For some reason my I Love House Music t-shirt from ages ago keeps popping up in my stats from people searching for it. Well, I decided to link it for them in this post, but also create a fresh design, as a way of saying MOVE ON. You just need to accept that house music has now spoken, and it loves me, BITCH.

Get the new shirt right here – www.redbubble.com/people/diesellaws/t-shirts/4791454-1-house-music-loves-me

There are four shirt styles to choose from, with 22 shirt colours all printed on American Apparel. So, there is absolutely no excuse for not getting one!

Also, if you want to know where you can get all my shirts from, I keep pumping them through here.

Flic Manning’s website redesign couldn’t have come at a better time with the recent attention from choreography, modelling and motivational posts coming her way. If you remember the first design for Flic that I posted about a while back, you would also recall it was a very static site, with limited page height and not meant for updates.

Though, as life would have it, Flic Manning now needed a website to reflect her current portfolio of work and her sexy, playful and vibrant lifestyle. She also needed a link between her Twitter and Website; which worked perfectly thanks to the people behind the free wordpress theme “Live Twit“.

Of course, this theme has been heavily modified to include a unique background, vibrant colours and extra images. Check out the new redesign right now – www.flicmanning.com

Inspiration is a very powerful thing and can come in the simplest forms; from a spoken word to a vibrant colour. In this book I have merged inspirational thoughts and sayings with beautiful colours to brighten up your home or office. Grab a pair of scissors and cut out your favourite pages and place anywhere you like for some Wallspiration!

Get it now:

Wallspiration Photo Book

$14.99

Ships in 3–5 business days
Photo Book, 20 pages

View the preview

For a while, the website for Fixd Music (my ‘band’) had been a bit neglected; so I decided it was time for a revamp. Originally it was a white, clean interface which directed viewers to the content, but it lacked colour and energy – something that our music focuses on.

After a good search of Wordpress themes I came accross this beautiful design – Kubrick on Crack!

Just to clear up any thoughts, I don’t condone the use of crack, but I DO condone the use of awesome colours, images and post headers.

After a few slight modifications to the colours/buttons the website is now live. Check it out – www.fixdmusic.com

In partnership with Extremely Inspired and My Absolute Success, we are in the process of writing Guts On The Outside: Wearing Your Inner Identity - which is scheduled for release late 2010. If you have any questions, or would like to hire youthful, driven individuals to speak at your event head to www.extremelyinspired.com.

You will also notice, the Extremely Inspired website has been designed with Wordpress using a modified version of the Aggregator Theme from Templatic (http://templatic.com/news/aggegator-all-your-feeds-at-your-website-front). It has been designed this way to focus on the static information/images yet still includes the latest posts linked on the front page through the RSS Feed.

This e-book will help you to build the foundation of a prominent and successful freelancing career. Taking you from the first steps in building your name through to a deeper understanding of how your thinking can affect the results you achieve, How To Be A Freelancing Genius Pt 1 will assist you through the most important stages of your growth. All this for the cost of a coffee for free!

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Download the Preview

How To Be A Freelancing Genius Pt 1 Preview.PDF (639KB)

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How to get it for FREE:

1. Become a fan of Extremely Inspired on Facebook.
2. Then head here to download the e-book.
   

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The Desktop child theme is clean, light, professional and very lightweight and works off the Buddypress Default theme. It was designed with Buddypress 1.2 in mind. There is no live preview, only screenshots.

Instructions:

** IMPORTANT: You must have Wordpress 2.91 and Buddypress 1.2 as a MINIMUM to use this theme. **

1. Purchase the theme

2. Upload the Desktop child theme to your wp-content/themes

3. Go to SiteAdmin->Themes and Enable this theme

4. Go to Themes->appearance and Activate this theme.

Changing Header:

If you want to change the Header image from the default one, open header.psd (included in theme download) and modify as needed. Save as png/jpg and in your dashboard area on WPMU go to Appearance > Custom Header > HIDE text > Save Changes > Upload your new header image and click UPLOAD.

*** For more support with child themes go to http://buddypress.org ***

Screenshots:

Home Page with Activity

Personal Profile Page

Groups Directory

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Purchase

Product: Desktop Theme

Price: $2.00

Your purchased item will be personally emailed to you once I have been notified of payment (within 1-2days). Any problems, contact me.

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The Randy Candy child theme is hot, dark and very lightweight and works off the Buddypress Default theme. It was designed with Buddypress 1.2 in mind. There is no live preview, only screenshots. Now available at Wordpress Themes Depo.

Instructions:

** IMPORTANT: You must have Wordpress 2.91 and Buddypress 1.2 as a MINIMUM to use this theme. If not, you may get ‘Template Missing’ errors.**

1. Upload the Randy Candy child theme to your wp-content/themes
2. Go to SiteAdmin->Themes and Enable this theme
3. Go to Themes->appearance and Activate this theme.

Changing Header:

If you want to change the Header image from the default one, open header.psd (included in theme download) and modify as needed. Save as png/jpg and in your dashboard area on WPMU go to Appearance > Custom Header > HIDE text > Save Changes > Upload your new header image and click UPLOAD.

If you do find any odd colours, or lines in this theme please show me and I will fix it.

Screenshots:

Logged in home page

Replying to a post

Public profile page

Download

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Donate

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This theme is free, however you can support my work by donating:

Thanks for your support!

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*** For more support with child themes go to http://buddypress.org ***

The Unplugged child theme is sleek, dark and very lightweight and works off the Buddypress Default theme. It was designed with Buddypress 1.2 in mind and is LIVE on http://freelancerunplugged.com. Now available at Wordpress Themes Depo.

Instructions:

** IMPORTANT: You must have Wordpress 2.91 and Buddypress 1.2 as a MINIMUM to use this theme. If not, you may get ‘Template Missing’ errors.**

1. Upload the Unplugged child theme to your wp-content/themes
2. Go to SiteAdmin->Themes and Enable this theme
3. Go to Themes->appearance and Activate this theme.

Changing Header and Info Banner:

If you want to change the Header image from the default one, open header2.psd (included in theme download) and modify as needed. Save as png/jpg and in your dashboard area on WPMU go to Appearance > Custom Header > HIDE text > Save Changes > Upload your new header image and click UPLOAD.

To change the Info Banner find the png in the images folder in the Unplugged theme and change it to whatever. I have also included the PSD in the download so you can modify it from there. You can also add anything you want (e.g. a bigger picture or banner ads) but just remember to change the ‘width and height’ in the default.css.

As this is my first theme, if you find any bugs or odd colours just contact me or drop a comment on this post.

Screenshots:

Logged in home page

Replying to a forum post

Public profile page

Download

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Donate

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This theme is free, however you can support my work by donating:

Thanks for your support!

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*** For more support with child themes go to http://buddypress.org ***

So, you have wandered down the path of free blogging services and are now ready to take it to the next level. Your very own website. The great news is that there are many options to getting your own website up and running. The simplest is to save your time and pay someone else to do all of it. The next best step is to do it all yourself and save yourself some money. Either way, you will be on the path to having your very own website up and running in no time! Below I will list the steps needed to have a great website with little cost, provided you are willing to do it all yourself. If it’s too much for you – contact me.

Step 1 – Getting Your Domain Name

Choose a unique domain name for your business. If you have a product, it should be productname.com. If you are a photographer, you can either have yourname.com or yournamephotography.com. Once you have chosen a cool name you need to see if it is available. I would head to here (in this example Hostmonster.com is our website hosting company). Once there, click on DOMAIN CHECK, type in your domain and see if it’s available by clicking NEXT. If not, go back and try other alternatives until you find one that is available (try to avoid dashes and hyphens in your domain name e.g. www.johns-photography.com – Keep it as simple as possible).

Next, fill in all your account details and passwords. Also, you will want the Domain Privacy (in this case it’s free!) and choose your website plan. What plan you choose will be billed upfront year by year. So if you choose 12 months @ $5.95 you will be charged $71.40 in total. This will also include the domain name and setup fee.

Step 2 – Installing Wordpress

After you have got into the back-end of Hostmonster.com (using your domain name and password) you should see a screen with lots of little icons. For now, we are going to jump straight into installing Wordpress which will be the basis on which our website is displayed.

Click on the Wordpress icon (it will redirect to Simple Scripts), then click on INSTALL, Choose a name for your blog, Username to log into Wordpress and Password to log into Wordpress. This username and password will be used often to add new posts, pages and change your website so remember it! Then click Automatically create a new database and click I have read the terms and conditions. Then COMPLETE.  You should receive log in details once it has installed Wordpress onto your domain – again, write these down for future use.

If installed correctly, you can access your website by going to yourdomainname.com and to access the log in area just add /wp-admin (which stands for Wordpress Admin) to the domain name. So it should read like this: www.yourdomainname.com/wp-admin. Then you can use your Username for Wordpress and Password for Wordpress (see image above) to log in.

Step 3 – Creating Your Website

So, you have signed up a domain name and have installed Wordpress. If you wanted to, you could get started right away using the standard template that wordpress shoots out. But, we are going to download a free template and make our website look sexy. Keep in mind that Wordpress can be a basic blogging platform or a very detailed and fully functioning website due to the plugins and modifications available. So, for that reason I am not going to go into depth of how to modify templates and plugins etc instead just brush over them.

When you log into your admin area (in the above image I am logged in to mine) you will be confronted with lots of info. Do not worry, there are only a few things that you need to worry about at this stage. The RED arrow points to the shortcut menu, which is handy if you just want to create a post or upload an image really quick. The GREEN arrow points to the Sidebar, in particular the Posts section. This is where you can add and edit posts. There is also much more on the sidebar, but for now lets focus on the BLUE arrow. The Blue arrow points to Appearance, where you can change the look of your website. Click on Add New Themes and follow the prompts to install a theme of your choosing or upload one you have downloaded. As there are many paths you can take, and the prompts along the way are quite well done, I will leave you to figure out how to add themes.

Step 4 – Themes, Plugins and Modifications

There are many free Wordpress themes available on the Internet, and also paid ones. You shouldn’t have to pay for Wordpress themes unless there is an amazing one that isn’t replicated as a free theme (just like Pay TV).

Once you have the new theme installed, check your website in a new tab or window (much easier than reloading the admin area each time).

From this point on, you have a fully functioning website ready for posting, images and anything else you can throw at it. Due to the sheer amount of Wordpress themes, plugins and modifications available on the Internet today, you shouldn’t have a problem keeping busy when updating and changing your website!

A few things you might want to remember when setting up your website:

1. Keep the domain name as simple as possible (avoiding hyphens and dashes).
2. Take note of the username/passwords you use for your hosting account (I recommend Hostmonster.com) and also the username/passwords you use for Wordpress.
3. You don’t have to use Wordpress if you don’t want to. I just find it extremely useful, fun and simple to use for any type of website.
4. Get familiar with the words ‘post’, ‘page’, ‘tags’, ‘dashboard’, ‘columns’,  ‘hosting’ and ‘domain’ and learn what they all are.
5. Take notice of websites you like the design of and use those ideas as a design template for your website.
6. Favicons. Learn what they are and why you need one.
7. Use Google for any questions you have while designing your website. He is a helpful fellow.
8. If the above is too much work for you or too confusing, call a professional who can design a fully functional website for you.

Thanks for reading!