Festive season is around the corner and I thought it would be a good idea to usher in the mood a little bit early this year. For those who are into Internet marketing, this is the season for selling. The buying mood has started and I am already seeing an increase in sales with my affiliate products since last month. To make things a little merrier amidst all the gloom in the economy, I have added a Christmas image to the background of my Theme here.

To ad an image to your WordPress Theme is as easy as it can be. Just go look for an image around the size of approximately 1600 x 1050 px. You will find lots of it in sites offering free desktop wallpapers. That’s my preference as it will fit most computer screens. Can be smaller or even bigger, it’s up to you. The idea is to have the images on either side of your contents and not hidden behind. It might take some adjustments to get it right. Those with ’slimmer’ content areas will have an easier time.

When you are satisfied with your image, upload it to your Theme’s image folder. Go to your Theme editor and open up your stylesheet. In most Theme, the first line of codes will be the one that declares all core layout. Look for ‘body’ or something similar. Inside the curly brackets you will see ‘background: #xxxxxxx’ (x=color codes) immediately after the color codes add in your image url like this: background:#xxxxxxxx url (images/yourimagefile) no-repeat;

As an example, mine looks like this:
body { background: #66070D url(images/xmas.jpg) no-repeat; color:#555354; font: 60% 'Lucida Grande', Verdana, Arial, Sans-Serif; text-align: center; }

One thing to take note, make your background color as close as possible to that of your image so it can blend in. Use a color picker to determine the color of the image’s very edge so you get a almost similar color. Have fun!

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Some guy asked me, “how do you manage to keep blogging every other day when most of your posts gets no comments?” Frankly, I’ve never thought of that or even asked myself that question. Yea.. how the hell do I manage to find the inspiration to blog here day in day out without getting any comments to my what I have written?

I see so many blogs ranting and complaining that no one is commenting. I see tons of blogs leaving a cliffhanger, asking some silly questions, doing a blog contest that requires you to leave a comment, go commenting in hundreds of blog daily so they will come reciprocating and the most absurd of all, begging for whoever is reading to leave a comment. Is that all worth it? Are this kind of comments genuine? Do these kind of comments add value to your post?

My Definition Of A Good Comment

A good comment is one that adds value to the post itself. For example, if I wrote something about good SEO WordPress Themes, I would expect the comment to be discussing about SEO and WordPress Themes. The commentator must be able to grasp the fact that I am trying to net the term SEO WordPress Themes and try to compliment on my effort by commenting about the same topic to get the discussion going. By doing so, the comments will add value to the post.

It can be in disagreement. It can too be insulting and rude. As long as it stays on topic, I feel it is acceptable.

My Definition Of A Lousy Comment

However, things are not and will never be that perfect. We see lots of popular blogs getting hundreds of comments, 80 to 90 % of them one liners like, “Great posts” , or “what a well written article”. All these are by people trying to ride on the popularity of that blog, hoping that with the sheer numbers of readers, some will click on their links. Many also are just looking for an outright link back. Worse still, if the blog has a top commentator plugin installed, these guys will comment 3 or 4 times in the same post to stay as top commentator so their links stays up every month.

Coming back to the question. How do I keep blogging without getting comments.

I have given it some thought after being asked and I came up with these ‘excuses’

First and foremost, when I write something, I don’t write with the aim of getting comments. Most of my posts are tips about WordPress Theme customizations and before I write those tips, I try them out first to make sure it works so I don’t cause problem for people who wants to try them out. Because I am quite sure the tips all works, I don’t get much question. For those who are courteous, they will leave a short thank you note. I appreciate that. For others, they just take it for granted, I don’t mind.

Secondly, I’ve been around too long and I know for a fact that tons of comments does not mean tons of traffic. Some blogs with a hundred readers will get a hundred comments. These are very social bloggers who goes out commenting on every blog they come across daily. They make it their mission to do that, so those whose blog they have commented on will come and do the same for them. So out of the 300 blogs they commented on, 100 will pay back the favor, with a comment. Not with a click or a purchase. I am not a very social guy. Since I realize this fact, I can rest easy with lack of comments.

Thirdly, I rely on my stats. Daily, I see more than a thousand search hits coming from major search engines so I can keep smiling knowing the posts I have written with the keywords I am using have served their purpose right and good. I know these visitors are coming for information and not coming to make friends. I like that as these are the most valuable visitors though they don’t drop comments.

Lastly and very frankly, I am into this blog to make some money. To make money, I need lots of Search hits and to get lots of search hits I need lots of search-able contents. So I keep posting day in and day out. If one post of mine can get 10 search hits per day, 500 such post will theoretically gets 5000 hits. I know if I get visitors like these, I don’t get comments.

Contrary to teachings that you go ranking for a certain set of keywords or key phrase, I go for every thing that I feel will be searched by people who wants to customize their themes or are looking for a particular kind of Theme. It might be varied, but like hell, it is a very targeted audience.

Knowing all these facts keeps me inspired to keep posting daily and the biggest inspiration is, every other day, when I get that email or when I check my affiliate sites, it shows me I have made a sale or 2 from my affiliate products. With that, I don’t mind not getting lots of comments. Not that I don’t appreciate it, I just don’t let it be much of a bother.

Do I Mean Comments Are No Good?

Of course not! Every blogger loves to see their post commented on. Not getting any comments is just a fact that I have accepted. When you accept something, the frustration of not getting it is gone.

Comments from fellow bloggers who has a true and frank opinion about your ideas and views are good for self improvement. Only a true friend will tell you the truth about your weakness, so feedback are an important part of life, be it as a blogger or as a human being in general.

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A reader, John asked whether it is possible to add an extra page template without any sidebars to the Soothing Theme. Seems like John would like to add a Forum to his site and he would prefer the Forums page page not to have any sidebars. Seems reasonable enough, but in all honesty, I have never found any software that would allow a Forum to be integrated into a WordPress Theme or are there any WordPress plugins that serves this. Most of it will require you to add the Forum Scripts in an individual folder and then point the link to that folder in your blog navigation. The closest thing is bbPress, but it takes some technical know how to get it working. Since I have never tried it, I don’t think I am qualified to talk about it any further.

Anyway, no matter what the uses, a page without sidebars does comes in handy sometimes. You can use it for the About Me page and so on. So without further ado, lets get cracking. Be reminded that, for the convenience of John, I am using the Soothing Theme that I created for this tip. It is a no frills Theme without any complicated codings so it is easier to work with when it comes to customizations.

First of all, we have to add some CSS codes in our stylesheet php to specify how we want the new page template to look. The content area naturally have to be widened to take up the space previously occupied by the Sidebars. So as in any additional stuffs that we want to add into our Theme, we have to create a new div id. For this, I created one called simply, no_sidebar. I set the attributes to these values.

#no_sidebar { width: 800px; padding:10px 10px 0 10px; overflow: visible; float: center; }

The width is decided by how wide is your page. If your page is 1000px you can set your width to 950 px. which will allow some space for paddings on both sides. Then of course you want everything to be centered since there are nothing on both sides.

Next you will have to create a new class id. This wil decide the layout of the page like the fonts, the spacing, the colors and so on. So I created this:

.nosidebar {width: 800px;font-size: 1.4em; line-height: 1.7em; color: #444; float: center; }

Update your stylesheet.

Now we will have to create a new php file. Look for your Page Template php. Copy and paste the all the codes into Notepad. On the top, before anything, add in these codes.

<?php
/*
Template Name: No-Sidebars
*/
?>

This will show WordPress that you have another Template.

Now replace the <div id="content"> with <div id ="no_sidebar">. Replace also the <div class="post" id="post-<?php the_ID(); ?>"> to <div class="nosidebar" id="no_sidebar-<?php the_ID(); ?>"> Lastly, delete the <?php get_sidebar(); ?>

Just to make things less confusing, the whole file will look like this when completed.

<?php
/*
Template Name: No-Sidebars
*/
?>

<?php get_footer(); ?>

Save the file as ‘no-sidebar.php’, without the quotations, of course. Open your FTP client and upload this new php file to your Theme’s root folder where all the other php files are residing.

Go to your WordPress Dashboard. Click Pages – Add New. On your right hand side, under Attributes, Templates, you will see an extra template named no-sidebars in the drop down menu. From now on whenever you want to create a page without any sidebars, just select and use this template before publishing.

Even though the tips above are written based on the Soothing Theme, the steps should be quite similar with most other Themes. You only need to identify the correct codes to replace as other designers have their own preferences.

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If you are into online gaming, have a blog doing computer game reviews or planning to start a blog about PC games, Xbox games, Playstation Games or Nintendo Games, then this WordPress Theme for Online games is the perfect Theme for you.

The eGamer Theme from Elegant Themes is a dark Theme almost like what you see here but much more elegant looking. The dark shades adds the mysterious feel and mood for gamers who thrives on adrenaline pumping games.

It’s a very suitable Theme for those who does reviews for PC and Console Games as the front page layout is specially formatted for the user to show case their latest reviews. It also has a rating bar depicted by the number of stars that the reviewer gives for the games.

A special column for videos adds a professional touch to the site. In this column you can add videos of any Games trailers that you might be promoting. The rest of the columns showcases your latest reviews.

A cool feature found in most Elegant Themes is the sliding box at the top the main contents where your featured reviews are displayed randomly. The header also accommodates the navigation Links as well as the categories links.

Computer Games and Console Games like the Xbox 360, Playstation and Nintendo are very hot topic in the Internet and millions are addicted to it. Site offering reviews, tips and cheats are very much sought after by gamers seeking to improve their skill and many of these sites makes big bucks with their affiliate links.

To succeed in this niche, you need a suitable Theme as avid gamers have an attitude of their own and the eGamer Theme is a Theme with an attitude. To check out the live preview information on how you can download this theme, go to Elegant Themes and click on the gallery link on the top navigation bar. Choose the eGamer Theme for full information.

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Just hot from the latest version of Thesis 1.6, talks are rife about the impending Thesis 2.0 and what to expect from it or whether there will be an increase in pricing. In my previous post announcing the release of Thesis 1.6, I wrote that there might be a price adjustment somewhere down the line. It was just a hunch on my part, seeing the improvements that has been made on the Thesis Theme.

Increasing prices for products that have gone through much research and development is a natural course that all businessmen takes. The price of products has to justify the man hours and the effort that has been poured in. A true businessman worth his salt will not be selling a product that has been freshly developed with the same price as one that has been improved over the years. You can call it capitalism at play, but that’s the way free economy goes. Thus if the price of Thesis does go up with version 2, it won’t come as a surprise.

Already hints have been dropped by the developer of Thesis himself when Brian Clark posted in one of his post, writing in the last paragraph,

But don’t think you have to wait. Our current model and pricing provides all Thesis customers with every future update and unlimited access to support… so you can get started with Thesis today and never miss out on what’s coming next.

(And if you caught the hint by my use of the word “current,” you understand that this will change in the near future…..

Now if that is not an obvious hint that there will be a price hike comes Thesis Version 2, I don’t know what is. Seems like my hunch is not too far off. Don’t hold back too long if you have intention of getting this greatest theme ever. Another hunch of mine is Thesis Version 2.0 will be release in tandem with WordPress 2.9. because they got to keep up to be compatible. And that is not too far off.

Lock down the price now with a purchase of the Thesis Theme 1.6 and any future upgrades will be free. A ending note advise. Once and for all, get the Thesis 1.6 Developer’s Option.

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