Considering that you’re reading my post i’m pretty sure you are either looking for a better webhost, or just curious about what Bluehost can offer.

Click here to register at Bluehost for only $5.95/mo

Before i get started listing the reasons why your webhost sucks and you should move to bluehost, i have to mention that i’ve been  with bluehost for over 5 years now, and this review represents my personal opinion about this webhost.

1. Bluehost has a monthly fee as low as 5.95$ and offers a wide range of features

6 bucks every month is nothing considering what you get in return: a free domain name, excellent reliability, loads of one click install scripts(powered by the amazing simplescripts, not the crappy fantastico almost every webhost offers)

Click to see the full feature list

2. Amazing support

Yeah, it happened to me too: the server went down and my sites were unavailable, so i promptly contacted the tech support. This happened a couple of times over the past 5 years and every time i’ve encountered an issue the staff clearly stated the issue(faulty ram, faulty hdd, etc) and ensured me my website will be up shortly and no data was lost what so ever.

3. Simplescripts script installer

As i’ve mentioned before, bluehost provides a service called SimpleScripts to all of its customers. Simplescripts is an advanced software installation service that can install automatically a huge variety of scripts: from blogging scripts to forum scripts, polls chat scripts etc. Trust me the fantastico software installer you’re using now is crap compared to simplescripts.

4. Extremely simple Google Apps integration

Lots of webhosts charge you a fee in order to be able to create  email addresses linked to your own domain (e.g tom@thaslayer.com ).  Other webhosts have the crappy web based email services. Why not have the ability to create your own email accounts which use Gmail(yes you’ve read it well). Google offers the app system free of charge and using the bluehost panel its easy to setup your domain to point its email servers to google’s gmail servers.

5. 30 day 100% money back guarantee

If  within 30 days you are unsatisfied with Bluehost you can cancel anytime and get your payment 100% refunded.

Click here to register at Bluehost for only $5.95/mo

As i’ve mentioned the review above is based on my experience with bluehost, and if you are currently stuck at a crappy webhost i’m encouraging you to sign up with webhost and get relieved of all your hosting worries! Remember that bluehost offers a full 30days money back guarantee!

While there have certainly been advancements to the various web services that enable the delivery of large files, there aren’t many that can compete with the usability and matchless communication advantages offered by free screen sharing and web conferencing software.

For far too long, one of the major drawbacks of a web designer or developer’s job was that all-too-familiar point when, after hours, days or even weeks spent meticulously constructing a project to specification, a client would think nothing of asking them to ‘just tweak one little thing’, causing a complete overhaul as a result.  With instant web conferencing services, this whole crushing process can be avoided, enabling designers and developers to instantly communicate with one another and their clients.

Web conferencing itself has, in fact, completely overhauled the way that the likes of web design and development agencies now operate, day-to-day. Time is money, so with the frequency of tête-à-têtes between company representatives and their clients has been vastly reduced by such services, companies have been able to save thousands on travel expenses and the time and money it costs for their employees to go off site, proving that the development of web services is absolutely invaluable.

In the case of web designers and developers, screen sharing is perhaps the most useful of all the web services on offer, for pre-screen-sharing, endless hours were frittered away organising, travelling to and holding meetings, as well as waiting for large files to be transferred between the email servers of designers and clients. Now, all thanks to the wonderful free desktop sharing software that’s on the web today, associates can share work and allow open collaboration, wherever necessary, at the click of a mouse – no hassle necessary.

Some of the web’s very web conferencing software available today comes complete with a free trial, so there’s absolutely nothing stopping curious developers and designers dipping their toe in the inviting world of web conferencing and screen sharing.

You can see the twitter bird icon on millions of websites, and what you can notice is that many websites use the same icons(maybe you too!) and this is the time when you can start wondering “why shouldn’t i be different?”. This is where the talented artists come in, who release amazing icons and icon packs(mostly on deviant art).

I’ve done some research and collected 17 icons & sets which will get your blog, website or forum readers look out to the tweet icon.

Amazing Twitter bird icon sets

Remember to read the licensing of every icon/icon set on the download pages!

1. Twitter Icons .PSD

2. Free twitter bird icons

3. Twitter Bird

4. Adiumy Twitter

5. Blue Bird Twitter Icon Pack

6. Twitter Icons Pack

7. Twitter Icon BIRRRDFON

8. Twitter Replacement

9. Twitter dock icons

10. Twitter Icon Pack 1

11. Twitter Icon Pack 2

12. Twitter Icon Pack 3

13. TwitterJoy icons

14. The GodTwitter Follow Button

15. Twitter Icon

16. Twitter Space Icons

17. IconTexto Twitter Buttons

This image is a special dedication to my colleague, mbogdan. This is your dream isn’t it? A nice comfty chair+ a huge desk with lots of lamps, and most significantly 7 monitors where you can code in peace and quiet listening to some rammstein, ;o

I heard this song quite a few times on the radio while @ work, or going to college or to work. The lyrics are really really catchy, but the music video is simply brilliant! I watched it like 10 times and listened to it like 50 times(today).

An other thing i like about T.I. that he doesn’t rap about crap. For example: 50 cent raps about bitchez, cocaine, guns, violence, while T.I. raps about learning from your mistakes and not doing the things you see on tv and in movies. This song is about the morale of life. (the video was made just before T.I. went to jail for 1 year and 1 day)

As you can notice it got a whole new look, but i kept the overall brown color, and added some very very nifty features. More than 9 cool addons were created specially for this new theme and to make my life a lot easier. Don’t believe me? Check the new features:

1. Author management. Admins can choose which author’s name and description appears on the front page(bottom right corner) and the author can set his own picture, name and description.
2. Dynamic image resizing. That the small thumbs you see are automatically grabbed from the images inserted in the post and for every size a new thumb is generated.(uber sexy stuff).
3. Ad management platform. This platform contains top header ad, box ad, sidebar ads. I can choose to set an image or use code(adsense for example as an ad.
4. Sexy featured category display. You already saw this didn’t you? It’s a small custom javascript written by my colleague, mbogdan.
5. Latest releases display. The part under the menu shows the latest theme and plugin releases. A thumb of each post is displayed and if you hover it title appears “pushing” the intro title up.
6. Category order. Admins can set which categories appear on main page and in what order. They can also exclude categories from appearing on main page.
7. YouTube video display. I just have to enter the YouTube URL and the video will be replaced with the video i desire.
8. Flickr stream management tool which allows me to display my flickr stream.
9. Super cool admin panel made for the theme (<3 mbogdan).

There are other smaller addons, but there’s nothing special about them worth to point them out.

I did the design about a month ago on a friday night when inspiration hit me on the head. I gave the design to mbogdan the next day and since than till last-last sunday he’s been working a little and stalling it. But eh, we finally got it done.

As you can see in the bottom part we will create a poll plugin(which btw will be released for free), and there are still some minor changes we have to do.

The sexiest part of the whole design is the comment page. I really like how it turned out, and as you can notice i moved the comment post box above all comments and sepparated comment from trackbacks(mixed up they were annoying). To see the comments page at glance check out the Custom widgets v1.0 release post (it has lots of comments).

As usual, if you have any suggestions or feedback please post them and they WILL be considered.

I will get back to the regular-basis blogging soon, but before i do i still have otehr work to finish + exams.

What does it do?

The main purpose of this plugin is to help you monetize your blog, in a smart way i mean. Ad Integration is an all-in-one ad managing platform which lets you create, manage and assign ads to your posts and sidebar as widgets (new feature).

Just as at Custom Widgets 2.0 the management and options panels were tuned up to fit the WordPress 2.7 design, and along with the tune-up we removed useless elements which used up the space. By this way everything got more organized and cleaner.

Assign Ads as sidebar widgets

Did i mention that you can now add your ads as sidebar widgets? I think i did, but eh here’s a quick in-depth look:

After setting the ad location as Sidebar Widget the plugin will automatically create a widget which you will be able to add to your widgetized sidebar from the good old widgets page. And there you have it, you can manage the ads from your sidebar also

How do i use it?

After you’ve installed and activated the plugin a stand alone meu item will appear right below the main menu. This provides quick access to the Custom Widgets management section.

Main Management panel

There are 3 main segments in the management panel: The ads display box, The Options box and the Donation box.

The Ads display box will show all the Ads you’ve setup. Those ads which are written in light grey aren’t public, and those which are written in black are live and running.

The Options box is meant to give you more flexibility and it allows you to define a custom css for the ads and even add html code to appear before or after the ad. The max ad count per page defines  the maximum number of  ads that should appear in the same time on a page.(category pages, tag pages, etc).

Adding a new Ad

Things can’t get simpler than this! Adding a new ad takes just seconds(after a bit of practice of course) and you will easily realize that Ad Integration is a very powerful ad management plugin and it will save you a lot of time and earn you a lot of money(hopefully).

To distingush one ad from an other give a title to your ad(will be visible only to you via the management panel) and insert the html code. The exciting new feature in this release is thge much requested show in sidebar option which if delected will create a widget that will addable to your sidebar from the widget managemenet section.

If you choose to inser the ad into posts you can choose it’s location and it’s alignment. The final step of the new ad setup is the publish function where you can select to publish the ad or not.

Editing An Ad

You can easily edit an ad by clicking the Edit button in the right part of your ad management panel. This will take you to a page where you can edit your ad: rename it,change the code and it contains all the settings which were present on the Add new ad page + EXTRAS.

The extras consist in two handy features:

1) You can choose wether to load the ad automatically or manually. Loading the ad manually means that you will have to inser the generated code() into your post for the ad to show up.
2) By default after adding a new ad it will be automatically activated. You can deactivate it by selecting the No tickbox and saving the changes.

Download Ad Integration 2.0

-

Click here to start TS Ad Integration v2.0 download

-

Installation

***To upgrade from Ad Integration 1.0 to v2.0 simply overwrite the old files with the new ones.

1) Download the .zip file to your computer and log into your wordpress admin panel.

2) In your admin panel head over to the plugins section and select the Add new segment. Browse to the custom widgets.zip file and click the Install button. WordPress will unzip the plugin and install it for you after which press the Activate Plugin button.

Stay Updated! Subscribe to my RSS feed

Support us by donating

We work our asses off to release new plugins and themes for free. Working for free isn’t very motivating as you might know. If you wish to make a small contribution(you will be redirected to a paypal secure page) feel free to use the widget below.Once the donation meter fills up we will release a new theme and a new exciting plugin!

Say what?

A lucky reader(maybe you?) will win a custom made wordpress theme based on their requirements, which will be ready to upload & use on your blog.

You will be treated just like other customers: you will describe your blog, the niche of your blog, and you will tell me your vision of the desired wordpress theme(color combinations, number of columns, structuring, and anything else you find important for me to know).

After getting all the details i will open up Photoshop and i will make a detailed draft and this will represent the starting point.

We will talk things over again after which i will modify the placeholders to fit your requirements. From this point everything goes straight forward: i work my ass off and finish your design as soon as possible. Also i will offer support via instant messenger (MSN LIVE or Yahoo! messenger).

After the design is complete you will make the final revisions and once you are satsified with the outcome i will forward the design to my colleague mbogdan who will code it(XHTML/CSS valid, tableless coding, widgetized sidebars).

Contest Duration

The contest will run from March 5th(tomorrow) till May 5th(in 2months), and the draw will be made using random.org .

This means that the more entry credits you have the bigger your chances will be of winning your very own custom made wordpress theme!

How to enter?

There are 5 ways you can earn entry points, it’s really simple earning them in fact:

1) Get 3 Entry points by posting a comment to this post with a link to your blog and why you want a custom theme (REQUIRED)

Your name:
Your blog’s tite:
Your blog’s url:
Why do you want a custom theme?

2) Get 10 Entry points by Subscribing to my RSS feed using the form below(use the name you used in the comment form)

3)  Get 20 Entry points by blogging about this contest( link to this post so i can track it)

4) Get 50 Entry points by signing up at Bluehost hosting , or referring someone to sign up under my referral id.Before you sign-up read my review of Bluehost.

5) Get 100 Entry points by referring a customer to order a custom wordpress theme(the entry points will be given only after the customer has made the payment)

What’s next?

Go ahead, post your comment and start earning entry points. You can earn 8 entry points in just 2 minutes of work!

Good Luck!