The Lady Programmer

One of my long overdue plans is now something that I was able to do these past few days: if you are a regular visitor of this blog, you may have noticed that I had added more advertisements and added a featured header on this blog. The featured header is not a WordPress plugin but it a built-in feature of this Flexibility theme v2.0 template which can be turned on and off. I decided to turn on that feature and add more useful content to it through widgets.

Now I’ve decided to work out monetize this technology and freelance blog effectively through several sources not only through actively writing paid reviews. The changes I had made are not really major: I could say these subtle but dramatic. I wanted to have more advertisements posted on the blog by posting at every possible place but I had to choose make my choices so that these would not overpower the blog’s overall appearance and content.

Again, my knowledge in CSS, HTML and programming helped me do those little adjustments. I am not yet finished with this task, but I am very pleased with the initial changes.

I will be working out an “advertise here” page anytime today, so that I can start accepting direct advertisers.

Some of you may have passed by and noticed the huge “Under Maintenance” sign that I had put up on this blog yesterday. I decided to ditch the old template and use the new release that Flexibility Themes had made for WordPress 2.7!

blog's upgraded look

My primary goal for putting down the blog was to troubleshoot the cause of this blog’s slowdown even if I have those WP Super Cache and WP Widget Cache installed. It turned out that the problem was on one or more of those activated plugins. I was not able to pinpoint which plugins caused the slowdown: what I did was to deactivate those unused ones.

continue reading »

Finally, I’ve just finished adding not so obvious changes on my personal blog. As some of you may have noticed, I own another personal blog related to my single parenting experience. I was working on that blog layout for two days. That’s a long time to do such modifications on a template, but I was working on the blogger server all time.

Anyway, these are the visible changes: continue reading »

I just finished working on this piano music site just the other day:

It is actually a WordPress blog that is made to look like a website. The blog is just a subset of the design:

The site is not exactly new. This was its past design.

The site owner, Michelle, decided to host this site on Bluehost to save on paying for the $20 per month. The Bluehost package that she had taken allowed her to create as many blogs as she like to have. She included this one with her existing set of blogs in Bluehost to take advantage of the deal.

Since this site advertises professional piano services, I had decided to adapt a clean classy look for it. At one point I had considered black or even a combination of red and gray, but I decided to settle on browns and yellows.

The template was customized from the header to the background. I had also changed the RSS icons and the individual “bullet” icons at the sidebar. I’ve configured this one so that the sidebar appears only when the blog section is clicked by the visitor.

Under its hood, I had added a number of WordPress plugins for the site, such as the sideblog, Google sitemap generator and a number of useful plugins to catch spam and allow cache on the site.

Here is the working site: http://www.strictlypiano.com

I suddenly remembered my new good-looking online friend, Jaypee. I was busy these past few days because I had some outsourcing job to do.  As I had announced in my previous post entry, Jaypee provided me the hosting space for this blog. He also made it easier for me to learn WordPress by sharing what he already knows about this stuff.

He had been a lot of help and yet he was still inviting me to his Christmas Giveaway contest – well this is my first time ever to join a blog contest, really!

Although the contest had been announced last November, I was able to blog about it this very last day. As I’ve said, I got knocked off from the net, then I had to catch up on everyone. Just recently, I had accepted an outsourcing job that would make up for the lost money-making opportunity when I was offline.

I am particularly interested in any of the prizes that are offered – really. I’m falling in love with self-hosted WordPress and all the power that comes with it. Sadly, Jaypee doesn’t want to give all the prizes for one person. Well, I still hope luck smiles on me on this New Year.

• 3 Revolution Two Pro Plus Memberships (each worth $149.95) – courtesy of Brian Gardner
• 2 Mimbo Pro Single-License Copies (each worth $89.99) – courtesy of Darren Hoyt
• 2 FlexxTheme Single-Use Copies (each worth $79.95) – courtesy of Cory Miller
• 1 WP-Member Plugin Ten-Site License (worth $67.87) – courtesy of WP-Member.com
• 3 WP-Member Plugin Five-Site Licenses (each worth $44.78) – courtesy of WP-Member.com
• 5 WP-Member Plugin Single-Site Licenses (each worth $27.13) – courtesy of WP-Member.com
• 2 Elegant Themes Membership Licenses (each worth $19.95) – courtesy of Nick Roach

As I am writing this, I am three hours  hours from the contest deadline which is December 30, 2008 midnight US Pacific time. If you happen to read this post, have a self-Wordpress blog and want a chance to upgrade to a new look this New Year, then hurry up (like me) and join this one!

Let’s not also forget the sponsors of this wonderful contest:

1. Revolution Two WordPress Themes
2. Pro Theme Design
3. iThemes Premium WordPress Themes
4. WP Member – Advanced WordPress Membership Plugin
5. Elegant Themes – Premium WordPress Themes