This was supposed to be my wish list, but being the way I am, I decided to turn it into an advice post to give clueless guys an idea on what to give their true-blue blogging girlfriend (or me! *evil grin*) for Christmas:

1. Wordpress for Dummies by Lisa Sabin-Wilson - a book about the most popular blogging platform. Any blogger will love it.

2. A brand new Wordpress Theme from E.webscapes. Request for Becca Wei to design your theme. She’s the best!

3. A new Canon digital camera for capturing images to blog about.

4. A new Nokia cellular phone (with a built in digital camera) so she can stay connected with you, AND have something to take pictures with (for blogging).

5. A hosting account and a domain name, to be paid yearly (cheaper).

6. A flash badge she can place on her sidebar. This could be something mushy like “This blogger is loved” or something nicer.

and, finally…

7. Read the wordpress book, study the nuances of the theme you bought from E.webscapes, tweak the cpanel of the hosting account, memorize the manuals of the cellular phone and the digital cam, and install the flash badge yourself … so she won’t have to. - This will make you the most considerate guy in the planet to her.

Useful? :D

The main problem for new bloggers is finding the right theme for their weblogs. Identity, as with real life, is important on the net and everyone craves to create a blog that reflects their personality. While using a pre-designed theme from Wordpress is easy enough, putting in your own headers and images may be difficult for the techie-challenged.

I came across this site, called WP-theme generator.

It lets bloggers and site makers put in the exact colors and images they want for their blogs. Everything is menu-ized;

• No codes to put in, no guessing color tags.
• You can insert images on backgrounds, on your header and on the sidebar.
• You can choose to show or unshow your blog title. Unshow, if your header/background image already contains your title.
• You can choose the size of the sidebar, the number of sidebars (1 or 2)
• It’s widget-ready, so arranging and rearranging your sidebar elements is hassle-free.
• You can choose to make the sidebar and the post body
• A pretty preview element let’s you undo mistakes effortlessly, and color scheming is a breeze
• When you’re done, all the elements of your theme are packed in a handy zip file that you can save in your computer and upload to your blog.

My only major concern with using this theme generator is the lay out. The elements of the page look completely disconnected from each other. It’s as if the header, sidebar and post body have a zone of their own. This might be ok to some people, but for people like me who want continuity among the blog elements, and need a compact-look for their blogs, this is a major turn off.

I tried resizing my header to “fit” the overall widths of the sidebar and the post body, and it was fine for a while (because I used a black background that masked the size flaws), but it still did not seem right.

Nonetheless, this is excellent for creating themes for friendster blogs and myspace. The templates (header.php etc.) are all individual elements that you can choose to upload to an existing design.

Have Fun!!!

Some people prefer to make blogs in friendster because of the convenience of having instant loyal readers! Who else will read your blog first but your friends, right?

You will be able to easily map out the content and local flavor of your blog because you already know who your target audience will be, your friends. While others scramble to build a strong readership, you will be breezing right through that and focusing on your writing.

Friendster blogs have a big disadvantage though, you cannot put in your own ads. While ads appear in your friendster blog, those ads don’t create revenue for you. If you don’t mind that, then by all means go for friendster blogs.

Oh, and set up is a breeze. Here’s a good site to grab some Friendster Theme sass!