WordPress.com 30 Credits Giveaway

UPDATE: No one entered, so no free credits to giveaway. Comments closed.

There is ‘new’ old news about WordPress.com displaying ads on users’ blogs. Some people knew about this and others didn’t. The reason some didn’t know about this is because when you are logged in or are a regular reader, you won’t even see the ads. I have yet to see the ads when I tried looking for them. I couldn’t find one.

A lot of people don’t mind, but there are some of you who do mind. I hope you realize that WordPress.com offers you a free service with the option of adding upgrades that is cheaper than if you pay for hosting. Most free services place advertisements to help keep the service free. But most of them are intrusive. The ones on WordPress.com blogs don’t seem to be.

Taken from the WordPress.com blog:

We seemed to have lucked in to a good balance with this approach, and don’t plan to change anything there. (Most of your readers will never see an ad.) As an added bonus the light advertising has allowed us to focus on free features for you guys rather than paid upgrades, and enabled us to invest in infrastructure so your blog is always fast and reliable and never shows a fail whale.

That sounds like a good deal to me! But I do understand if you are completely against ads on your blog.

So, I thought I would help out one lucky person. I’m going to give away 30 credits to one blogger. This will end on October 11, 2008 (in 3 weeks). Please share with anyone who might want a free year of no ads, it could earn you 15 credits.

Follow the instructions below to enter in the giveaway.

1. Subscribe to the feed. (If you are already subscribed, then you should find the 3 sets of numbers on a new post in the feed.)
2. Contact me via the contact form with 3 sets of numbers found in the feed and your WordPress.com username.
3. Leave a comment saying you’ve subscribed and contacted me. (This lets me know that I should have received an e-mail so it doesn’t get lost someplace.)
4. (Optional) Share this giveaway with a friend and if your friend wins, you will receive 15 credits. Your friend must provide your WordPress.com username in order for you to receive the 15 credits. So be sure to tell your friend to include your username on the contact form.

WordPress Self Destruction

I may be the last one on Earth to find this, but I thought I would share it for those of you who also don’t know about this hidden feature.

With the newer revisions feature in WordPress, there are two radio buttons next to each revision to allow you to compare. I thought I would compare a revision with itself. Not sure why, I just wanted to. Watch the following video to see the self destruction of WordPress.

I apologize for the looping of the video.

Fluency Admin WordPress Theme

One of the most complained about features I’ve heard for the newer WordPress versions is the admin area. I actually liked that it looked different, because it was easier to look at. It just looks better.

I’ve checked out some WordPress admin themes before, but most of them seemed to be missing something, not working right, or just not that great looking. Just today I came across one that is just more appealing. Fluency Admin by Dean Robinson. It works with WordPress 2.6.

It’s not that I think the colors in the admin area are ugly, it’s that everything takes up so much space, when it all can fit into a smaller area.

This is what WordPress 2.6 Dashboard looks like:

Here is the Dashboard after:

A much needed improvement is the Other WordPress News box on the dashboard. It’s now a smaller list instead of these huge boxes for each post. Way too much space was wasted. In order to cut back on the space, I had to limit the boxes to showing only five, otherwise they got out of hand.

Write Post screen after:

Manage Posts screen after:

Sidebar after:

My favorite feature of Fluency Admin is that the sidebar stays put even while you scroll down the page. That was one annoyance about the menu that I had before. I’d have to scroll back up just to go to another screen.

You can check out more screenshots at Dean Robinson’s flickr page. If you want this awesome WordPress Admin theme, go download it!

Win a Premium WordPress Theme

UPDATE: It is now June 5th and the winner is… Vivian! And to quote her, “So I just HAVE to win, it’s in the cosmos…” She was right! This was completely random through Randomizer. I assigned all four participants a number and then let Randomizer pick the number randomly. Congratulations Vivian!

NOTE: Comments are now closed.

This isn’t going to be a huge giveaway like most are. But, since I have a premium WordPress theme that I don’t plan on using now, with Brian Gardner’s permission, I am giving it away! The theme I am giving away is the Revolution Theme. Here is a live demo if you would like to see it in action. If you need help with this theme, there is a support forum and tutorials.

UPDATE: I decided to change the rules, because I might be really busy and won’t be able to keep up. So, everything with a strikethrough does not apply.

To enter, subscribe to the RSS feed and then come back here and leave a comment on this post saying that you subscribed. Be sure when filling out your e-mail address that it is correct. It will be used to send you your new theme!

I will choose three people at random. I will ask the first person for a code. This code can only be found when subscribed. So be sure that you have subscribed! If the winner can’t give me the code, I will contact the second person and so on.

The code will not be the same code that is used for the free advertising, so please look out for the correct one!

You must leave a comment about subscribing before June 5th, 2008 EST. And yes, if you’re already subscribed, just leave a comment and you get an entry.

In summary, here are the steps to enter to win the theme:

• Subscribe to the feed.
• Leave a comment on this post saying you subscribed. This is important or you will not receive an entry!
• Watch the feed for the correct code anytime between now and June 5th.
• Wait until June 5th, 2008. I will announce the winner on this post!

The winner will be announced after one of the random three has given me the correct code.

Even if you don’t win, you can still purchase the Revolution Theme or several others. Or if you want something unique, maybe Brian can help you with that by creating a custom design.  I also hope when this ends, you will decide to stay subscribed subscribe!

Good luck to everyone who participates!

Buy Premium Themes, Don’t Steal Them

If it wasn’t for looking at my stats, I probably would not have known this. But apparently someone thinks my blog uses the NewsPress theme by Adii. My blog does not use the NewsPress theme. My blog is not a live demo of the theme.

I wanted to announce this because the forum I found this on doesn’t allow me to post; possibly would if I had an account, but I’m not creating an account just for that purpose. So, I am announcing it here on my blog in hopes that any visitors from that forum looking for a live demo of the NewsPress theme will see this.

I’m flattered someone would use my blog as a live demo, but not by someone who is trying to distribute copies of the theme illegally and obviously not wanting to point to the actual live demo in fear of getting caught. NewsPress is available to buy if you are interested. The theme looks really good though, so if you want it, please buy it instead of trying to steal it.

Premium themes are usually themes that people have worked hard on to provide you with a high quality theme for your blog. They deserve to be paid for their time. So, if you’re looking for a free theme, there are plenty of websites that offer free themes. You can search Google for quite a bit of websites offering free themes.