Pimp my Blog is a never ending contest that is starting now on March 28th, 2008. I dont know how many of you are familiar with the MTV Show Pimp My Ride. Well, In this program I will randomly pick one of my email subscriber’s blog once a month and will offer them to redesign for free !

Yes, entirely free. It will be customized for the subscriber’s needs. This will be somewhere around $350 – $800 value product. Now when I say, I will redesign blogs. I am talking about redesigning Wordpress blogs. I won’t be bothering with designing other blogging softwares.

How to enter?

Simple!
Subscribe to my blog through email.
Verify the email.
Keep updated with the blog.
Post valuable comments on the blog with the same email that you are using to subscribe.

Only if all above are followed, at the end of the month, I will randomly pick a winner. One of my subscriber will get a customized redesign for their wordpress blog every month. I am hoping this contest will go forever as the subscribers are increasing. I definately want to say that this should be a cool experience for both the subscriber and I.

The design will have a stamp in the footer that will say Pimped with the logo of Balkhis. I will make it blend in the design so it doesn’t look like a paste over.

Now if you thought that you cannot afford a quality wordpress theme. Now you can all for free. Just subscribe to my blog and post some valuable comments.

Do not spam the blog please. Keep relative comments. I am not looking for quantity. I am looking for quality. In the end the pick will be random.

I will post all the Blogs Pimped by Balkhis on the page Pimp my Blog

I have randomly picked the winner for March, and We are working on his design. Once it is up, I will show it to all.

If you have any questions about this special program, feel free to use the contact form.

Ever wonder, why people are not buying ads on your website? I know I used to as well when I first started, but It all went away as I begin to understand the psychology. I always wondered what can I do to maximize my sales. I tried several ways and failed, but I learnt from my failure alot and these are the important key points.

Lets establish this first, that your website will not sell ads if you don’t have quality content, High traffic, Credibility and SERPs. You need to wait out in the beginning and keep your ads sale limited and work on quality content of your website. If you are thinking that by starting a blog or a website will get you money quick that is wrong. Because you won’t get anything. You have to work on establishing the site first before you start making serious money.

Quality Content builds slowly. Especially in blogs because you will need a number of quality posts to be classified as a quality blog. Same with credibility. If a person say one thing good doesn’t mean he will always be right. Therefore credibility comes with time as well. Same goes to popularity and traffic. Now establishing that you have all of the above

You should do the following to sell ads quickly..

Remove all……..Read the full post

Alright Directory owners, after a long time I am writing some tutorial for directory owners and It feels great. For those who are wondering what a category Icon mod is, It is a mod that allows the user to display unique icons next to main categories on the homepage. A display of that can be seen at my template called Areebu Theme. This is available for Download in my freebies section.

Let me begin with where I got the Idea to work on this mod. There was a thread started on Digitalpoint forum by a member asking for the category icon mod. Shabu, aka Vegabond on the forum replied with a link to phpLD Forum thread which contains the codes.

Now all I did was use the smarty tags to show the images for only the homepage categories and show a default icon for the rest of the subcategories. To do this method you will have to get the category ID for all your main categories. You can find it by simply logging into your Directory Admin Panel, and than going to the categories section.

Simply look for the categories that have Top tag for their parent id, and bring your mouse over. Look in your status bar, and it will show the Cat ID.

Now download any .png Icon at the size you desire but make sure that all of those have same size. I prefer 48 x 48 px, and also for your sub categories in inner pages pick an icon with the dimensions of 16×16 px and name icon.png

Say you have 16 top categories, so get 16 icons and name them each according to their category.

So for example the icon for Art’s name will be 1.png

Upload them to your template’s image folder. Then open main.tpl

Locate:

 <a href="{$smarty.const.DOC_ROOT}/{$cat.CACHE_URL|escape}" title="{$cat.TITLE|escape}">{$cat.TITLE|escape}</a>{if $smarty.const.CATS_COUNT} <span class="count">({$cat.COUNT})</span>{/if}

Replace it with:

 {if $category.ID eq 0}<img src="{$smarty.const.FULL_TEMPLATE_PATH}/images/{$cat.ID}.png" border="0" alt="{$cat.TITLE}" align="left" style="margin-right: 10px; margin-top: 5px; margin-bottom: 5px;" />
{else}

<img src="{$smarty.const.FULL_TEMPLATE_PATH}/images/icon.png" border="0" alt="" style="margin-right: 2px;" />{/if}<a href="{$smarty.const.DOC_ROOT}/{$cat.CACHE_URL|escape}" title="{$cat.TITLE|escape}">{$cat.TITLE|escape}</a>{if $smarty.const.CATS_COUNT} <span class="count">({$cat.COUNT})</span>{/if}

This code will add unique icons next to appropriate main categories, and add a default icon to all the subcategories in the inner page.

This mod does require some work, but It is worth it. If you are not willing to work and don’t want the hassle. Rob aka An0n have a better version of this mod because his version have a backend also, so all of the main.tpl stuff can easily be modified through admin panel. He also offers very good customer service support, so If you have the cash and no time, than I will definately recommend him.

I hope this helped alot of those who were eagerly wanting this mod.

Show me some support and digg this topic as well as add it in other social bookmarks.

Once again, Balkhis and Uzzz Production is proud to present you the Areebu template for phpLD and Wordpress. This template is named after my brother Areeb, who is also a part of Balkhis.

This template is special for directory owners because it contains category Icon mod, so category on the homepage will have unique icons. This mod is right now a paid one by another vendor, but I am offering it for free in this template.

All you have to do is get the category id number, and rename the icons to those numbers, and you can also add “.png” icons 48 x 48px size with more categories as you go. To find quality Icons, refer to my post Icon Pack for Webmasters.

Note for directory owners: When you install the template, It won’t work in the beginning because Category IDs are different in each database, so you will have to rename the icons or add icons. For those who doesn’t want this mod, I will add a version without the mod also, so for those who doesn’t want to go through the updating of the mod they can just download the other version.

Wordpress version is like normal. I have added some extra widget ready sidebars. If you don’t know how to use it than visit my post about how to create and use extra sidebars.

Preview of the template

Live Demo for PHP Link Directory

Live Demo for Wordpress

Download this template now:

PHP Link Direcctory Version with Icons

PHP Link Direcctory Version without Icons

Wordpress Template

TOS: You must leave the footer links intact to use any templates available for download at Balkhis.

Free Backlinks?? Everyone wants them. These are not just any backlinks, but these backlinks are from some highly popular galleries that will send you tons of traffic along with a strong backlink only if you have a good looking site.

I have been using these galleries to stay updated with the current designs, and I often use them for my inspiration also. Why I never submit my designs to these galleries. Because I am a fan of tables. Tables make my life easy (Less problems as in with browser compatibilities) whereas paddings have issues with different browsers. Therefore when I make a website that I know I will be managing in the future, I make it with tables. Many others prefer CSS because it makes your site look much more neater, works faster, and everything is organized. If you want one of the sites like those feel free to contact Uzzz Productions. If you have a good looking website that is entirely based on CSS, than you are eligible for a backlink from these quality webdesign galleries.

Have your own site listed among one of the best looking websites on the web. Check those out below:

1) CSS Vault » The Web’s CSS Gallery & Site
2) css Zen Garden: The Beauty in CSS Design
3) CSS Drive- Categorized CSS gallery and examples.
4) CoolHomepages Web Design Gallery – Web Page Design Gallery, Web Design News, Links, Flash Designs. Browse Cool Website Templates and Examples For Inspiration
5) Web Standards Awards
6) CSS Beauty | CSS Design, News, Jobs, Community, Web Standards
7) The FWA: Favourite Website Awards – Web awards at the cutting edge
8 ) Stylegala – Web Design Publication
9) light on dark | inspiration for your darker side
10) CSS Mania
11) The Best Designs – The Best Flash and CSS Web Design – Web Design Awards
12) CSS Reboot
13) CSS Collection
14) » screenfluent | the web’s most favorite collection for zeitgeist of screen design | by thomas marban
15) CSS Gallery Web Design Gallery For Inspiration
16) Design Snack / The web design showcase that you control. / CSS, XHTML and Flash Showcase
17) Styleboost – showcasing outstanding websites since 2001
18) CSS Import™ | The CSS Gallery
19) http://www.cssremix.com
20) CSS Web Design Inspiration and CSS Gallery – Unmatchedstyle.com
21) W3C Sites – Web sites created by designers that conform with W3C standards
22) Web Creme | Web design inspiration
23) csstux – The best dressed sites on the web
24) CSS Gallery – css design, web design gallery, css design gallery
25) CSS Princess | Showcase gallery
26) Best Web Gallery – CSS & Flash Design Inspiration
27) Csslove
28) FullSingle – Full site Single page
29) CSS Based Web Design Gallery – Designers love nature!
30) Web Site Design Showcase and Color Archive
31) CSS Hazard
32) InspirationKing – Web design inspiration
33) No Resolution
34) Inspirational CSS, Web 2.0 and Blog Design Gallery | Design Shack
35) CSS Gallery | Website Design
36) CSS smooth operator // Tite site collection.
37) The Horizontal Way – an horizontal showcase for horizontal scrolling websites.
38) CSS Galleries: aggregating web design inspiration
39) The Daily Slurp
40) CSS Flavor – Collection of Best CSS Design Websites
41) FullSingle – Full site Single page
42) CSS Impress – the most updated css gallery
43) Screenalicio.us – Get inspired!
44) CSSclip | Web Design Inspiration and Gallery
45) eduStyle || Inspiration for Campus Web Designers
46) Web Design CSS11
47) Most Inspired | Home
48) brdcast.
49) CSS Container
50) CSS Design Yorkshire – Gallery of CSS Websites

Visiting Webmaster forums get me one good thing. I get to know alot of people, and some actually goes onto becoming really good friends. Mikey is one of those friends of mine.

This post is by Mikey of Talk Directories. I, Syed Balkhi am writing the post, but the content is from Mikey’s forum and with his full written permission I am copying his list that he compiled from various sources.

Get your Backlinks, and don’t forget to show your tribute to Mikey by visiting his forum.