template | Graphics and Innovation

Widgets Ready Custom WordPress Theme, How To Creating A Web Page More Efficiently

Written by The3dtechnologies · 2 Comments

When I’ve launched the3dtechnologies.com for the first time, just after three days, I started using the three columns WordPress theme called “Grid Focus Public”, with the hope to improving my brand, the users trust, and of course, my montly income stream.

The point is that as my traffic grown, and my daily work as well, I throught that my blog would have done way better if I had got the theme right that could help me to simplify my job.

Sure, nothing to say about my old theme layout, but onestly, I really was unsatisfied by the lack of the widget.

Now, for an expert is no new this term, but a newbie blogger may not know what are widgets and what is a widgets ready theme.

What Is A Custom Widgets Ready WordPress Themes

A Custom Widgets Ready WordPress Themes is a theme that lets you to customize your layout and design in a few click directly from the dashboard without any effort.

Most of free template ignore this great technology. Of course, if you want convert a custom WordPress theme to be Widgets Ready you can do it as well, however it take a lot of time and you need to have php knowledge.

In general, custom Widgets Ready WordPress themes have a post column(or body) and one sidebar. However are common WordPress themes with three columns and sometimes four columns.

For this site I’m using a custom Widgets Ready WordPress themes called “frugal“. Below, I’ve just put a sample of how robust the Frugal theme option really are.

frugal options

As you can see on the image above, Frugal theme lets you change anything of your theme, without having to get your hands on css or php files. You can set any type of color, font, weight of your column.

My Blog Section After I Moved To Frugal Theme

home_page_the3dtechnologies

For those are new at The3dtechnologies, yesterday finally I decided to move from Grid Focus Public WordPress theme to Frugal Theme. As you can see in the detailed image above, the sidebar now contain these four sections:

Email subscription forms – It’s very useful to grow my subscribers number and send my latest weekly email to them, plus I’ve put three cool button for feed, Twitter, and Facebook for who want to be updated with the latest post.
Recent post – Include the latest 5 post I wrote.
News - Is the work we do to aggregate and manually select the most relevant news for our readers from a group of about 50 selected news sources.
Ad post – In the middle between subscription forms and recent post I’ve added an ad spot to monetize my blog.

As you can see in the Email Subscription Forms basically there is an input form where the user needs to type its email address and click on “Subscribe.” He will then see the following popup window (for the sake of simplicity we will carry the analysis using the Feedburner service only).

subscription_form

In my view this method has some drawbacks. First off, of all it uses a lot of space. Precious space if we consider the monetization aspect. You have only a simple box where put your email instead of a full registration form.

On this pop-up windows the user will just need to put his email address and to pass the CAPTCHA filter by copying some letters. Once done, an email will be sent to the mail box containing a link that will be used for the activation of the subscription.

email_subscription_request

In a nutshell, the steps required for subscription:

Click on the link
Type email address
Type CAPTCHA letters
Click on “Complete Subscription Request” button
Go on your email box
Click on activation link

In the home page, in particular on the right sidebar I give a preview of latest news about the topic related to my site. I’m thinking to put the section “news” only in the home page while let the same section of every single page blank.

Every day I try to optimizing every post I write in order to ranking well in the Google search engine. When I’m selling affiliate products I make each single pages like landing pages. This is the reason I’m thinking to let each single pages as simple as possible.

Make Your Single Page Like A Landing Page

Compared to my old theme I’ve let each single page as clear as possible. I’ve only put a subscribers form and two adsense ads(one within the content and another in the right sidebar). I didn’t begin doing this until just a few month ago.

The reason I’ve choosed this strategy is because I consider these page like landing pages. As I said before, when I started with affiliate marketing each single page were full of stuff.

It means that they could distract the visitors from what they are really searching for, then from the content of my page, which could make me lose sales.

Sure, I do not tend to selling affiliate products every day, but when I promote something on my site I prefer leave those page simple as possible by anything doesn’t concerns the main topic of the page.

Make Money WIth The Header

Compared to my old header, I’ve left only the logo on the left header. I took this decision because on the right header I can use the blank space to add some affiliate banner or the next book I’m writing.

Categories: Wordpress - Tags: Frugal, template, theme, Widgets

A SEO Friendly Ready WordPress Theme

Written by The3dtechnologies · 2 Comments

UPDATE – 29 June 2011 – When I started blogging I realized rather quickly that I had been terribly short sighted on the importance of SEO.

If you don’t know it yet, behind most successful websites out there are a SEO friendly WordPress themes. The reason is quite simple, those who want to increase their site traffic, a SEO friendly themes semplify the way to make things.

However, before to pick one of these ready wordpress theme for your blog, you need to take some important decision. If you do not realize your goals for your blog, you can not make the right choice. For instance, imagine you are owner of a real estate company and you would to highlight your business by creating a professional niche site.

If you don’t have a web page design built for that specific purpose, better, if you don’t get a professional theme that allows you to attract new visitors will become very hard to turn potential customers into sales and make money from it. Well, here is where the Thesis Theme for WordPress comes into play.

I have to admit, I was really impressed when I first seen this theme. So, a month ago I planned on fully optimizing one of my blog themes, cleaning up the code and adding in the final needed plugins to make them as search engine friendly as possible. The blog where I installed Thesis theme is my new site cabinrentalsideas.com as you can see.

Why I Choosed Thesis Theme For Cabinrentalsideas.com?

When I started researching it a little more about Thesis, I thought…….. Why bloggers and affiliate marketing entrepreneur such as Danny Sullivan, Google’s Matt Cutts, Chris Brogan, Darren Rowse, all use Thesis for their sites?

Also, why would over 5,000 other bloggers and webmasters purchase the same WordPress theme? it’s very strange.

Well, the answer is simple. The answer is: Thesis isn’t really just a WordPress theme. It’s actually an SEO-optimized code framework with tons of design flexibility.

The goal: High conversions, competitive price.
The problem: None.
Landing page: https://diythemes.com/

Why Would I pay For that?

For those are novice when it comes to CSS or don’t know how to manipulating sections and columns of a default theme, Thesis give you all necessary to do it directly from your dashboard. With Thesis is never be so easy to set up a niche site in a fast and simple way.

But don’t just take my word for it. Watch this video created by Lisa

[HTML1]

Easy To Customize

Never have I saw a theme that is so easy to customize. Usually, by using a free theme you need to touch the source code if you want to make some change at header, sidebar, and so on. With Thesis you have the flexibility that you desire. You are able to set up every options from your admin page.

You can move elements around the page (sidebars, etc.) without getting into the code. Thesis allows you to upload, resize and crop your header image once you have choice it. Also, the new “Design Options” panel allows you to customize fonts and font sizes all across the theme.

The best thing is that, once you join the Thesis community, you get every upgrade at no extra charge. If you want have an ideas of its options look below.

Low Cost Solution

Thesis is a low cost solution if you want a professional WordPress theme created by a professional designer. It’s available with two license options. The personal license is $87 and the developer’s license is $164. The main difference is that the second license allows you unlimited use of the theme across as many sites as you like. For that price you have an high quality WordPress theme with support from the designer.

With so many design options and support, well worth the price. If you are starting your new site, I reccomend you to try it.

Download The Thesis Theme for WordPress

Categories: Product Reviews - Tags: friendly wordpress theme, template, theme, Wp Thesis

Do I Need A New Blog Template? Thesis Is Here

Written by The3dtechnologies · 4 Comments

UPDATE – 3 January 2011 - I felt compelled to discuss this article because I’m seeing many affiliate marketers do the same big mistakes when they build their first blog. Now you’re probably wondering what this mistake is. The answer is simple. The answer is: They use a bad web site template.

Often people ask me for recommendations about what to choose as template for their blog. In my long blogging journey(4 years right now), I’ve tried a lot of free templates, especially when I was a newbie blogger, and I must admit some of that were good templates. However, I realized immediately that something’s missing with a free templates. They doesn’t had widget, and most important the support, which in my view is the most important factor to consider if you want get serious in creating a killer theme for your blog.

Do I Need A New Blog Template?

As my esperience with affiliate marketing is grown, I had needed of a new template that could simplify my workday.

If you want to make money from a blog, you need to customize layout and design, often and quickly, and without using professional web templates become very hard to do if you don’t have technical knowledge of PHP and CSS.

Customize Your Blog Template With Thesis Is Very Fast

Often, I’ve noticed, there are a lot of bloggers that try to make money online with their blog by using a bad template, maybe even outdated. For instance, with my first WordPress theme, I need to change the PHP code each time I want to customize the layout for my website, change the background colors, font, and so on. Whenever, the entire process taking me a lot of time and effort before to complete it.

thesis-theme

Recently, I’ve tweet a question about which are the most complete WordPress theme for affiliate marketers. Well, I’ve received a few direct messages on TwitterDeck where some people have answered they were using Thesis Theme.

It’s not the first time I talk about it. This is a very powerful theme for WordPress blog that has been developed by Chris Pearson. I can attest this because I use it on my latest site cabinrentalsideas.com as you can see.

If you don’t have enough PHP and CSS knowledge, this theme can give you a great hand to help you to create and manage a professional blog without effort. You can customize your blog design, and definitely does optimize it for search engines and give you a lot more features to your blog rather than the default WordPress theme.

Thesis Overview

Before you go spending you money you need know what is better for your business, right? First and foremost, Thesis theme has three main positive aspects:

Simple to Use – Thesis is quite intuitive, and is easy to use and I’m sure Chris will continue to add new features and ways to use the theme.

Design – Looks very clean.

SEO – Thesis allows you to optimize any blog post in order to rank well in Google.

It has had a lot of reviews around the blogosphere and it is no wonder – because it’s full of great features such as:

People can select the number of columns of sidebar, and the width as well.
Choose the font, size and type in all the different sections of the theme.
The theme also allows you to choose either version within one overall theme.
The SEO control is another great options that allows you to control the seo of each post.

With Thesis theme you are able to have a great control through two control panel menus. Also, has a free support forum, that compared to others premium theme support is very active, and queries are very quick. With over 21,000 webmasters and bloggers you can get a great help from Thesis Certified Designers, and a lot of your peers who simply enjoy lending a helping hand.

It’s easily customizable. Chris has create a theme that has rich options(image below), such as support for custom CSS, can have different backgrounds and much more.

Here, a sum of the main features:

Choose between 1, 2, or 3 column layouts and select the size of each column
Create strong navigation menus
Thumbnails images, and teasers
Create a magazine-style layout
Customize colors design without code
Edit font types and sizes
Display rotating multimedia
. . . and much more

Below is a demo video from DIYthemes showing how it works but it’s very simple in concept.

Though it may have seemed like a long post, it’s just the tip of the iceberg on functionality that you have acess to through Thesis.

Thesis Theme has a lot more options and features to justify the non-free price, $87 for the basic version and $164 for Multi-use Package. Thesis is very professional theme with great admin panels. For common sites is a great choices.

Categories: Product Reviews - Tags: template, theme, thesis, Thesis Theme

Frugal Theme – Clean WordPress Themes

Written by The3dtechnologies · 4 Comments

UPDATE – 3 February 2011: If you’re looking for Frugal Wordprss theme, I am glad to announce that Frugal theme is switched to Catalyst theme. Welcome to Catalyst. Read my full review.

Frugal Theme is came upon the Version 3.5 and now is more easy to install and operate as well. Read more

My Brief Story With Frugal Theme

Some month ago, I had a problem with my old three columns theme, which according to my stats many of the heavy use files were linked to it. So I decided to look into another theme more clean and simple, and I opted for the Frugal theme.

Frugal is a clean WordPress 3.0 theme. Since the early releases of WordPress 3.0, the Frugal Team has been constantly monitoring the WordPress Core Code to ensure that Frugal is fully compatible with all the fantastic new functionality. So, if you’re looking to upgrade the theme of your blog I surely reccomend Frugal too, because I use it on my blog and I can attest that is a great theme.

A Full Frugal Theme Review

Developed by my friend Eric Hamm Frugal is one of the best and complete WordPress magazine theme out there. Compatible with WordPress 3.0+ is a clean and fully customizable theme for those who don’t have any PHP or CSS knowledges.

In these months, I was looking the perfect theme for my main site The3dtechnologies. I’m already using two different theme in other of my two sites, Arthemia Theme on nickdeiana.com, and Thesis Theme on cabinrentalsideas.com.

Sure, they are two great theme, but I must admit that none of them has worked well with my site the3dtechnologies. Instead, Frugal has all features which I always wanted to have in one theme: faster page loads, simplicity, and a lot of widget availables, and Frugal theme presents all these features.

Frugal Theme is definitely a writer’s theme for its Georgia font for headings and Arial for body text. As you can see on my blog Text is black, and links are a nice dark blue. Also there’s enough whitespace for all your advertisers.

Here, is a short snippet from the Frugal website:

When it comes down to it, your blog’s content is MUCH more important that the theme itself. Sure, you don’t want your site to look tacky or amateurish or misrepresent the focus of your blog, but at the end of the day, it’s WHAT your saying that creates the draw for your potential subscribers, not what color the background is when they read it (though that can have an effect).

So in designing the frugal WordPress theme I kept in mind the idea of providing the absolute best possible framework to put ALL the focus on the words and images you provide your readers…no more, no less. In it’s stock form, the frugal theme is light and clear and perfect for the next great work you are about to share.

WordPress Theme Is Ideal For Google Caffeine: Google Caffeine Loves Frugal Theme

frugal wordpress theme

When it comes to choose a WordPress theme for the new Google Caffeine algorithm, than Frugal is the right choice.

Getting a theme with a clean code structure is very important today. The new Google algorithm, includes new ranking factors. If you want to get an high position on search results, the page speed should be most faster as possible.

Here, where Frugal comes into play. Frugal wp theme was developed to make your page load very quick. Compared to most of known theme out there, Frugal do not use images into its background, headers, navigation bars, and footers.

Also, you no need to install plugins to your blog like custom avatars and custom favicon, which create clutter and slowing your site. Frugal has these features integrated.

Watch this cool video below to see just how powerful this theme is.

Customize Your Layout And Design Without Touching Your Theme Files

One of the better aspect of Frugal is its minimalistic, clean design. However, first all, I reccomend this theme for those are creating their first blog. The reason is quite simple. Frugal is a theme for non-coder, so you have no need to learn php or css language. You can setting up the background color, font, and so on. Also, You can add a custom header, as well.

In this image below, you can see what you could setting directly from your wp control panel.

frugal options

and that’s just the main content font options.

Speed Up Your WordPress Theme To Rank Better in Google

If there is one thing that weakens a blog is wait to watch every page load. A slow load time can depend from many factors. Usually, the main reasons a blog is slow are:

Poorly made plugins.
Slow web server.
Too large images on your site.

Well, in this case Frugas will give a great help because is super speedy to load every page due uses ZERO images and a low number of plugin integrated.

Main Frugal Theme Features

Frugal has a lot of features. Some of the highlights includes:

1. Upload a custom logo – Frugal theme lets you to upload your own logo and adjust it. Once created a logo in a certain specified size, you can display it to your header.

2. 29 page guide – Frugal give you an useful user manual. It was wrote to help client to customize their theme.

3. Custom favicon – Another essential features is Frugal theme favicon. It let you create, then upload your favicon file into a specified directory in your Frugal theme. Once done, you can display your Favicon image in your URL into your browsers address bar.

4. Two 468×60 ad/feature widgets – One is located on the right side of the header, while the other is in between your posts main content and the comments section.

5. Custom avatar – Frugal lets you to add your own custom avatar image(80×80, but this can be adjusted to your liking) to sit to the left of the name of the comments of your blog without using additional plugin.

6. Threaded comments – This features allow you to reply to individual comments. It was included with the latest version of WordPress, but this does not work with all themes. So this theme has all necessary for threaded comments.

What’s Come With The Frugal Theme 3.5?

Rearrangable Admin Page Option Boxes: The same flexibility and power you’ve come to expect in the options of your Frugal-based sites has been brought home to the admin interface. Each box of option sets is now draggable & sortable, collapsible & expandable. You can organize your admin pages however you want, with your essential options always visible and at the top of the page.

Frugal Theme Admin Menu has moved ‘Above the Fold’: With 3.5, we’ve decided to carve some space out for ourselves between ‘Comments’ and ‘Appearance’ in the WordPress Admin Sidebar. Not only does this save users on lower-resolution screens from needing to scroll down to see the menu, but it’s a subtle way of demonstrating that, with this release of Frugal 3.5, we’re on our way to the top!

WordPress 3.0 Compatibility: We’ve done extensive testing to ensure that Frugal is ahead of the game and ready for the upcoming release of WordPress 3.0.

WordPress MU / 3.0 Multi-User Enabled: Another exciting aspect of WP 3.0 is that the WP Crew has folded WP-MU into Core. Frugal has worked with WP-MU for quite some time, but we’re pleased to see that this feature is going mainstream.

Refined image inputs: With Frugal 3.5, we’ve removed the need to type in the names of your uploaded images into the options pages by hand, and replaced the old textfields with drop-down menus showing all available images.

Here’s what Eric has to say to us about the new release:

The following video will go into detail

Price

One of the better thing about Frugal is that is free to download(default version). You can also choose to pass to the premium version that goes up to $79 for a single user license, while the developer license goes up to $199.

Of course, the premium version have more features then the free version. That justify the non-free price.

Final Conclusion

To make sure to be indexed by the new Google Caffeine algorithm, your web page structure must be clean as possible, so here where Frugal Theme come into play. This theme is a blessing for people who want that their pages will load quickly.

DOWNLOAD FRUGAL WORDPRESS THEME

Now, take a look ‘behind the scenes’ of the frugal Theme.

Note: I could not put all screenshot.

Admin Pages Settings/Uploads: