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!!!

Site counters are site accessories that you can’t live without. They show you how many people have been “blessed” enough to read your posts. Some even have dual purposes, a counter and a tracker in one!

A lot of site counters look like tiny rectangles with numbers, and some are just colored numbers. I have patronized the counters from Blogmad.net for a long time, because of the variety of counter choices.

I recently came across gostats.com free counter section and i got hooked. Cutesy counters are not for everyone, but they definitely are for me!

It’s a nice touch to have a counter that shows off your personality, and will complement your blog.

This is a suggestion for theme developers out there. While themes are a definite need in the blogging world, I do hope that more site counter designs will also be available in the near future. At present, I saw only a few counter sites that caters to the too-personalized bloggers like me.

Please create more counter designs!!!

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.