Tag Archives: WordPress

WordPress Theme of the Month: Gridlock

Well, you WordPress users out there have a tough job when it comes to finding the good themes. Sure, you can make your own, but what if you don’t have the expertise (or you’re too lazy). So, I’ll be trying to point you towards some of the better ones in the coming months.

This month’s theme is Gridlock, by Hyalineskies.

Gridlock is a slick, magazine-style theme with an interesting history. As the author put it:

“Back when Gridlock was first released, very few blogs were running themselves as magazine-style, where different posts were displayed on the main page in an order other than a chronological list. Now, a webzine-style hierarchy is the trend. Gridlock offers a primary category and a secondary category setup for your posts; with this type of setup, you can give your readers their favourite content and have space left over for your personal things, all on the same page. Of course, you can always run Gridlock in standard mode with a traditional chronological order. If you want tradition, though, there are plenty of other WordPress themes out there.”

Sound good? Give it a test run if you’re in the market for a new theme.

Starting a Great Blog Part 6 – Posting

If you’ve made it this far in our little tutorial series, then there’s a good chance your thinking “When can I start blogging? I’ve been following all your advice, when can I start posting?” Does now sound good? Welcome to part six of the Starting a Great Blog tutorial series. Today, you will learn about posting. Sound like fun? Just because we’re letting you post now, doesn’t mean it’s the end of the series. Don’t worry, there are quite a few more installments to go. :)

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Starting a Great Blog Part 5 – Themes

Now that you’ve got your blog installed and configured, are you ready to replace that boring default design with a better one? You didn’t think you’d be stuck with that default metallic-blue and white one forever, did you? Today, we’ll show you how to find a new theme, install it, and customize it a bit. Ready?

Okay, first of all, you need to find a theme you like. How do you do that? First, you check out some theme repositories. Here are a few to look through:

Starting a Great Blog Part 4 – Configuring WordPress

Well, you’ve made it this far, from the Intro Post to getting a domain and hosting to the installation of WordPress, are you ready to start customizing WordPress’s many settings? Today we will show you how to make WordPress work the way you want it to. Tomorrow, you’ll learn how to install a new theme for your blog. The day after, we cover posting (and other blogging activities). We’ll cover more than that, in the days to come, but I won’t bore you with the details now. Ready to start setting some settings? Let’s go!

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Starting a Great Blog Part 3 – Installing WordPress

So, you’ve got your domain and hosting? Well, it’s time to install WordPress. What is WordPress? It’s an extremely versatile and easy to use blogging package. WordPress is used to power a lot of blogs. This site utilizes WordPress. It’s extremely easy to operate, once you install it? Up to the challenge? It’s not much of one if you’ve ever installed web scripts before (even if you haven’t, it’s not that hard). With this tutorial, I have no doubt that you will be able to do it. Shall we get started?

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Starting a Great Blog Part 2 – Domains and Hosting

So, you’re serious about starting a blog. Welcome to part two of the “Starting a Great Blog” series. Today we will cover the naming of your blog (and the purchasing of a domain), and we will cover hosting. Ready? Let’s go.

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Starting a Great Blog Part 1 – Intro

Have you ever thought about starting a blog? Even if you haven’t, there are plenty of reasons to. It’s a lot of fun. Take a look at some good blogs, and get the feel for blogging:

You see? The term “blog” doesn’t mean what a lot of people think. It doesn’t refer to an online journal (there are waaaay too many of those annoying things). Sure, webjournals (as I call them), use blogging services, but they’re not the “Best of the Blogosphere”. They are the rubbish that sinks to the bottom (you can probably tell I don’t think much of webjournals). A blog is merely a website that features articles posted in a chronological format. You probably read blogs without even knowing it. If you think about it, you’ll realize that news sites, like LeakyNews.com or NYTimes.com, are basically blogs. What are they but news stories posted in a chronological format?

Now the question is, what do you want to blog about? Here at Webmaster-Source, we blog about things that interest webmasters. At ProBlogger, they blog about blogging. What would you like to blog about? Bicycling? Bowling? Writing? You can blog about anything…as long as you are addicted to it. You can’t write about something you don’t like doing. To blog, you must find a niche topic that interests you. I can’t help you there.

So, have you got a topic? Good.

Stay tuned. Tomorrow we will teach you about naming your blog, getting a domain, and finding hosting. We’ll also show you how to get hosting for nothing, or next to nothing.

Below are the other parts of the tutorial: