Without further ado, I’d like to present the new theme – comment below and provide your feedback.  I haven’t spent a whole lot of time editing it yet, but want to keep the theme as simple as possible.

Addressed Areas

As you’ll be able to see, some of the main areas of the site have changed, and they will continue to evolve as the site grows.

• Next and Previous Links are now textual, rather than using images, making it easier to determine what direction you are traveling.  Further customization of the theme adds a “Continue Browsing” area beneath the posts to view the next and previous posts without returning to the main page.
• More Social Bookmarking Options have been added – the ShareThis plugin is back in use, located in the light blue box beneath each post, with quick links to bookmark/share the post in Delicious, Digg, and StumbleUpon, as well as Subscribe to the Feed beneath this bar.
• Possibly Related Posts can be found to the left of the subscription/social bookmarking/sharing links as a further organization method.
• Posts are Excerpted, except for the main post, which will display in its entirety.  
• Browsing Through the Past is now much easier.  The archives page has been greatly expanded with an integrated search box, posts by date, a listing of all posts, tag “list”, category “list”, and popular posts listing by number of views.
• Additional Archives Views were added with the styling of the theme.  Simply click through the drop-down menu in the sidebar, and you’ll be presented with a listing of posts (number according to number displayed on main page), along with the post date and number of comments.
• Better Typography.  In my opinion, the typography (at least a majority of it) is easier to read, as the font is larger and better separated.  There are still some areas that have to be addressed (i.e. below the posts).
• Subscribe More Easily using the “Get Free Updates” in the header of the main sidebar.  This is much easier than the previous option, as there is no comments feed link – only an RSS and Email subscription link.
• Commenting is Easier using a larger box and “Subscribe to this comment feed using RSS” link beneath the comment form.
• Unwelcome Changes - You’ll likely notice more advertising.  I have decided that it is time to open up greater advertising options – thus, the advertising page has also been semi-updated with more ad formats being available soon.  This decision comes primarily because I haven’t generated much income off this site to date, and I want to give more advertisers options as it comes to advertising.  It is still a fraction of what other sites have.
• Problems – Posting comments still returns a 404/Not Found page, and this error appears to be common among blogs running WordPress.
• Overall the changes are for the better, in my opinion, giving the same clean, simple theme that the other version had.  There is still some content to be added/rearranged, but for the most part, everything is complete.

Click on image to preview the new design.

Feedback

I need your feedback for this new theme – is it for the better?  What changes should be addressed or made?  Without your feedback, the current design will remain intact.

Take this poll to give your quick thoughts on the theme.

Updates

Feedback has allowed me to rethink some of the configuration/layout/design, outlined below.

• Extra space has been removed between post title and content/post meta area, making the these areas more connected.
• Ad has been removed from above posts/pages in single view, as it was a hinderance to the viewing of the post.  This will be re-looked in the future, as it is a prominent placement for advertisements.
• Sidebar has been widened by 60 pixels, allowing more space for “left” and “right” sidebars (smaller).
• Footer error fixed (during update).
• Text beneath posts for related and bookmarks has been increased in size and is no longer italic.
• Comments fixed to accommodate larger sidebars.
• Plugin added to subscribe to comments via email.

This post is simply meant to help spread some thanks to the people who make this blog possible.  Later on, I’ll try to publish more of these posts (perhaps once a month or so).  People listed are using the name used to comment.

10 Most Active Commenters

1. Ben Barden (5 comments)
2. Jeffro2pt0 (3 comments)
3. zobibi (2 comments)
4. Jenny (2 comments)
5. Lazy (2 comments)
6. pandi merdeka (2 comments)
7. clickstream (2 comment)
8. Ditto Rahmat (2 comments)
9. aannttiiiittnnaa (2 comments)
10. Alex (1 comment)

10 Most Frequent Entrecard Droppers

Note: Previous 30 Days/1 Month

1. Technically Easy (31 drops)
2. Turnip of Power (27 drops)
3. environmentastic! (17 drops)
4. My Drift (14 drops)
5. Nice2All (13 drops)
6. Sqeaky’s – Madmouse Blog (12 drops)
7. WOW Factor (12 drops)
8. The Blogshop Blogger (10 drops)
9. Mr. Sound N’ Mrs. Sound (8 drops)
10. People You Need to Know (8 drops)

Problems/Complaints/Concerns: Please address them as they are critical in the design and future of this blog.

The Future

I have decided to take the site in a different direction – the content and overall post theme will remain the same, but more subjects dealing with blogging and website design will be covered.  It is a necessary change, as traffic vs. subscribers vs. growth hasn’t shown a huge growth in the (surprising) nine months since I first began this blog.

Look forward to more resources, tips, reviews, and more to come during the month of June and beyond.

As you may have noticed, the past week presented several problems with this blog, mainly stemming form problematic plugins and corrupted databases.  However, at this point, most of them have been solved.  I apologize for any unavailability, errors, or multiple posts you may have received.

WordPress runs primarily off databases – all posts and comments are stored in them – and once corrupted, a blog is typically not operable.  Bloggers depend on having a blog that it is accessible for a greater portion of each day, and if it isn’t, they face the chance of losing a ton of money, readership, and lots of time.

During the process of trying to repair WordPress, I contemplated whether a clean install would take place, and when you receive the “Hello World.  Welcome to WordPress.” post, you know that either everything has been destroyed, or you still have much of your content restored.  It is crucial that you don’t make critical mistakes trying to restore a blog, as much of the databases, content, and admin areas can be restored safely with either a backup or rewrite.

I have provided the steps below to restore a database, in simple terms, which helped recover my blog, from being unable to access by admins and users.  (Visitors were redirected to the install page when trying to access the home page).

1. Be sure that you have plenty of backups on hand before performing any of the steps listed below.  Use backup plugins, however, don’t rely solely on them.  Plugins like Backup WordPress can make automatic backups of your SQL daily or a full backup weekly, which is stored both on your server and can also be emailed to you.  Make weekly, or sub-weekly backups at the very least.
2. Sign-in to your hosting account or server.  Go to the main cPanel screen.
3. Find the Databases area, click MySQL Databases, then you will be presented a simple screen for making minor changes to your databases (checking, repairing, deleting, and creating).



4. Find the database you wish to repair, typically _wrdp1 if it is your first install. (I don’t know what _wp01 is associated with, as nothing happened when I tried to repair the database of that file.



5. Click Repair DB, and the process of repairing your database should take place, typically within a few seconds.

Forum

A forum was added, although at this point it is incomplete.  More categories and threads must be added.  The purpose of the forum is geared towards extending the community and allowing people to post reviews of their blogs/others’ blogs without necessarily being marked by a spammer had they done that in the comments.

You can share your thoughts about top blogging stories, your experiences with blog services, or simply your general thoughts about this site.

Join the forum today.

Back-end/Administrative Changes

To accommodate growth, I instituted a change in the categories (compressing many topics into one), taking advantage of the new WordPress tags feature, and tried (apparently unsuccessfully) to organize all the posts in a somewhat functional manner.

I am pleased with the new WYSIWYG editor as most of my HMTL is kept intact and using it doesn’t result in having to make major changes over and over like I found before.  What this meant was that I had to “convert” all posts to the Visual Editor format.  I needed to re-center all text and images using the editor and removed any spaces this caused.  You’ll find that older posts may have a different appearance as they are less spaced out.

Advertising Options

Over the past couple weeks (since the beginning of March), we have added several more advertising options and had to bump up the price (due to the amount of work the site required recently and our plans), however all prices are still extremely low and reasonable.  Ranging from free (Entrecard) to banners at $10/month, there are several options that will fit in your budget.  Remember that as the blog gwows, there will be a higher return on investment.

The stats and information regarding traffic and subscribers has been updated reflecting updates from the services.

Coming soon, we will likely make it easier to advertise, with the stripe ads (?), ads in feeds, more banner ad spots, and/or text ads in the directory or sidebar.  We despise some of these forms of advertising, but in order to meet demand from advertisers we will direct them towards certain groups.  We are not in this for money, we are in this to provide a resource for aspiring bloggers.

Check out the advertising options.

Job Board

A jobs board serves as a way for bloggers to find out about jobs that may be available in their particular field. By adding the jobs board, my main objective was to conenct job advertisers (automatically added) to people looking for those jobs.  At this point, it is fully functional, but needs to be oriented towards bloggers and needs a more intuitive interface.

Special: Currently, you are able to receive a free 60-day submission of as many jobs as you’d like using the code 7ad8EH. The code expires on June 15th, 2008 at the end of the day (PST).  This is a great opportunity to post jobs if you are a blog owner and need co-authors.

After the special ends, you may add jobs at a rate (currently) of $10 per 60 days.  Jobs are gathered and purchased through Job-a-matic.

Visit the job board.

Guest Posters and Writers

Coming shortly! - If you would like to be a part of a growing blog, you can register as a contributor to begin or contact us to work out a specific deal.  Down the road, we may begin paying posters as an incentive or rewarding them with other services.  Please note the specific terms included on the Write for Us page.  The main topics you should write about are blogging, design, search engine optimization, and blog tips.  We are looking forward to hearing from you.

For a long time, we put aside the thought of having multiple writers, but today we feel that it is one of the fastest ways to see blog growth and see a positive return for both readers and writers at the blog.

Directory, Archives, Policies, About, Contact Pages

These pages have also been updated or redesigned for better return rates.  Instead of a link page, you can now add your site or service (must be your own) to the link directory.  The process is extremely simple.

Theme Changes and Reorganization

Further changes will be occurring on the visitor’s end, with more resources, links, and community-oriented widgets placed or redistributed throughout the sidebar.  Features such as comment rating and plugins which reward commentators will also be implemented.

Minor change: the ShareThis plugin was displayed twice on feeds and the incidence has been resolved – the HTML and plugin were enabled.

Recap

There are exciting changes occuring and we want you to be a part of them.  Our main goals at this point are to deliver the most content per reader and have a higher reader invovlement with our site.

Take advantage of the new features and leave your feedback.

There were several reasons why I switched the theme, including:

1. The previous theme didn’t support ordered/unordered lists the way I wanted.
2. I wanted a theme with better integration of recent comments/posts, and most popular posts.
3. The font wasn’t considered readable by all users
4. It required editing to be consistent throughout.
5. Errors in appearance on different browsers.
6. Other miscellaneous things didn’t fit the blog’s purpose.

However, despite the criticisms of the previous theme, I would like to make sure that no parties were offended – the previous theme was unique and that’s what I was looking for, but it required pretty much editing to achieve the readability/appearance that I wanted.

Note: the current theme is not fully integrated. Sidebar ads have been removed temporarily and will later be incorporated in a better manner as well as the “about” area.

I also want to incorporate the “Share This” plugin/widget into the post, as well as more community/comment-related tools to provide a better experience for visitors.

Please provide some feedback about the new theme added, from Adii, and how it fits the blog or if you find any errors/display problems.

1. Content – The best ways of meeting many of my other goals is to produce more high quality, inspiring and unique content that is also posted on a more consistent basis, writing more posts in advance and keeping a better schedule. Bring blogging-related news sooner and review more products. Proofread and recheck each post before submitting, adapting better writing styles. Perhaps I’ll expand, creating more blogs in similar areas. Create ‘best of’ posts. Add pictures to illustrate key points.
2. Marketing, Linking, etc. – Leave comments on others’ blogs, create posts highlighting great articles from other bloggers, use better advertising methods, and practice better SEO. Add the blog to blog directories, Sphinn, Digg, and Stumble others’ posts. In turn, this will lead to higher rankings in Alexa, Technorati, and potential earnings.
3. Theming and Design – A unique blog design is crucial to set you apart from the rest, so perhaps I’ll either design one myself or purchase one from a web designer. Redesign the current theme to make it more visually appealing and feature more quality content.
4. Interactivity/Readership – Along with design and marketing, I will strive to respond to comments more quickly, market my feed better, and attain at least have 200+ readers by next December. Add better ways of contacting the author.
5. Essential Goals – Be more organized, stay on top of everything, and find new opportunities to try things. Never give up, especially when you feel like quitting.

To wrap up the year, I wish all of you the best of luck and thank the readers that help make this blog successful.