Image courtesy: 4_EveR_YounG

If you know about blogging, you must have heard about the world’s most famous blogging platform WORDPRESS. Wordpress always believes on open source and work according to that. Thanks to this feature, a blogger who is using Wordpress as the blogging platform is free to do any customization for his/her copy. Obviously anyone will first go with the customizing the theme. I also use Wordpress as the platform for this blog and when I started, I found a theme and did some modifications and now you are seeing my customized theme in this blog. But the original theme has done by another great person. I was curious about how to design a Wordpress theme and looking for some information wanting to start designing my owned theme. I write this post to inform that I see a brighter path now and developing a professional looking Wordpress theme. When I finish this I will put it here for you all to download free without putting into my blog .

I thought that it will be better and interesting if let you all know how I started this and what I have learned so far. I will add more posts when I proceed with it. To tell you the truth when I started, I had no idea what so ever about theme development. I did some research with the help of Google and Wordpress itself and managed to get information to start this learning process. Wordpress Codex helped me a lot. I found that the following aspects must be considered before starting real design and coding.

• You must have a sound understanding about CSS and HTML components and a web design software like Dreamweaver.
• You must have at least a little understanding about PHP and identifying PHP code from the existing templates.
• You must have a good knowledge on a graphic design software like Photoshop.
• You must be aware about the Wordpress theme design guidelines provided by Wordpress.

Then you will need a pen or pencil with some drafting papers. If you are OK with all the above mentioned factors, you are ready to go. But keep in mind that if you are starting from the scratch, it will take more time for you to design the first theme. I’m experiencing this. But when you finish your first theme, it will not take much time to design the next themes. If you are willing to find out how I’m doing this and to download the completed theme in the future, I recommend you to subscribe for my RSS feed in the top right hand corner or Here.

Image courtesy: Simon Pais-Thomas

This post will be interesting for people who are interested in driving more traffic to their websites. In this post, I will explain about how to use the famous real time video website YouTube to generate traffic to your website. This will take little time and effort but it will ultimately work as a good traffic source to your website.

Millions of people around the world use YouTube daily. They are looking for videos according to their interest. If you can produce a video which satisfies their interest and which they will think interesting, they will definitely visit your website. But there are few important things you must consider when you produce your video to publish in the YouTube.

Make it useful for the viewer - This is a thing that many web masters don’t understand. Many web masters try to embed their sponsored advertisements and promotions to the video thinking that the viewer definitely be interested. But the truth is viewers simply ignore this.

Quality production - Your video must have an acceptable quality. Or else the viewers will be annoyed and bored and go away from the video. The worst is, they will put negative comments about your video which will sabotage your ultimate hope, free traffic to your web site.

Put an attractive message at the end - This is the most important and critical part. You should figure out a fascinating and invitational message to put at the end if the video which will emphasis the viewer to visit your website. If you can correctly find the words, your dream will come true.

If you follow these guidelines you will definitely get free traffic from YouTube and you will also find comments about the videos you make which will give a hint about the user feelings and how can you improve your videos to be more user friendly, get more ratings and ultimately get more traffic. As I mentioned above, it will take some time to see the results. But when you start to see them, it will be a steady traffic flow. So get to work. You’ll find many tutorials on the internet about how to make videos for YouTube. I wish you good luck on your video promotions .

Image courtesy: nantel

Anyone who uses a computer is familiar with screen savers. Many of us use a screen saver and some don’t like to have it ON. Anyway I’m writing this post for the people who like to have a screen saver and willing to make it more meaningful and useful.

This is a news about a new collection of screen savers which motivates you, inspires you, encourages you, lifts your mood and brightens your day. They are called “Screensaver Quotes” I have to tell you that these screen savers are not for free. But they will cost a very small amount and the value you will experience is far better than that. The significant thing is that you can go for a trial version before you buy it. If you are satisfied you can buy or else just uninstall them.

If you buy one, you will get another one free. And here is an extract from the vendor’s website.

You get that “Yes! I can do it” feeling from positive, upbeat, inspiring quotes on
every screen, they make you feel great!

PLUS… the backgrounds for the quotes make each screen as beautiful and colorful
as it is inspiring and encouraging. You never get tired of watching the huge variety
of awesome sunsets, dazzling rainbows and incredibly rich colors.

Every Time Your Motivational Screensaver Turns On You See:

• Vibrant, Jewel-Toned Colors:
  Incredibly vivid colors fill your computer screen with a richness you can almost feel!   It’s candy for your eyes
• Awesome Sunsets and Rainbows:
  The breathtaking sunsets, stunning sunrises, and dazzling rainbows add extra inspiration to the uplifting quotes.
• Inspiring Quotes That Make You Feel Great:
  The positive input you get every time your screensaver turns on helps you feel better about yourself, better about your goals, and you get that terrific “Yes! I can do it!” feeling.
• Quotes that are Easy to Read:
  Each terrific quote is the central focus of each screen. You can read every word easily, even from across the room.
• Amazingly Beautiful Transition Effects:
  The transitions are mesmerizing and relaxing to watch. You can feel the stress melt away as you watch the screens roll, glide and twirl from one to the next.

Screenshots of the Transition Effects

The transition effects of these screensavers are part of the enjoyment. They don’t flash by in a blur like the effects do in other screensavers, you can actually watch them change… and enjoy the process.

It’s not possible for still shots to convey the beauty of the transitions in motion but these sample screenshots will give you some idea of the variety:

You can also check all the 77 quotes and samples. Therefore you can be in a pretty good position to decide whether you buy it or not. Why are you still waiting? Have a visit to the site and explore yourself.

Image courtesy: Fliedermaus

Have you found a website which has a Google rank of 10/10 before? Or have you ever thought that a website can have a Google rank of 10/10? If you haven’t, the answer is YES. I was looking for a website which has a Google rank of 10/10. You can be a billionaire if you have a site like that while staying at your home. But this site is not a commercial one. I think that it is not bad to introduce you it as the father of web development technologies.

It is the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C). This website is the standard institution for web development technologies if you are not aware about that. Here’s how the website describes about itself.

The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) develops interoperable technologies (specifications, guidelines, software, and tools) to lead the Web to its full potential. W3C is a forum for information, commerce, communication, and collective understanding.

Here is the image evidence for that.

Do you have any idea about the amount of hits that this website has per day? According to Alexa.com it has an average of 800,000,000 hits per day. Here is the chart.

Pretty amazing ha! .

Image courtesy: Etolane

I thought to write this post on a very good plugin which automates Wordpress upgrade process. Some of you might have heard about it. It is called Wordpress Automatic upgrade. It automates all the required steps to follow manually in a Wrodpress upgrade. I also wanted to upgrade my blog’s Wordpress version 2.5. I used this plugin few hours ago and it was awesome. You are now looking at a Wordpress blog which is upgraded to version 2.5 .

Here’s how Wordpress describes it.

Wordpress automatic upgrade upgrades your wordpress installation by doing the following steps.

1. Backs up the files and makes available a link to download it.
2. Backs up the database and makes available a link to download it.
3. Downloads the latest files from http://wordpress.org/latest.zip and unzips it.
4. Puts the site in maintenance mode.
5. De-activates all active plugins and remembers it.
6. Upgrades wordpress files.
7. Gives you a link that will open in a new window to upgrade installation.
8. Re-activates the plugins.

The plugin can also can be run in a automated mode where in you do not have to click on any links to go to the next step.

If you haven’t upgraded your Wordpress version to 2.5 and don’t like to get messed up with the manual upgrading, this is the best plugin ever which will ease your work and stress. It even provides a temporary “The site is being Upgraded” page while you are running the upgrade process. But as a precaution I recommend you to get backups of your current installation and the database . If anything goes wrong, you can revert back . Anyway the probability of happening that is very low. But the experience I had with this plugin, I found that it doesn’t re-activate the whole pugins which were deactivated before. But it is nothing much a problem. You can activate them manually when you want.