Posts Tagged ‘WordPress Themes’

What Is A Good WordPress Blog Design?

Tuesday, June 10th, 2008

What would you think of your blog if it were the first time visiting it? Often, this is a question you should ask yourself, but I know all to well that it’s really hard to make a good decision about what you think and be consistent with what others think. From time to time, there is nothing wrong with asking your readers what they think about your current blog design.

You can even go so far as to create a poll that has a serious of questions that allows users to offer their opinions by choosing answers from multiple choice questions. Another idea is to simply write a post on your blog asking readers for their direct opinions in the comments. (more…)

Is Your WordPress Blog Worth $65,000 Dollars?

Sunday, March 16th, 2008

wpdesignerFor many, bloggers work towards building their blogs by increasing their brand, traffic and readers for the ultimate goal of selling. While some might not have the intention to sell, there may come a time in their lives when selling becomes a option due to many unforeseen circumstances.

Today marks an exciting time for the WordPress community and for many a somewhat emotional one for many as well. It seems that one of the most popular and leading WordPress Themes blogs has been sold. The owner, who goes by the name, Small Potato, listed his highly successful and very popular blog, Wpdesigner.com up for sale in Site Point and is pending the final stages in being acquire by a private owner for $65,000 dollars.

The two year site owner explains more about the reason why he stared Wpdesigner.com, “I started Wpdesigner.com back in May 2006 because I was not happy with the quality of free WordPress themes”. The reason for selling is clearly explained on Site Point, “I’m a one-man team and will be traveling abroad for the rest of the year (very long vacation), which means I won’t have time to keep on growing this site”.

The $65,000 dollar domain name is just 21 months time has attracted over 2900 RSS subscribers, over 400 paying premium memberships, 1300 standard level memberships, has managed to work up the PageRank chain to PR7 and take the top spots in most all major search engines for terms related to WordPress Themes and similar.

For those interested in learning what it takes to make it far in the dot Com and WordPress world, you should invest some time into reflecting on all the hard work that has been put into this site over the last 21 months. $65,000 dollars is not a bad price for less than two years of work. Many bloggers including myself work hard with our blogs and or no where in the same position to sell for as much as Wpdesigner.com has sold for. I predict this to be a WordPress blog success story that will carry over for many years to come.

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Professional WordPress Blog Design Services

Friday, March 14th, 2008

I have had a lot of fun learning the inner workings of WordPress as well as learning how to make WordPress Themes. Over the past year I have landed quite a few jobs for providing customers with their very own professionally designed WordPress blog design, or as most bloggers call it, professional or premium WordPress Themes.

In this article I want to showcase some of my work and allow everyone to marvel and say, ahhh…. so pretty! (Joking) But I do want to show off some of the past work and also provide a follow up service to my previous clients and send them some traffic. (So be sure to check out these sites!)

MasonWorld.com - This design is brand new, still has the price tag on it. Mark Mason hired me to redesign his blog and get him hooked up with a very professional, clean and free flowing WordPress theme. He told me that he really enjoyed my previous work and wanted something that followed suit but a little more customized to his taste. The result was amazing! Both Mark as well as myself are extremely pleased with the final product.

Mark Mason is a very gifted and talented individual. He works as an engineer at Texas Instruments. (I bartered and asked for a calculator when we were negotiating our contract to do the web design work!) By nature Mark is very smart with many things and it seems almost predictable that he would have such an interest in Internet Marketing.

His blog is very straight forward and simple. He’s on a journey to learn more about Internet marketing and his personal blog is used to record his personal accounts within his venture. Readers and site visitors are welcomed to follow and learn along the way. Mark is very keen on developing what he calls, Niche Super Sites. You should check that out and learn more.

Before:(click to view full size)

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After: (click to view full size)

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ClarksvilleHomeInspection.com - This site is owned by a long time family friend of over 20 years. The owner is John Goad and the site promotes his very successful and high quality business called, Clarksville Home Inspection. John turned to me for advice a year ago and explained to me that he wanted to gain a presence on the Internet. Little did he know that just after one year, not only would he have a presence but he would totally knock out the competition by providing amazing services on his web site.

clarksville-home-inspectionJohn Goad is an amazing individual. He is one of the most detail minded people I know, and that says a lot because I know a bunch of detail minded people. Taking the number one spot for that is huge! If you ever get a home inspection done by him, then you’ll find out quite a bit about your home. I wouldn’t put it past Johnny to count and make a record of every single nail and screw used on the homes he inspects.

John provides a very unique service on his web site. He offers a free service called, Ask A Home Inspector, which gives readers, visitors and potential customers an open channel to speak directly with him regarding questions related to their homes. From there he accepts, answered and publishes the material live on his blog so that others can read and learn.

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In addition to the Ask A Home Inspector service we started an additional service on his web site that allows users to see examples of his findings during real home inspections. We use FlickR to upload the pictures and stream the pictures live on his web site via RSS syndication. You can find many articles on his home inspection blog that will help you learn more about your home and things to look for regarding the health of your home.

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There is no other home inspection web site on the Internet like Clarksville Home Inspection. This web site is very ahead of the times. In fact, we will soon be adding a YouTube channel where users can easily view videos snippet examples of his findings during a home inspection.

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The Television Show Blog - This is a brand new blog, still undergoing design work. I recently purchased this domain name a few months ago, predicting that there would be a huge surge in television show press once the writer strikes ended.

In my opinion, television shows are a very “Hot Topic” to blog about. If you have the right name, branding and content, you’ll go very far in the business of blogging.

The Television Show Blog will be underway in a few weeks. Recently I have found a writer for this wonderful writing project. Her name will be unveiled when I offer the official press release of The Television Show Blog, which again will be in a week to three.

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Clarksville Pilots - This is a very simple WordPress Blog that I designed for my son’s local travel ball baseball team.

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The Airplane Blog - This is becoming a pioneer blog in the aircraft and aviation niche. The Airplane Blog is owned by me and is a place where I can have tons of fun blogging about the latest news in airplanes, aviation and aircraft for sale.

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For readers just tuning in for the first time, my name is Garry Conn. I provide a very affordable, creative, effective and unique service to a wide range of customers.

In the business of Internet Marketing, aggressive and crushing domination in the search engines and total capitalization and utilization of the modern Internet as coined, Web 2.0, I am available for hire. If you have a business, product or service that you want to market and promote on the Internet, contact me today for a free consultation and service quote.

I am bold enough to say that I provide one of the most effective Web 2.0 marketing services online. Anyone that has the opportunity to work with me will excel and take their Internet presence into a digital realm that only very few business can achieve. My services are highly affordable and extremely effective. Under my development and guidance, your business will completely own the competition on the Internet.

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Not Another Theme Change!!!

Monday, January 14th, 2008

Yes, I am sorry folks. I have updated Garry Conn dot Com yet again! I would like to believe that every time I update the site, I push it in a forward growth direction. I have learned a lot about your expectations, wants and needs within just the last few week. This design change is the result of that.

Garry Conn dot Com sports a very clean, easy to navigate/find and simple design. The site should look a lot better for folks viewing in on wide screen and high resolution monitors. In fact, the site should look great for folks still viewing on 1024×768 as well.

On thing that you guys will be VERY happy to learn is that I have brought search back to GCDC. Check out the bottom right side of the home page and you’ll see an entire section devoted just to search.

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Another really great feature is my Subscription section, located top right corner. I am aiming to really buckle down and recruit new readers. By advancing my readership this will in return make things even more enjoyable for my current regular readers. There will be more people commenting and voicing their opinions and soon this place will be just booming with activity… (I hope! lol!!!)

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I have a brand new section that is already hitting off like wildfire called, Ask Garry! This is a place where anyone can ask me a question via email and I will not only answer their question but I will also post it LIVE on my website. Full credit and links are given to the person who asks the question. If you have a question that is related to blogging, making money online, search engine marketing or optimization and WordPress tips and tricks, feel free to email me ANYTIME at GarryConn@Gmail.com. Your answered question will go live on Ask Garry! Also, some questions will even make it LIVE to my main site!

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Another brand new addition to Garry Conn dot Com is my Submit A News Story section! Blogging is a tough business for both you as well as myself. The way I see it… many bloggers might need some help with promotion and I need help with finding material to write about. If you have a story that you want covered on GCDC, submit your material into me and it just might make the home page of my site!

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The individual post pages have been completely redesigned. There is NO sidebar and it is very easy on the eyes. My content is valuable and I want people to read it. I don’t want any distractions from my readers. When you read my articles, you will have the comfort and ease of viewing nothing but the content. At the bottom of the post page, you can drop a comment as well as quickly access some really awesome related posts.

I hope that you guys enjoy the new Garry Conn dot Com! Remember, I am also trying to maintain some order around here! LOL!!! It is very hard, but I am attempting to stick to posting ONLY one post per day and at 1201 Midnight CST. I already have about two weeks worth of content scheduled to publish!

GarryConn

Learn Everything About WordPress

Wednesday, January 2nd, 2008

I was speaking with Simon Baker last night in Google Talk. Simon is a pretty good blog friend of mine and operates a blog at www.zath.co.uk. Recently, simon got motivated to start a new blog at www.cheapbargains.org. I really enjoyed visiting his new site and I can tell that he is putting a lot of hard work into providing his soon to be readers with the best bargains online. I look forward to watching the growth of this site. To better help me keep track of the site, to help boost his traffic to it and to help provide my readers who follow my discount sites, I have added his new site into my “Best Deals Online” mashup. This mashup is very similar to “My Favorite Blogs” mashup.

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Anyway… in the process of speaking with Simon last night he asked me a very good question:

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Simon asked me if I had any recommendations for the best place to learn about coding WordPress themes. Further he adds, “I can make minor changes right now, but it’d probably be good to learn from the ground up.” I know exactly how he feels and over the last six months, I have really beefed up my experience with WordPress, especially WordPress themes. For me, the answer is www.WordPress.org. The rest of this article will point out a few sections on the WordPress doc site that has helped me the most within the last six months.

Template Tags: This page has an entire collection of tags that you can use in your WordPress theme. You can click on each tag to view a separate page that gives you a very good description of the tag function as well as examples. See screen shots below and click to view full size:

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Theme Development: This section is extremely useful, and actually I would consider being the main page for sources of information for learning how to create your own WordPress themes.

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WordPress For Beginners: You might not think that you are a beginner… but you are! I am too!!! If you skip this section over just because you think you have a little to moderate amount of experience then you’re missing out. The WordPress For Beginners section is a gold mind and has tons of useful information for beginners as well as the more seasoned WordPress blogger.

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The official WordPress site is one of the best places for me to learn more about WordPress and all the wonderful things within, such as being able to make my own themes and tweak and modify existing ones. The amount of information found on the site can be overwhelming… I would suggest making it a habit to invest about 15 minutes to 30 minutes per day reading the site. Just take one thing at a time and try not to expect to absorb the entire technology in one bite. For common bloggers such as myself, it can take a long time to learn all the inner workings of WordPress. I haven’t even scratched the surface yet! This is all in fun too… I love learning about WordPress, and www.WordPress.org is one of my favorite places to go to receive daily lessons.

What do you like most about WordPress? What are some sites that you can share in the comments that have helped you learn more about WordPress? How does WordPress compare to Blogger.com? What are some things that you would like to learn more about? Drop me a comment, I would love to hear what you have to say!

GarryConn

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