Make Money Online - Blue Theme

Posted by fwpt on May 2nd, 2008

Gorgeous blue WP theme with 2 Columns, AdSense & Widget Ready easy to use and install ! Famous theme about making money online is a stable template ! Supported by all WordPress versions, including the latest one. Thanks for the opportunity.

DOWNLOAD | THEME URL

Tagged: 2 Column, Blogosphere, Blogroll, Blue, Blue Lounge, Blue Sands, Bluejet, Clean, Colors, Cool Buttons, Design, Design Inspiration, Earthy, Free Downloads, Freebies | Free Web 2.0 Icons, GPL, General, Google, Graphic Design, Inspiration, Layout, Lime Lover, Monetize, New WP Themes, Note WP, Ocean, Online Business, Open Source, Plugins, Pop Blue, Prima Web, Pro Blog 2.0, Raised, Resources, Royal Blue, Royale, SEO, Sea, Sea Anemone, Sea Star, Sea Turtle, Social Bookmarking, Solid WP Theme, Stars, Tech Blog, Tech World, Technology Blog, Template Panic, Theme Distribution, Theme Viewer, Themes, Tips, Tricks, Web 2.0-ish, Web Design, Web Tools, WordPreciousss, WordPress, WordPress Skins, WordPress Templates, WordPress Themes, WordPress Themes Gallery, aquatica, business blog, e-themes, free, internet, make money online, personal blog, refreshing, submit your themes, temi-wordpress, terra blue

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Posted by Snap! on August 20th, 2007

sandbox icon There are many new designs that came out of the Sandbox design competition and each design comes with instructions on how to install them. Not following my gut, I decided to instead follow the included instructions and I find out that it never worked for me. So I decided to write my own instructions for those who are planning on using the Sandbox based designs without having to deal with the hassles I faced. BTW, if you have not noticed it already, we started featuring Sandbox competition designs and hope to have more for you soon.

What the instructions say?

It is critical to read this to understand the base structure and why it probably never worked for me.

If you plan on using a Sandbox design, youâ€™ll need the Sandbox theme in the following folder with a file structure like:

/wp-content/themes/sandbox/style.css

This makes sense, Sandbox is a complete theme and when activated works as is.

The instruction also recommends the design file structure is set as below:

/wp-content/themes/some-design-name/style.css

(where some-design-name is the name of the design)

This is the part that does not work for me, mostly all designs are just that: a CSS file and some images, they do not have any template files like index.php and in almost every case result in a “Template is Missing” error when you go to Admin >> Presentation >> Theme.
Irrespective of the WP version you use, or even using the /wp-includes/themes.php patch for Sandbox results in this error, in short, using the instructions included with the design just does not work (again itâ€™s a personal experience, I might be screwing up some place).

So what did I do?

Instead of including the design folder under the main ‘themes’ folder, I placed it within the Sandbox theme folder like below:

/wp-content/themes/sandbox/some-design-name/style.css

I then opened the Sandbox themes stylesheet (/wp-content/themes/sandbox/style.css) and deleted all the styles below the comment /* Just some example content */

I then replaced the style import URL from

@import url(’sandbox-layouts/2c-l.css’);

@import url(’ some-design-name/style.css’);

That does it, simple aye.

Tagged: Best WordPress Themes, Blogging Tips, Copyrights and Licenses, Design Tools, Keyboard Shortcuts, PimpDaBlog, RSS Feeds, Resources, Sandbox Theme, Selection, Thumbnail viewer plugin, Tips, Web Tools, WordPress, wpsnap

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Posted by Snap! on August 10th, 2007

We might as well list all the important plugins that make sites with high traffic stay afloat, but we decided to focus on just three very essential plugins that will be invaluable for your high traffic site.

I say “high trafficâ€? only because WordPress powered sites “as is” can work really well for most sites, but when your traffic increases, the equation changes with increased load on the server and need for better management.

The plugins are listed in no particular order:

Akismet No Spam

Akismet/ Bad Behavior/ Spam Karma 2: As your traffic increases, so does your spam, the affinity of spammers to your site is not due to the popularity of your site alone, but imagine this scenario, if every 3rd comment is a spam, the more comments you have, the spam you will too. The simplest solution to stop comment spams in conjunction with the aforementioned spam blockers (that can be downloaded from wp-plugins.net or Codex) is to use a plugin like reCAPTCHA.

Database Backup

WordPress Database Backup: The newer version of WP has built-in backup via XML downloads, however that is not as good as the original plugin based sql download. The newer version of WP does not include it as a default plugin, but here’s a link to the original plugin managed by a new and reliable developer. Use this tool to back your database as often as you like, you’ll never realize how valuable it is, but let’s hope you’ll never need to go through the excruciating pain of restoring your DB ever!

WP Cache

WP Cache: This plugin does what the name suggests, caches WP files, and it does it in two phases. The first phase checks if the requested URL is already cached, if so it serves from the static file and finishes, the second phase stores the generated page in a static file for further request. Collectively it can reduce the load on your database server significantly and improve site load speed.

So there you go, 3 essential plugins for your WordPress site that all sites should consider installing.

Tagged: Akismet, Bad Behavior, Big City, Blogging Tips, CMS, Copyrights and Licenses, Keyboard Shortcuts, PimpDaBlog, Plugins, RSS Feeds, Resources, Spam Karma, Thumbnail viewer plugin, Tips, Top Plugins, WP Cache, WordPress, WordPress Database Backup, WordPress Plugins, WordPress Tutorials, reCAPTCHA, wpsnap

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Posted by Snap! on August 6th, 2007

widget We were contacted earlier by Karen, a user of wpSnap who was trying to widgetize a non-widget theme from a couple years ago. The theme in question was from the pre-sidebar widget days and there are many good themes on this site that fall in that category. So rather than providing a fix to each theme individually, we decided to write a short and easy tutorial for one and all.

Here’s what you might need in addition to access to your WP Admin panel, you need to have access to your server via FTP to add a functions.php file to your theme folder if it does not exist. So letâ€™s get started:

1) If you open your sidebar.php file or any other file where your sidebar elements like categories, archives, blogroll or whatever else that people fancy reside, you will notice it is invariably in an unordered list format. Usually it will be as below:

<ul>
<li>
<h3>Categories</h3>
<ul class=”categories”>
<?php wp_list_cats(’sort_column=name&hide_empty=0′); ?>
</ul>

<h3>Archives</h3>
<ul class=”archives”>
<?php get_archives(’monthly’,”,”,’<li>’,'</li>’,”); ?>
</ul>
</li>
</ul>

Your default sidebar need not necessarily have this very code, it could be anything, it could even be a JavaScript as in the case with the Japanese Cherry Blossom theme that triggered this post. Also, itâ€™s not a must to have h2 as the heading, although that is what the widget sidebar uses. We will fix that in the CSS so letâ€™s not worry about it for now.

2) You need to just add two lines of code to this mark up, one at the top and one at the bottom of the list as shown below:

<ul>
<?php if ( function_exists(’dynamic_sidebar’) && dynamic_sidebar() ) : else : ?>
<li>
<h3>Categories</h3>
<ul class=”categories”>
<?php wp_list_cats(’sort_column=name&hide_empty=0′); ?>
</ul>

<h3>Archives</h3>
<ul class=”archives”>
<?php get_archives(’monthly’,”,”,’<li>’,'</li>’,”); ?>
</ul>
</li>
<?php endif; ?>
</ul>

3) Open functions.php if you have one in the theme, if not, create a file, call it functions.php and add this line to it:

<?php
if (function_exists(’register_sidebars’)) register_sidebars(1, array(’before_widget’ => ”,’after_widget’ => ”));
?>

Note how I highlighted the 1 in the above code, it indicates the number of widget boxes in the whole theme. Since in the above example, we created only one dynamic sidebar, we will leave it at 1.

One last step that is seldom needed is in cases where h2 is not used in the default unordered list as heading. Say h3 was used as in our example, the easiest hack to address this would be to open style.css and look for styling for h3, copy and paste it right below (or above) the h3 styling and call it h2 instead. For example, say you find the following code for h3 in style.css:

h3{
color: #FFFFFF;
font-size: 1.15em;
font-weight: normal;
}

Copy paste and make it h2 like below:

h2{
color: #FFFFFF;
font-size: 1.15em;
font-weight: normal;
}

h3{
color: #FFFFFF;
font-size: 1.15em;
font-weight: normal;
}

That is pretty much it, the theme is now widget ready.

Additional Usage and Styling

Say you need 2 widget bars now, simply follow the same example as above, but when you create widgets, make sure itâ€™s as below:

<?php if ( function_exists(’dynamic_sidebar’) && dynamic_sidebar(1) ) : else : ?>
Unordered list
<?php endif; ?>

<?php if ( function_exists(’dynamic_sidebar’) && dynamic_sidebar(2) ) : else : ?>
Another unordered list
<?php endif; ?>

then in the functions file, change the 1 to 2 as below:

<?php
if (function_exists(’register_sidebars’)) register_sidebars(2, array(’before_widget’ => ”,’after_widget’ => ”));
?>

You can take it one step further and add a specific styling before and after the widget as shown below (Iâ€™ve used <em> as an example where x is the number of widgetized sidebar lists):

<?php
if (function_exists(’register_sidebars’)) register_sidebars(x, array(’before_widget’ => ‘<em>‘,’after_widget’ => ‘</em>‘));
?>

Specific fix for Japanese Cherry Blossom Theme

Karen wanted the 3rd bottom column to be widgetized. We open sidebar.php and find this as the 3rd column/block elements:

<div class=”block”>
<h3>In Other News</h3>
<ul class=”counts”>
<script type=”text/javascript” src=”http://del.icio.us/feeds/js/krisandapril?extended;count=1″></script>
<noscript><a href=”http://del.icio.us/krisandapril”>my del.icio.us</a></noscript>
</div>

Right away I can tell there is an issue, the open unordered list <ul> is not closed with a </ul>, so we add it like below (although this step is unnecessary):

<div class=”block”>
<h3>In Other News</h3>
<ul class=”counts”>
<script type=”text/javascript” src=”http://del.icio.us/feeds/js/krisandapril?extended;count=1″></script>
<noscript><a href=”http://del.icio.us/krisandapril”>my del.icio.us</a></noscript>
</div>
</ul>

Next we gut out the del.icio.us Java, so we end with this:

<div class=”block”>
<h3>In Other News</h3>
<ul class=”counts”>

</ul>

Then we add the famous dynamic sidebar call like below:

<div class=”block”>
<h3>In Other News</h3>
<ul class=”counts”>
<?php if ( function_exists(’dynamic_sidebar’) && dynamic_sidebar() ) : else : ?>

<?php endif; ?>
</ul>

and add the following code to the empty functions.php file that came with the theme.

<?php
if (function_exists(’register_sidebars’)) register_sidebars(1, array(’before_widget’ => ”,’after_widget’ => ”));
?>

The style.css for this theme shows that both h2 and h3 are styled alike, so all you will need then is the sidebar widget plugin and you are good to go.

Hope this helps!

Tagged: CMS, Copyrights and Licenses, Dark Helium, Dot Dot Dot, How to widgetize, Keyboard Shortcuts, PimpDaBlog, Tips, Tutorials, Web Design, WordPress Plugins, WordPress Tutorials, WordPress plugins, wpsnap

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Posted by Snap! on August 3rd, 2007

We often find seasoned bloggers using clean templates with little or no color and hardly any imagery. Colors and graphics do make a theme visually appealing, however they do conflict with the content if not used carefully. All themes cannot be plain and generic though, so for those of you who love colors and are constantly looking for inspiration, here are a few resources (which some of you might be familiar with) to jazz up your themes!

COLOUR lovers is a resource that monitors and influences color trends by providing not only color galleries, but a palette of the trendiest colors in the blogosphere based on a variety of genres. It would serve as a good reference guide for web design, architectural specifications, interiors, product design, ad campaigns, magazines, etc. You can also suggest a website of your choice for an add. It’s cool and contemporary, and one of the hottest sites for color resources.

Color Combos offers a variety of irresistible features such as:

9 Rules Logo Colors Combo Tester: Extracts colors from websites, gives complimentary color options, gives text color options, and you can even try your own template with different header, sidebar, footer color and text options.

Color Library: For color combination ideas

Articles: On colors, color meaning and application.

Daily color scheme (Beta) provides you one inspirational and usable easy color scheme a day. If you do not want to use the colorpicker or the eyedropper tool, this site is for you. As of now, you cannot make a search to get instant color information of a site that is not listed in their archives. The enhanced search feature will definitely make it a steal.

Color Burn Widget

The ColorBurn widget features a new color palette every day with 4 colors, along with its hexadecimal values. Each daily palette has the option to change your background from black to white and back again. Previous palettes are saved for one week.

Color Schemer Studio is a professional color matching application for anyone from hobbyists to advanced professionals. Mix, match, darken, lighten, and add your own color combinations to the gallery.