Bloggista.com’s New Look and Link Love
After 5 hours of tweaking, testing, coding, and lots of trial and error (a newbie’s worst nightmare), I have finally switched to a new theme – the second major theme change since Bloggista.com went live online last January, 2008.
I just hope the theme is as SEO friendly as the previous Revolution theme by Brian Gardner that I used. With all the post titles in H1, this should be alright. My ultimate goal is to have my own custom designed theme – however, with the availability of great free wordpress themes everywhere, this is not a priority at the moment. If you are looking also for free wordpress themes, be reminded of these 3 simple tips that I use:
- Make sure it is SEO friendly. Check the Site, Page and Post titles and headlines, they should be using the < h1 > tags which are optimized for the search engines. Also, check out if your theme’s meta tags and descriptions are not pointing to someone else’s site. The easiest way to do this is to go to your home page and view the page’s source (usually by clicking on the right mouse button, and select View Page Source).
- Avoid too many Link Credits at the Footer. Links are cool, but they’re ain’t cool if you see lots of them in your theme’s footer or sidebar. Many free wordpress themes are sponsored so you get those link credits to several sites. No matter how cool and great looking the theme is, if it has more than 2 link credits at the footer, I will not use it.
- Fixed-width, widget-ready and gravatar-ready theme. Most themes are widget-ready alright, and are fixed-width as well, so no need to elaborate. It is always safe to use a fixed-width theme so it won’t easily break in most web browsers. This theme is not gravatar ready, so I just inserted a PHP code to enable display of those funny looking avatars in comments – if it happens the Commenter have not uploaded his/her own avatar at gravatar.com.
Of course there are a lot of great articles out there giving out tips and guidelines in choosing a free wordpress theme, just google it.
Now time for some link lovin’:
The Dreamweaver guys who made this great-looking theme. And they only put one link credit at the footer. Nice work dudes.
The Bloggista Contest Sponsors:
- Blog Affiliate Marketing
- Blogging From Scratch
- Classifieds Philippines
- Mommy Earns Money Online
- Pinay Mommy Online
- Reap Money Online
- Tech Jaws
- Technology and Reviews
Thank you! By the way, Bloggista.org will posting the October 2008 CPA Board Exam results and list of passers once it’s released, so check it out.
Arnold @ Filipino... (2)
ivy (2)
jim (2)
Joliber Mapiles (2)
Stas (2)
ahne @ Best Penny... (1)
Anne-pressrelease... (1)
Archon Digital (1)
ark (1)
atty. soc padua (1)
thanks for leading me to their site. i’ve downloaded six of their free wp themes.
ceblogger´s last blog post..The Best Definiton of Bloggista: My Contest Entry
Reply
Looking great! Very nice theme. Aprub!
Reply
@ceblogger: They have great looking themes bro – certainly a great find.
Reply
@Fitz: hey, thanks for dropping by. It feels great you like the theme too. Hehe. See you this Saturday bro.
Reply
ang pogi ng bagong template, pwedeng pang-chicks..ahhahaha.. mzta po kuya?
Reply
a very handsome template you have here kuya.
Miss Elle´s last blog post..Boy, I Like It When You _____ My ___
Reply
@Joliber Mapiles: Hehe, at nabuhay uli si Joliber. Where have you been lately? OK ba talaga theme or biro mo lang ako. Hehe
Reply
@Miss Elle: OI, ito rin si Ms. Elle biglang nabuhay uli. Hehe, btw, where’s your Bloggista Definition entry? Last nalang tomorrow, hehehe.
Reply
yayy your comment thingy now saves our details so we dont have to type things in
and yes we can do a blogger band hehehe. 
I’m one of the vocalist 
Am glad you liked my friend Nicole from Crowjane, wait till I feature the next local band artist with their lead singer Sunshine your gonna luvvvvv her just as much… 
Metz – Empty Streets´s last blog post..Featured Local Artist: Crowjane
Reply
By the way B – there is website that talks about Website marketing in video format that kicks ass am sharing this not just as a promotion but a lot of the things he has mentioned and this is in video really makes a lot of sense.
Here’s the link – http://www.videobloggingtips.com and to think this is just a kid whew… Reminds me of that Carl Blogging kid amazing is all I can say
Metz – Empty Streets´s last blog post..Featured Local Artist: Crowjane
Reply
I like this theme. Better than the previous one. Easy loading too! I have changed my theme again. Quickpress theme is an SEO theme and easy to download.
Ambo´s last blog post..Blogosphere News and Recap
Reply
This is a wicked theme B! Naiinggit ako parang gusto ko na agad magpalit ng theme dahil sa sobrang ganda nito. However, as a newbie blogger, nahihirapan akong maghanap ng super newbie-user-friendly. *sadness*
snow
http://dearbloggery.com
Snow of The Budget Shopper´s last blog post..Colin Powell Endorses Obama for President
Reply
I have checked your site and wow 59k no wonder the load time is quick compared to my site at 290k sigh i guess that is an advantage for people that use hosting services and personal registered domains. I myself have done some tweaking and now am incorporating a lot of the best practices on my new sites Marketing 411 and Metz’s Secret Garden
sad thing though B is that i checked your comment luv thingy and found out it is only applicable to Wordpress themes sigh. And the rest that replicate this simply slow down my site. oh well hopefully I find the key to streamlining like what you’ve done here 
Reply
Your new design rocks!
and yes, having H1 tags for post titles would be very helpful for SEO.
archondigital´s last blog post..Ubuntu Saves the Day – Windows XP Crashes Yet Again
Reply
wonderful theme you got here bloggista
cyril´s last blog post..OCTOBER 2008 CPA BOARD EXAM PASSERS ( COMPLETE LIST)
Reply
@archondigital: hey, thanks archon. One of these days, let’s do some ubuntu project will yah?
@cyril: thanks bro. You got some good traffic from your SEO hah. Good job!
bloggista´s last blog post..CPA Board Exam List of Passers and Topnotchers
Reply
thanks for the tips! interesting post!
Aika Sy´s last blog post..((My Beautiful Ride contest)) Want to win an Asus laptop? HERE’S HOW!
Reply
Your page load time rocks I am so jelly now huhuhuhuhu
hehehe
Metz – Empty Streets´s last blog post..CPA Board Exam Results Now In: Info courtesy of Bloggista.org
Reply
@Metz – Empty Streets: LOL, I haven’t noticed though with the page loading g performance, but this hosting now have about 20 other websites shared -huhu. Soon if money allows, I might need to get a dedicated hosting na rin. Just too expensive…
@Aika Sy: Thanks for visiting, looks like you have an extra cool contest huh. Got to check it out.
@Snow of The Budget Shopper: There are lots of themes naman that you can use – I can help you if you need some.
Reply