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.com Giveaway: 3423 1184 5508

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.

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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!

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!

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.

WP 2.5 introduced a “security key” that you add to your wp-config.php file. When I upgrade, I don’t touch that file, and there you go. Missed.

I usually check that file after an upgrade, but I didn’t this time. That’s what I get for being lazy! So, thanks to Chris, I was able to add the security key.

How do you add the security key? It’s easy, in fact even the updated wp-config.php file tells you where to go. Head to the WordPress site and it will generate one for you automatically.

What does it do?

Doing this will invalidate all your logins, so everybody on your site will have to relogin, but doing it will greatly increase the cookie strength of WordPress 2.5. This means that your login cookies, if intercepted, won’t be able to be reproduced as easily. It also means that somebody who gains read-only access to your database through some other means won’t be able to login to your site.

Chris says more about this on his blog. I recommended reading it so you don’t miss this important security feature!

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.

For those of you who don’t know who Natali Del Conte is, she appeared on the TeXtra shows and now has a new show, Loaded, on CNET TV. She posted up a challenge on her blog today. She is challenging anyone to design her site and she will pay you $100 via PayPal. That might sound like a low amount, but you will receive credit for designing the site and you can put her on your resume as a reference.

I think designing Natali’s site would be enough to do it! Hurry and start designing, this ends on February 29, 2008!

This is what she says she is looking for:

Here is what I am looking for: I would like to get rid of this aquatic-looking color scheme. Perhaps something a bit more gender-neutral. Even a gray scale would be nice. I don’t like the font that my name is written in above either. I would also like to use either one of the two photos below in the header. I’m not really all that picky about it but one is quite formal and the other is more casual. I’m sorry I can’t give too many more guidelines. Like I said, I have no vision.

I hope someone will take up this challenge, because I’d like to see what it will look like redesigned. She deserves a redesign. Here is what it looks like now:

I love giveaways. Unlike last time when I posted about a giveaway, I’m not entering. I’m just informing you, the readers, about this giveaway in case you are interested in winning a new WordPress theme for your blog. These are nice looking premium themes!

There are instructions for entering to win. Don’t feel too rushed, they both end on January 28, 2008 and are hosted by Blogging Mix.

• Win Your Blog a New WordPress Theme
• Win a Block Magazine WordPress Theme Designed By WordPress Rockstar Adii

Good luck everyone.