What is timestamp?
Surprisingly, many bloggers don’t know about this neat WordPress feature. Timestamp lets you choose the date and time that your post will be published. A lot of well-known bloggers keep their blogs updated regularly by writing posts in advance and timestamping them. This feature is also good to be used when you go on vacation, write a few posts in advance and schedule them throughout it.
How to utilize this feature?
It’s very easy to use this feature. After you’ve written a post, before clicking the Publish button, look for a box in the right sidebar called Post Timestamp and do the following:
- Check the Edit timestamp box;
- Choose the date and time that you want the post to be published.
Then, hit the Publish button. Now, your post will only be published once the customized date and time comes.
You’ve just timestamped a post!
I thought that I had timestamped this post, but I apparently forgot to click the publish button. o.O
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What’s a favicon?
A favicon (favorites icon) is an icon associated with a blog/site. Most popular browsers display favicons as 16×16 pixel icons next to the URL in the address bar, next to the title in tabs, and next to the title as well in bookmarks.
The following is my current favicon:
How to create a favicon?
First, create a 16×16 pixel icon using your graphics editor of choice. Then, you could either save it as favicon.ico or save it in another format and use an online favicon generator to do the conversion to .ico.
Links that might be useful:
- How to Create a Favicon in Photoshop
- Favicon Converter | Favicon Converter 2 | Favicon Converter 3
- Favicon Maker | Favicon Maker 2 | Favicon Maker 3
Need inspiration?
- 50 Remarkable Favicons by Smashing Magazine
- Favourite Favicons by Daniel Burka
- The Favicon Gallery
- Favicons of the Top WordPress-Related Blogs
How to add it to your blog?
Once you have your favicon ready, place it in the root directory. Most popular browsers will automatically detect and use the favicon.
For better results, add the following line to the header.php file of your theme, between the <head> and </head> tags:
<link rel=”shortcut icon” href=”wp-content/themes/current_theme/favicon.ico” />
*change ‘current_theme’ to the name of the theme that you are currently using
You’ve just added a Favicon to your blog!
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WebAppers is celebrating their new blog milestone (4,000 readers) and giving away 3 copies of “Classic Pack” icon sets. All you need to do is leave a comment or publish a post about this event. Ray will pick 1 lucky winner from people who left a comment about interesting thing(s) at Christmas and 2 other lucky winners from people who published a post about this event on their blogs/sites. Deadline for this event is on 31 Dec 2007.
News:
- DavidAirey.com has been hacked, so David is currently using DavidAirey.co.uk.
- I’ve signed up for an Entrecard and will post more about it once I finish testing it.
- I want to create my own database of tutorials, so expect several tutorials in the next few days.
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The theme is still not completely done, but it is in its final stage and ready to receive some feedback. All that is left for me to do now is fix a few bugs and put the gallery back up. Suggestions are also appreciated, so if there’s something that you’d like to see in this theme, please leave a comment.
During the creation of this theme, I’ve changed my mind several times and the theme that you see now definitely does not look like what I had planned a few days ago. However, the changes were for the better and I’m happy with the way the theme looks now. It’s also good to see that WPThemesGallery is using its own theme now.
The theme was created and designed by me, but I’ve used a few famfamfam icons and a style-switcher created by Small Potato. The default color of the background is blue, but you have the option to change it to a darker color. I was going to put repeated patterns in the background, but I didn’t. Should I? I was also planning in displaying the latest themes that were added to the gallery in the sidebar. How does that sound?
Well, leave your suggestions and feedback. I hope you like the new theme as much as I do. (:
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New Design
I’ve been working on a new design for this blog in the past few days and I plan to start using it at the end of this week. The design is 80% complete and it’s looking good so far. The theme is not amazing, but at least WPThemesGallery will have its own theme soon. There are no previews, so you will have to wait till it comes out. (:
Other bloggers that have redesigned their blogs recently: WPDesigner, WPThemesPlugin, and Justin Tadlock. Adii is still not done, but he has posted a preview of his new design.
News
- Justin Tadlock released a new News/Magazine WordPress Theme called Structure;
- Graph Paper Press has released Visualization and Gridline (Magazine, Lite, News). Gridline Lite is free, but the others are $19.99 for personal use and $99 for developers.
- Need inspiration? Best of CSS Design 2007 - a list of 50 websites hand-picked by Nick La from Best Web Gallery;
- Need more inspiration? My 53 Top Blog Designs of 2007 - a list of 53 blogs chosen by Adii;
- I had my 20th birthday last Thursday.
- I’ve been lucky lately. I won a Home Theater DVD at a raffle last Friday and a movie ticket from Blingo this past Monday (For those who don’t know, Blingo is a search engine that gives away prizes).
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WPTG Rank #1: Weblog Tools Collection
WPTG Rank #2: WPDesigner
WPTG Rank #3: Daily Blog Tips
Best Google Pagerank: Photo Matt
Best Alexa Rank: Weblog Tools Collection
Best Technorati Rank: Photo Matt and Ryan Boren
New Blogs added to the Top 40:
Blog that went up the most ranks: WP Themes Gallery
A few blogs have been removed because they weren’t “Blogs About WordPress” or because they just listed WordPress themes and/or plugins in their posts or because of inactivity. (N.Design Studio, OptiNiche, Mandarin Musing, WordLog, and Binary Moon)
Do you know a blog that should be listed in the Top 40? If you do, please send an email to wpthemesgallery [at] gmail [dot] com, so that I can add it to the list.
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For those who don’t know, there’s a WordPress plugin that can show top commentators in the sidebar. Many WordPress blogs utilize this plugin to reward their readers who regularly leave comments and to also encourage readers to comment more and be more involved. The list does not only display their names, but it also links them to their sites if desired.
This single link can be more helpful than you actually think, John Chow shared an evil top commentators trick earlier this year. So, by using this plugin, the blog and the readers get rewarded. Do they? A problem that could arise from this would be the start of low-quality comments and/or spam. John Cow recently had to ban someone because of this.
A simple way to fix this would be to just display comments after admin approval. However, many bloggers have a busy schedule and/or receive a large amount of comments daily. So, having to wait for admin approval hurts the blog discussion between readers. Spam comments can be easily taken care of, but what about low-quality comments? How will you decide what crosses the line and what doesn’t?
Show top commentators or not? Quantity over quality or quality over quantity?
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The second month has passed, so it’s time for another report:
- 5,569 unique visitors and 11,398 pageviews;
- had a spike of 1,197 unique visitors and 1,834 pageviews on November 4 because the theme WPTG was mentioned in ‘WordPress Themes Releases for 11/4‘ by Weblog Tools Collection.
I’m happy to see that the numbers are increasing compared to the statistics from the first month. WPThemesGallery is currently averaging about 100 unique visitors and 250 pageviews per day. Factors that definitely helped were the creation of the Top 40 Blogs About WordPress and the release of the WordPress theme WPTG. In the upcoming months, I plan to learn more about design, coding, and WordPress in order to release better quality WordPress themes. (:
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What web design mistake?
It seems logical to open external links in new browser windows to keep visitors from leaving your blog/site, so that they return later on. However, this is a web design mistake that should be avoided. While others still don’t realize that this is a mistake, many bloggers who made this mistake when they first started out, have changed.
Why is this a mistake?
This method of getting visitors to return to your site defeats its own purpose, because most web users are accustomed to utilizing the back button to return to a site instead of closing a window. Most importantly, it ruins the user experience by opening several windows and polluting their screens. By not setting external links to open in new browser windows, the visitor has the choice of opening links in any way he/she may want. It’s a privilege that should be not taken away from the visitor.
Why haven’t I noticed this mistake earlier?
A reason is that I don’t navigate my own blog like visitors usually do, but the main reason is that I set my browser to open new pages in new tabs instead of new windows. So, external links would open in new tabs, which is not that bad. By the way, these are not excuses, I apologize for making this mistake.
For the bloggers , have you ever made a web design mistake before?
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