I used Corporate Sandbox as a base, which is based on Sandbox. I also used some elements from the new Twitter design. I even used a couple features from Fresh News. The feed icons come from DryIcons.

For the most part, it’s done. I may have a few things to correct. Let me know if you see anything broken.

Off the topic, I apologize for the lack of posts recently. I have been so busy with work.

WordPress.com Giveaway: 3423 1184 5508

It was a little harder with customizing to get it to work right, but I managed. It was one of those ‘It works in Firefox, but not IE7′ issues. Took me a couple hours to finally get it just right (at least in IE7 and Firefox). I’ll leave it up to anyone using other browsers to point out if anything looks wrong. Just a small note: it isn’t BuySellAds’ code that caused the problem, it was some CSS not working right with the layout in IE7.

I do like how they don’t just show your Google Page Rank or Alexa Rank; they show more information, such as Yahoo Inbound Links, Technorati Rank and more. This allows people who have lost their Google Page Rank to at least appear popular in other areas (assuming they actually are).

I added two spots on the side which both currently say “Advertise Here”. If you click on one, it will take you right to the page to purchase an ad. I hope they will fill up.

Also, I am currently offering free advertising to one random RSS subscriber. Just pay attention to the bottom of each post in your reader and one will mention free advertising with a code. Just follow all instructions if you’re interested. Good luck!

I’m still making sure there are no errors and changing things here and there, but you shouldn’t notice too much. I think the blog also loads faster than it did before.

I apologize for the lack of posts, but I’ve been really busy with work and it’s hard to make time to come up with new content to write about when most of the time I’m learning new things for work. I will not give up on this blog. Subscribe to the feed if you want to be notified when I write a new post, which shouldn’t be too long from now.

If you have any suggestions or comments, please let me know by leaving a comment.

I’ve seen some of what WordPress 2.5 would look like before trying it out. It looks so much better; it’s clean and easy on the eyes. Some may not agree with me when I say that this version is a little easier to use than previous ones. It just seems like I can login and find what I need to find right away, whether it’s writing a new post, viewing spam comments or changing the settings.

There are some newer features with this version. The most changed is probably the Dashboard. When first logging in, the Dashboard displays useful information such as new comments and incoming links.

I like that the more useful information is at the top and the WordPress Development Blog and Other WordPress News are at the bottom. If I wanted, I could also change those two to display other RSS feeds.

I also like how the Manage Posts screen looks now. It is much easier to read. I like the font size used, doesn’t feel like I’m looking at something for the blind, although I do have poor eyesight.

I don’t like that all of the options that were off to the side in the Write Post screen were moved to the bottom of the page. Why should I scroll when it would be faster to change options on the right side of the post? I think those options would be better where they were in previous versions.

Overall though, I like WordPress 2.5. Anyone else have something you don’t like about WordPress 2.5?

Read more about the WordPress 2.5 features at the WordPress Development Blog.

I hope everyone has a wonderful holiday. I will try to write a couple posts this week if I can.

If anyone has some great tips on finding time to write posts while being busy with work and kids, I would love to read them. Feel free to leave a link to a post you have written.

My new computer has an AMD Athlon 64 x2 2.6GHz Dual-Core Processor with 2GB of RAM. It is also running Windows Vista Home Premium. Please do not leave comments about how bad Vista is, because I’m actually having a wonderful experience unlike some. I also didn’t have a choice of Vista or XP. I probably would have chosen XP, but am glad that I didn’t have a choice now that I’ve given Vista a chance.

There were a couple annoyances and they were easily disabled. One was the Welcome Center. Who really needs that to start every time Windows loads? The other was the User Account Control asking permission for every little thing.

The only thing Vista is missing for me is VPN access. I know the feature is there, but I can’t use it because my work’s VPN requires MS-CHAPv1, which Microsoft decided to remove that, without giving you an option. This means you need to spend money to upgrade the VPN server.

You might be wondering how I connect to work’s VPN if I’m using Vista. I am running VMWare with XP installed in it. I only need to use my work’s application with the VPN. Sure, it’s an extra step to connect and do work, but I’m used to it now.

Please do not comment about how I could just run XP on the computer instead. I like some of the features in Vista that XP is just missing, but also, that would mean I’d have to go and actually search for all the drivers. I do not have separate discs for any of the hardware, just one Gateway Windows Vista disc with everything in it.

There is only one thing I had to search for drivers for that a simple Google search found right away. That was the ZDWLan for my WIFIMax dongle because it needed drivers to work correctly on Vista. Unfortunately, I can’t find the link again to put it up for anyone who might need it.

Mitch over at Mitchelaneous has written about things he likes and doesn’t like about Vista.  I’m glad to see someone not just pointing out the bad things and then going back to XP just because of a few bad things. If I had done that with Linux, I would have never figured problems out. In fact, if most people did that, Linux probably wouldn’t be what it is today.

If you like Vista, please feel free to leave a comment about what you like.

Anyone who is a regular here should know that I normally write more often than I have in the past week. For those of you who don’t know and have considered unsubscribing because of the lack of posts, please don’t! Or, if you aren’t a subscriber, please subscribe to the feed so you’re notified when I start writing again.

The reason for the lack of posts is because my computer stopped working correctly. I’ve tried everything possible, coming to the conclusion that the motherboard has a problem with the slots where the RAM goes. It won’t take anything in the last two slots and is picky in the first two. (Yes, I know that I can’t just place any RAM in any slot. I have a manual that shows me the combinations.)

I am writing this from my laptop, but I don’t have anything on this laptop to work with. This laptop isn’t great for doing the type of work I do, which involves Flash and Photoshop.

Although I love my computer very much, I am kind of glad that I will be getting a new one, because mine is 4-5 years old (considered ancient if you compare it to newer ones). It has also had problems from the beginning with double-sided RAM even though it claims it is supported. It’s a Gigabyte motherboard if you’re interested. Great motherboard, but very picky.

So, if you don’t see any new posts from me this week, hopefully I will be setting up a new computer. Stay tuned!

Previously, I had said that I will not write on the weekends, but this is an important update that I wanted to have done before the weekend was over.

One obvious change is the look of Soft Tech Reviews. I had used Revolution by Brian Gardner before he released the Revolution News Theme, along with a few different styles. I really like the Magazine style for it. Before I saw the style, I was already considering on adding something new to the site, but wasn’t sure how to go about displaying it. This theme is perfect for what I want.

The new content is videos. Not videos created by myself, but videos that are related to the topics I write here. Every so often I do add a video to a post, but I would like to include more in its own section. Currently, there is only one video post, so I am not going to display a list until there is more.

If there is anything out of place or any errors appearing, please let me know.

It seems that a hot topic is about Google making some changes. These changes have caused a lot of blogs to have lower PageRanks. Why? Everyone has their own ideas.

• Removing AdSense
• Using WidgetBucks
• Selling text links

PageRank isn’t actually all that important to me, but it seems to be important to advertisers.

I decided to check if my PageRank of zero has changed. I didn’t expect it to so soon, but it turns out that it’s now a three! A three? How is that possible? The Soft Tech Reviews domain is only about four months old. I haven’t done very much except write in the blog.

So, the top blogs go down and Soft Tech Reviews goes up. Did Google make a mistake? But like Darren Rowse from ProBlogger said, Forget About PageRank and Build a Better Blog. Although I now have a PageRank of three, I’m not going to become obsessed about it.

I started to offer free advertising in August and not many were interested, so I am removing the Related Links in the sidebar. If you are interested in advertising here on Soft Tech Reviews, you still can. I will provide free advertising again in the future as a giveaway, possibly to subscribers only. Subscribe if you don’t want to miss out on this. E-mail subscription is available in the menu.

I have decided to write about 3-5 posts a week and during the weekdays only. I will not spend time writing on the weekend. I’m hoping that this will give me more time to write better content and also allow me to do other things, such as coming up with ideas for content.