) Buckets and Chunks: An Exercise in Writing Everything Down by Ryan Imel shows how this concept can be used in your blogging.

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