I hope you don’t mind if I pour myself a cold one while writing this post. You can grab one too and share this one with me.

I’ve been blog browsing because I haven’t found any Entrecard credit contest that hasn’t ended yet. While it’s nice to find out what other bloggers are talking about, there’s a side effect to this. I am now unashamedly admitting that I envy themes that other bloggers use. That once again, for the nth time in my blogging life, I feel the urge… to change my site’s theme.

*sighs and drinks*

I won’t bore you with the details of how I was with every new theme that I installed: like an ecstatic babe with a new toy. Messaging my friends and inviting them over to view my new theme. From the moment I fall in love with a theme, I download it, modify it, install it and then worship it for a month or so until … I tire of it. This theme now is Abstractshylock and I adore the compact look. My only trouble with it is, since it’s a “fixed width 2-column” theme, my readers (and I) have to scroll down, down, down to view my sidebar accessories.

I click my bookmarks to browse ewebscapes.com and think of buying a custom theme designed by Becca Wei, but then again, what if I tire of that too? If anyone wants to design a theme for me ‘free’, you can advertise on my blog for 3 straight months. *winks*

On a positive note, being discontented might be a good thing as this shows how I’m growing as a blogger. I’m getting exposed to others’ work and my blogging knowledge improves.

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No, this I-feel-the-urge-to-change-my-theme is not a metaphor for some other urge I might be feeling now. Though, it could be. *evil grin* But seriously, there are some envy-worthy blogs that I really like and here are some of these:

jdonuts.com - Japan life and culture

Sam freedom - I followed his Entrecard how-to, and voila, visits increased

Girl Geeks Do It Best - I feel physical pain due to envy when I read this blog, primarily because I wasn’t the one who thought of this domain name (afrogtokiss.net…it’s just so cool), and secondly because she proclaims the sentiment that geek girls all over the world have known for a long time… geek girls do it best. Visit her and get hooked, too.

And I wouldn’t have known of these blogs if it weren’t for Entrecard.

:D

WP is a great tool to use in your site if you own the site and use WP as your platform. You have a lot of control over what goes on in terms of presentation and the like. However, I learned from a lot of my pals that wordpress-hosted blogs do not always allow for much freedom.

For example, they don’t allow posting of your own google ads. Google adsense or some other ad provider is a no-brainer way of getting money through your blog. It’s simply there, generating money for you. But when your blog provider doesnt allow you to do so, I would like to think that you’re losing time and energy writing about the things you love without really getting a bonus.

Aesthetic-wise, WP is still the best blogging platform with thousands of support. But you’re better off self-hosting and using WP as a platform than creating your blog with them.