You can view a live demo at http://themes.angadsodhi.com
You can download the file from here.
Here’s a screenshot of the theme:

Click to view larger image

Creating this theme from scratch was fun. I have a few people to thank whose posts were very useful:

• New page menu function in WordPress 2.7
• Display your tweets without a plugin
• How to add a dynamic sidebar in Wordpress?

Theme properties:

• Widget-ready
• Fixed width
• W3 XHTML valid
• Designed with SEO in mind (eg <h1> appears just once on every page and that is the poast title)
• wordpress 2.7 ready (I presume it shouldn’t have problems with wordpress 2.8)
• Threaded comments (requires Brian’s Threaded Comments plugin included in download package)

The most difficult part was naming the theme! With thousands of WP themes already available, it has become so difficult naming them. I’ll be grateful if you can suggest me a better name.

Please let me know how you like the theme. Even if you don’t end up downloading the theme, please do let me know what you think about it. Comments and suggestions are always welcome! I’m coming back from a long layoff so please help me spread the word. Digg it or tweet it if you like it.

Psst: I plan to make many more themes before my next semester starts. If you like this theme, please subscribe to this blog. Expect a much better premium theme in the weeks to come!

Twitter contests are fun. You just have to tweet about the contest and you are in! Contests cannot get any simpler than this. They help the contest holder gain followers and it gives you a chance to win something really cool!

About Motive Interactive:
Motive Interactive is a performance-based (CPA, CPL, CPS) advertising network that has great Advertiser and Publisher Solutions. That are rather new but very good. If you haven’t joined them yet, signup now! Motive Interactive also has many more twitter contests so do follow them at @motive where they also tweet about exciting new offers.

Motive is still giving away an iPod nano a week in the Shoemoney Las Vegas Challenge contest.

As quoted from the official post,

Three Ways to Win:
1.) Join Motive Interactive and earn within any of the Commission Levels above during the month of June. Contest tier prizes only awarded to new Motive affiliates signed up through this blog during June 2009. YOU HAVE TO SIGN UP THROUGH THIS LINK TO BE ELIGIBLE
2.) Follow @Motive and Tweet this contest on Twitter. Just “tweet” the following from your Twitter account and you are automatically entered to win a new iPod Shuffle each week.
“Follow @motive and join Top Rated CPA Affiliate Network Motive Interactive to make money and win big prizes! http://xr.com/s1g RT 2 WIN! “
3.) Blog about this contest promotion. If you have a blog, simply link back to ShoeMoney’s contest blog page and talk about this contest. Then you will be entered to win a new Xbox 360 Elite plus two games.

Thus, you can win an iPod nano everyweek just by tweeting about the contest and win an Xbox 360 by blogging about the contest the way I have done here.

If you are good with Affiliate Marketing, you stand a good chance of winning some even bigger prizes:

Network Earnings Prizes
$500,000+ Tier – Vegas VIP Prize
. 1st Class flight for two to Las Vegas
. Fairway Villa for two nights
. $5,000 in cash
$200,000 – $499,999 Tier
. 1st Class flight for one to Las Vegas
. Wynn – The Suite Life Package : Parlor Suite 2 nights
$100,000 – $199,999 Tier
. $4,000 in cash
$50,000 – $99,999 Tier
. 2 tickets to UFC 100 with accommodations and flight for 2 for 2 nights
$25,000 – $49,999 Tier
. Sony Plasma TV
$10,000 – $24,999 Tier
. Xbox 360 Elite plus Halo 3 and NEWEST UFC XBOX GAME
$3,000 – $9,999 Tier
. iPod Touch 32GB
$1,000 – $2,999 Tier
. Best Buy Gift Card

More details can be found at the official post about the contest.

Motive also gave me a nice “What’s your motive” tshirt. Loved it guys. Thank you once again, Luke. (Sorry for the late post. I was busy with exams) Here are some pics:

Simply love the color!

This is on the back of the tee.

The nano and the tshirt. Hope to win many more!

Psst: It’s my birthday tomorrow! Even this blog celebrates it’s birthday tomorrow. I turn 21, my blog 2!! Expect a bit of a surprise here tomorrow..

I was asked by 4cheapwebhosting.com to review their services. I had a look around their site. So here it goes: If you want me to review your site or services, drop me a message via the contact form.

Finding a good host is vital for any website’s success. You don’t want your website to have thousands to hits daily only to crash abruptly. Downtimes have a really bad effect on public memory. They don’t go down well with advertisers either. And since you have to choose a host before you have actually started your website, most newbies end up with hosting packages they don’t actually need or a hosting package that is way smaller than their needs.

An ideal host would have the following features:

• 100% uptime guarantee
• 24/7 customer service
• Live chat support
• A good forum that has plenty of big daddies on it
• Regular backup facility
• It should be cheap and affordable

Choosing a good host can be rather intricate. Have your work cut out simply by visiting 4cheapwebhosting.com and check out their affordable web hosting packages. This site can be exceptionally useful specially if you are planning of moving to new servers. That way you know your exact needs and can find your ideal host easily.

For newbies, they have a very unbiased list of hosts. Do a bit of research on them and choose wisely. Hosting packages have been classified into categories such as linux / windows hosting, ASP / PHP / JSP scripting, MySQL databases (you generally need them for blogs and CMSs), multi domains etc.

There are more than 400 packages to choose from. You can even have a word with them just to be sure you are getting the best. Take your pick wisely.

Relevant links:
http://www.4cheapwebhosting.com

I was fascinated when I first heard the term ‘electric sitar’. If you don’t know what a sitar is, jump over to youtube and search for ’sitar’. Niladri Kumar has tweaked this traditional Indian string instrument. Check out both videos.

For the second video, you’ll have to head over to YouTube because embedding of that video has been disabled upon request. The music video is called Priority and can be found at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AQU5eGg8wcM. It has a Hindi intro to it, so just skip ahead if you don’t get a clue.

The Burj Dubai. Construction began in 2005 and is expected to be complete by 2008. At an estimated height of over 800 meters, it will easily be world's tallest building when finished. It will be almost 40% taller than the the current tallest building, the Yaipei 101.

This is what downtown Dubai will look like around 2008-2009. More than 140 stories of the Burj Dubai have already been completed. It is already the worlds tallest man made structure and it is still not scheduled to be completed for at least another year.

This is what downtown Dubai will look like around 2008-2009. More than 140 stories of the Burj Dubai have already been completed. It is already the worlds tallest man made structure and it is still not scheduled to be completed for at least another year.

Recently it was announced that the final height of this tower will be 1200 meters. That would make it more than 30% taller than the Burj Dubai and three times as tall as the Empire State Building.

The Burj al Alam, or The World Tower. Upon completion it will rank as the world's highest hotel. It is expected to be finished by 2009. At 480 meters it will only be 28 meters shorter than theTaipei 101.

The Trump International Hotel & Tower, which will be the centerpiece of one of the palm islands, The Palm Jumeirah.

Currently, the largest amusement park collection in the world is Walt Disney World Resort in Orlando , which is also the largest single-site employer in the United states with 58,000 employees. Dubailand will be twice the size.

Dubai Sports City. A huge collection of sports arenas located in Dubailand.

The Dubai Marina is an entirely man made development that will contain over 200 highrise buildings when finished. It will be home to some of the tallest residential structures in the world. The completed first phase of the project is shown. Most of the other high rise buildings will be finished by 2009-2010.

he Dubai Mall will be the largest shopping mall in the world with over 9 million square feet of shopping and around 1000 stores. It will be completed this year.

Ski Dubai , which is already open, is the largest indoor skiing facility in the world. This is a rendered image of another future indoor skiing facility that is being planned.

Some of the tallest buildings in the world, such as Ocean Heights and The Princess Tower , which will be the largest residential building in the world at over a 100 stories, will line the DubaiMarina.

Amazing eh? If you liked this post please digg / stumble it.

This is part one of the 2-part series. Be sure to check out the other part too.

Dubai in 1990 prior to the craziness

The same street in 2003

The very street last year!

The Palm Islands in Dubai. New Dutch dredging technology was used to create these massive man made islands. They are the largest artificial islands in the world and can be seen from space. Three of these Palms will be made with the last one being the largest of them all.

Dubai is said to currently have an estimated 15-25% of all the world 's cranes!!

The Dubai Waterfront. When completed it will become the largest waterfront development in the world ...

All of this was built in the last 5 years, including that island that looks like a palm tree.

Upon completion, the resort will have 2,000 villas, 40 luxury hotels, shopping centers, movie theaters, and many other facilities. It is expected to support a population of approximately 500,000 people. It is advertised as being visible from the moon.

The World Islands . 300 artificially created islands in the shape of the world. Each island will have an estimated cost of $25-30 million.

The Burj al-Arab hotel in Dubai . The worlds tallest hotel. Considered the only '7 star' hotel and the most luxurious hotel in the world. It stands on an artificial island in the sea.

Hydropolis, the world's first underwater hotel. Entirely built in Germany and then assembled inDubai, it is scheduled to be completed by 2009 after many delays.

The second part can be found here. If you like these posts please digg/stumble them. Expecting some SU love on this one!

The entire episode has been divided into 5 parts. This has to be the longest SuperSundayVideo yet, but then the stadium deserves it! The stadium has a seating capacity of 91,000. It was built with 36 km (22.4 miles) of unwrapped steel, with a combined weight of 45,000 tonnes. Estimated cost of construction: $423 million!! Highly recommend everyone to watch all 5 videos but you could always jump directly to the last video.

I’d like to mention that there are ad spots up for grabs. If you would like to advertise on angadsodhi.com, please have a look at the ‘Advertise‘ page.

Looking forward to your comments. A couple of comments could get you into the top commentators list. Getting a quality backlink from a PR3 blog should now be easy pickings!!

Here is just some of the exciting stuff that he’s got over at his site.

If you like this post and find it useful, please digg it/stumble it.

I was asked by UZOOM to to review their site and the chat softwares they provide. I thought the softs were pretty neat and worth a mention. So here it goes…

If you are on a self-hosted blog, chances are that you have already used the ‘Live Support’ features most webhosting companies provide. I think it’s a really cool feature. Much better that having to open a ticket and wait for someone to reply to the ticket. Using a liveSupport function instead of the ticket system shows that your company actually wants to be accessible at all times. It simply shows that you care.

UZOOM is one company that provides all kinds of chat related softwares for your site/blog. First, we look at the ‘Live Chat’ feature. This service was very easy to setup and run. You just need to add the ‘LiveSupport’ button to your page that will show the ‘NOW ONLINE/OFFLINE’ status. The rest can be controlled from your account on their site itself. You can add additional operators so that your team can attend to different clients at the same time!

Just an example of how the button can look like

Then there is the Free Chat Client that allows you to add a neat looking chat window to any page (you don’t need an account with them for that). Just pick a nickname and chat away. As seen in the screenshot below, it has all the standard messaging features like text formatting and emoticons.

A screenshot of the embeddable free chat soft

But now the big question - Do you really need a chat software as a blogger? A support system could come real handy if you are a designer who’s just released a theme or a new plugin. If you are a full-time blogger, why give away your private messenger IDs when you could chat off your own blog! Sounds like a great way to give back some of that reader love. Then you can always add it to your facebook/myspace page.

+ves:

• Very easy to setup.
• Nice clean layout
• Gives you a professional touch

-ves:

• LiveChat sometimes took ages in the ‘connecting servers’ phase.
• LiveChat is a tad expensive if you don’t make much money from your product
• Anyone could pose as you while you are away on the free chat client! There should have been an authenticated login for the admin

Note: I have implemented the chat client on my blog. Give it a shot. It can be found here.

Note: This is a guest post by Debby Phillips who is a part of Affiliate Marketer’s Give Back. The initiative she has taken is truly noble. I asked her to write me a guest post on this blog and she obliged.

Affiliate marketing guru, Missy Ward, started a group called, Affiliate Marketers Give Back to benefit Susan G. Komen for the Cure. It is a group of 15 affiliate marketers that will walk 60 miles for breast cancer on September 12th-14th in Seattle, Washington.

Jen Fluker and I heard about the group and immediately joined. My grandmother is a breast cancer survivor, and I am walking in her honor.

We started a blog, www.marketleverage60milewalk.com, so that we could document our training and fundraising efforts. The rain seems to be working against our attempts to train!

Donate. Raise awareness. Do your bit!

Each walker is required to raise $2,200 each. Jen and I have asked our family and friends for donations. MarketLeverage has agreed to match every dollar that is donated. So far our group has raised $29,136.09 of our $45,000.00 goal.

If you would like to help Jennifer and me in our efforts to raise money for this important cause, please follow the links below to donate. Thank you for your support, and please be sure to go to www.marketleverage60milewalk.com to follow our progress.

Jen’s donation link

Debby’s donation link

–Debby Philips

This is week 9 of SuperSundayVideo. If you have any suggestions for next week’s edition, feel free to add it as a comment to this post. I would love to share it with all my readers.

The entire process of installing it on the blog was easy but the concept of SezWho beats me. Probably if I don’t figure it out by a week, I might throw it out! I’ll keep you guys updated whether this service really helps.

Till then, I’ll be grateful if a SezWho user can brief me up on it.

The only solution could be to manually select posts that you feel are related. Here’s a plugin that will definitely simplify the entire process. It’s called the Microkids Related Posts plugin.

This plugin neatly integrates into your Write Post page. Every time you write a post you can very easily search for a post that you know of and add it to the bunch of related posts. Check out the screenshot below to know more.

This is a screenshot from this post itself. As I type in the word 'wordpress', it searches for posts that features the word 'wordpress'. Then you can add them manually.

So when I install this plugin, do I have to do this for all my previous posts manually!! The answer is a mix of both yes and no. When I write post A and mark B as related to A, A is also marked as related to B automatically. So when I edit post A, I don’t have to edit post B. That’s half the job done!

So here’s a plugin worth giving a shot. Try it out. If you don’t like it, you could always dump it!
Note: The ‘Similar Posts’ you see below were not generated by the plugin. I’ll be using it when I have the time to do it.

A caption below an image looks neat

WP2.6 gave us the feature to use captions for our images. I tried using these captions and they just wouldn’t show up. The captions looked like plain text. Then it struck me. The CSS needs to be modified to facilitate captions. Here’s what you can try out.

Open your Stylesheet (style.css) for the theme you are currently using and pasted the following code into it. Place it anywhere in the CSS file and it should work.

/**************************/
/* Captions (Wordpress 2.6 stuff) */
/**************************/
.aligncenter,
div.aligncenter {
display: block;
margin-left: auto;
margin-right: auto;
}

.wp-caption {
border: 1px solid #ddd;
text-align: center;
background-color: #f3f3f3;
padding-top: 4px;
margin: 10px;
-moz-border-radius: 3px;
-khtml-border-radius: 3px;
-webkit-border-radius: 3px;
border-radius: 3px;
}

.wp-caption img {
margin: 0;
padding: 0;
border: 0 none;
}

.wp-caption p.wp-caption-text {
font-size: 11px;
line-height: 17px;
padding: 0 4px 5px;
margin: 0;
}
/* www.angadsodhi.com */
/* End captions */

Change the value of background-color to whatever you wish. f3f3f3 is a cool blue which looks great for captions. On the top of this post, you can see an image with a caption below it. Neat huh!

Now here’s a firefox plugin that makes sharing a lot simpler. It is called Shareaholic and can be downloaded here. Neat lil plugin to say the least. Using Shareaholic you can share any content you like over all of the major bookmarking sites. Just hit right-click >> Shareaholic and you see a bunch of sites you can submit the current page to. Then there’s also a neat button that the plugin adds to your browser. It has the same features there too. Both options have been shown in the screenshots below:

When you right-click on the page you want to share (left) and the button the plugin adds to the toolbar (right)

Then there’s also the option to just Shift-Z, which brings up a small form where you enter the email-addresses of people you want to share the page with. Check out the screenshot to know more. Neat huh!

Hit Shift-Z and you can mail the current page to your buddies

Shareaholic Homepage:http://shareaholic.com/
Services included: digg, del.icio.us, facebook, friendfeed, google bookmarks, google reader notes, kaboodle, magnolia, mixx, myspace, pownce, reddit, stumbleupon, tumblr, twitter, and ycombinator.

SU can be a boon to newbie bloggers. If a post of yours makes it big on SU, it can bring insane traffic to the tune of 20k hits a day! Here are 5 things you can do when getting insane traffic from StumbleUpon.

1. Monitor Bandwidth
If you are on a self hosted Wordpress installation, monitoring bandwidth is the most important step you need to take. If the BW limit for the month is reached, your CPANEL would lock you out because even the cpanel is hosted on your site itself and needs some of that bandwidth. What that means is that you no longer have access to your files as well as your database until you buy more bandwidth.

2. Turn on cache
wp-cache is a must have plugin in such situations as it greatly reduces the amount of data a returning visitor downloads from your server. This implies, same BW but more PageViews!

3. Add all known Bookmark buttons
My observation tells me that a SU may never generate revenue for you but he is ‘bookmarking aware’. Therefore if he sees bookmarking buttons, he might Digg it, he might Sphinn it. Make sure your bookmarking options are clearly visible. If you like the bookmarking buttons on my site, see my post on how you can have them on your blog.

4. Put up the Alexa stats box
Alexa gathers it’s data from users who have installed the Alexa toolbar. Every click on the Alexa stats box by a user without the Alexa toolbar is regarded as 1 visit by a user with the Alexa toolbar! Thus when every non-toolbar user clicks on the stats box, your Alexa rank will go up. Get an Alexa Stats box for yourself here.

5. Encourage commenting
Comments are the life and soul of any blog. Encourage comments by asking readers a question or asking them to voice their opinion on the topic. If you can think evil, you could even instigate a comment war yourself! As seen on YouTube, people love to fight it out. If a guy posts some contradicting comments, he is pounced upon. What that does its that it makes people wanna come back to the blog again n again. Make sure you have the Brian’s Threaded Comments, Subscribe to Comments and the Top Commentators plugins installed. They greatly encourage commenting.

Then there are a few tips that should be followed at all times. Make sure your subscription button is clearly visible. Give out great content every time. I’ve seen people delay posting new content when their latest post makes it big on SU. Don’t do that. Write for your regular readers. Go ahead! Make the most of the attention you get!!

The primary aim of such a theme is added functionality. You can show your top posts, your recent posts, a featured article… all on one page, the way problogger does it. Or you could show a post from each of your categories as Balkhis does it. Check out both blogs.

Syed Balkhi of Balkhis.com has come up with an e-book on designing a magazine style theme. Do check it out. Has plenty of neat illustrations to guide you through. If you do find it useful, do let us know.