As we get ready to start a discussion on WordPress theme development I wanted to take the time to share some of the resources that I find useful. To get started I thought I'd offer up a link to a great tutorial which outlines installing WordPress on your PC.

I don't know if this will be helpful to Vista users but for anyone running XP it's extremely helpful.

Why Install WordPress Locally?

Installing WordPress locally brings two benefits. First, you can work on your theme and play around with all the code without ruining your current online theme. This is great for doing little tweaks that might otherwise shutdown your site when you're still playing around with the code.

A local installation also gives you the ability to quickly make changes without waiting for uploads or screwing around with the server. In the long run you'll find it much easier and faster to edit your themes locally.

The tutorial provided by Urban Giraffe was the first I found that really worked. I highly recommend checking it out in preparation of our upcoming project. Check it out and let me know what you think.

I'm going to start work soon on a theme for public release. As part of the theme building process I thought I'd do double duty and turn it into something of a blog project. Over the course of the theme design I'll share it's incremental development and take questions and suggestions for what to add to it.

The goal here is kind of two fold. First, I want to be able to release my first public free theme. Along the way, though, I wanted to cover some of the basics of theme design in the hopes of helping new bloggers customize and build their own personal theme.

If you're at all interested please leave me a note and be sure to follow along for the next few days.

To get started, every day (starting tomorrow) I'll be asking some questions about what you expect from a theme. This way I can get a good sense of what people want to see covered. If you want to kick it off with any suggestions please feel free to do so here. Thanks,

I've been working with WordPress for a while now. Close to two years if not more.

In that time I've only ever used themes that I myself designed. While I'm no graphical artist, I find that using simple CSS and some creative Photoshop play (I simply couldn't reference GIMP there) has been highly rewarding.

The funny thing about WordPress is that it's actually surprisingly simple to design for. I've not released a full theme yet to the public but it's been something I've had in mind for awhile. So ... I've got a question for anyone interested.

Have you ever wanted to learn theme design for WordPress or are you in the market for a cheap custom theme? I'm thinking about running a series of posts on theme design and I'm just curious who would be interested in it. If you'd be interested in following a project of this nature please let me know. I may take a few extra steps to make it more interesting but I thought I'd just ask up front to guage interest.

Thanks,

-bill

Here's a quick tip that doubles as a follow up to my recent post on incorporating AdSense for Search into your WordPress Theme. In case you missed it, Google discourages site owners from using Google AdSense for Search when searching their own pages.

While it's true that you can use the search dialogue that's built into WordPress' administrative interface, sometimes you just want to jump in and get to work. This is where a familiar piece of WordPress code (a bit that I introduced when talking about AdSense and the Postpreview pane) comes in handy.

In that post I went over how to prevent WordPress from displaying AdSense ads whenever you're reading your own site. This cuts down on false impressions and decreases the chances of you wasting any high paying CPM or CPC ads. With a slight tweak to that code you can actually get WordPress to use two search dialogues. One for you and one for your reader.
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Seeing as how it's the first of the month today makes a great time for doing some blog housekeeping. Here are a couple of blogging reminders / tips for all you bloggers out there.

1. Backups: While you should certainly backup no less than weekly, the first of the month is an ideal time for a scheduled backup as well as archiving previous backups. I usually backup my database (using the WordPress Database Backup plugin) weekly and at the end of the month I burn a cd of all my backups as well as a copy of the directory structure - just in case.
2. Update: If you haven't updated your blogging software this is a great time to do it. You've just backed up your database and directory structure so now's one of the best times to update.
3. Review Last Month: Take a look at the last month's posts. Check to see if any posts are unfinished or could use some updating. I also like to check for any potential revenue streams that I could tap. If an old posts talks about a game or movie that hasn't been released yet I take the time to add an affiliate link. You can read more on the process in one of my older posts about monetizing your archives.
4. Review Last Year: ... not the whole year, just last years posts for the coming month. Lifehacker does a great series called "Retro Roundup: One Year Ago on Lifehacker" which is a weekly series. If you have year old posts this is a good time to review them (see the above item) as well as consider doing a followup. Sometimes posts and news stories dissappear - "whatever happened to" posts are great for sparking discussion and reminding you of things you were excited about one year ago.
5. Do an Earnings Report: I'll be writing one of these soon for Bill2me dot Com, Everton from Connected Internet already has his posted. At the end of each month it can really help to review the month's earnings and revenue streams. If you're trying to monetize your site this can help you decide what types of advertising programs you want to stick with and what programs you may want to drop.