Do Follow Comments is a popular technique used among bloggers to increase comments on their blog. If you don’t know what Do follow comment means let me explain.

Do Follow Comments – is a technique used by bloggers in which they exchange comments. More like you comment on my blog, and I will return the favor. These bloggers also make the link on the comments dofollow.

Now how the heck do you find out which blog is using Do Follow and which one is not?

Usually they put some ugly button like this one:

Now if you know me, I am a graphics freak, and I am very picky when it comes to designs. I don’t like the design of it.

Now I have shared tricks before on how to attract commentators on your blog. But showing people the button is another nice way of attracting comments.

Well I don’t show this button. Several reasons why?

1. I don’t want to lie – I try to leave comments on my readers blog, but only if I find something to say. If I don’t like your blog, I won’t comment. If I like the blog, but don’t find anything constructive to say, then I won’t say it. So if I say, you comment I follow. I will be lying therefore I didn’t put it.
2. Too Lazy – I think I am just lazy or never got around putting it in the sidebar. It is just that when I think I am using a custom design, the default button just don’t go along and I don’t think it is something that I need on my site.

But should you get this button? Well that is a personal choice. It depends on what type of campaign you are running. If you have no advertising budget, and just want to increase your commentators and readers. Then do it. If you have a new blog and want to increase readers, then commenting on other blogs is very nice. And if someone comment on your site then go back and comment on theirs.

But if you really decide to put a button on do you really want to put that ugly button. Well to solve that issue, I made a new set of buttons.

Well you can either copy and paste the images from here, or I have it available for a download all in one in a zip package.

Feel free to use these on personal or commercial pages. Don’t claim them as your own. If you don’t mind please share them, so these get popular. You can use the download link of my server. Don’t upload on your server.

If you missed it Download these Icons here.

Yesterday, I wrote about Selecting Blog Design Options and discussing the pros and cons of free/premium/custom themes. Today I will discuss which screen resolution is best for your blog. When you are picking a theme you have to analyze all aspects of it. So therefore this can be considered as a sequel post for selecting a blog design.

Screen Resolution

Screen resolution is a value in pixels that can be displayed on the monitor screen. There are many different sizes of screen resolution. Few are listed below:

• 800 x 600
• 1024 x 768
• 1280 x 800
• 1280 x 1024
• 1440 x 1080

Statistics

According to Wikipedia

Higher than 1024×768 – 38%
1024×768 – 48%
800×600 – 8%
Lower than 800×600 – < 1%
Unknown - 6%

What do I think about these Stats? I personally think that stats can vary from site to site. For example, if you are targetting a web audience you are safe to avoid 800 x 600 resolution. I will go as far as saying that majority of the people are on or above 1024 now a days because of the new computers. But there are still a small proportion that is on 800 x 600.

The Ideal Design

There is none! Because there will be always someone that will be unsatisfied. If you want to maintain the quality of the design than you will have to make some sacrifices to satisfy the MOST.

Majority of the sites that I see now a days are running on a fixed design that ignores 800 x 600 audience.

Yahoo.com – 950px ~
Cnn.com – 1000px ~
Youtube – 880px~
Ebay – 945px~
Amazon.com – 990px ~

These are one of the most visited sites in the world. All rank in top 50 Alexa. Eventhough alot of people don’t believe in alexa but we have to agree that these are some well known websites. Do they not care about their users to miss them out or has the standards upgraded?

Before the standards were to be compatible in screen resolutions of 800 x 600 and 1024 x 768, but now as time progresses and technology advances, we are getting higher screen resolutions and smaller screen resolutions are getting outdated. Therefore I think we need to upgrade.

So what are your options now?

Fixed Width Design

Fixed width design is the one that have fixed width. Duh! I think if you look at the sites that I mentioned above all of them are under 1000px and above 800. As a designer I know that the quality of a design improves significantly when I design in 1000px rather than 800px. 800 limits the space. Therefore these companies have decided to give majority of their audience the BEST, and let few of their audience suffer.

Solutions to make an optimized fixed layout

• Select your width below 1000px if you are targetting the majority (1024×768) users. So they don’t have to scroll horizontally.
• Place Content on the left, so even if 800 x 600 users have to scroll, they will see the content. Interlink your posts, so they can visit other posts without the sidebar.
• Rss Button exposure can be an issue because users won’t scroll horizontally, so they won’t scroll. Therefore you can add your RSS link in your posts. Use your vertical space wisely.
• If you have 3 columns in your layout than put the useful links on the left sidebar.

Just remember your goal is to avoid horizontal scrolling for your users. So if you need to optimize for 800 x 600 than set the width to be below 800 so it fits the dimension in the browser. Because you have to consider the scroll bar taking up the width. Same with 1024. Make it 1000 or below.

Fluid Width Design

Fluid designs, also known as liquid designs, are the one that is compatible with all dimensions. Meaning none of the dimensions will have to scroll horizontally. Sounds like a perfect solution right? But it is NOT!

Downside of the fluid designs are:

• You don’t have control over all dimensions. You can’t put alot of images. It must be CSS for the most part if you want it to look good in all dimensions.
• It doesn’t look good in higher resolution (which is the future) because the text line is too long.

So are they good for anything? Yes they are. They look very good in smaller resolution but now you are entering the next age of technology with higher resolutions. So more people will have higher resolutions and your site won’t look good on those. (well the text won’t)

Now the choice is yours.

Are there any other options? Yes there are and that depends on the creativity of the designer. Because you can have the header to be fluid while the content to be fixed width like Balkhis. (We are working on new look)

What resolution are your sites running on?
What are your opinion about the web resolutions?

One of the starting steps to starting a blog is picking a blog design. There are three options that are available. Free Designs, Premium Designs, or Custom Designs. Now as you all know that I am a strong supporter of Wordpress, so examples on this post will be wordpress related only.

There are pros and cons for each option. So lets review them.

Free Blog Design

Free themes are the ones that are available for download for free. Alot of designers are releasing free themes in order to gain backlinks therefore you will see that in most free themes there is a designer link and sometimes sponsor link also. You are required to keep those links as the terms of service. Check out available free WP Themes by Balkhis.

Pros

1. It’s FREE – Well they are free and cost effective. Duh.
2. Good collection – There are too many free ones available. So you get to pick from a wide collection.
3. Change for Free – You can switch your themes around alot. Because too many new ones coming out.
4. If its free like Pimp My Blog than you are good to go.

Cons

1. Not Unique unless it is from Pimp My Blog.
2. You get Designer and Sponsor links on majority of them. But there are alot out there that only have designer link.
3. Your blog will never catch the eyes of a reader because there is another one that looks just like it. Unless you use a very crappy theme. Good themes get used by alot of bloggers.
4. Usually you get no support on free themes.

Premium Themes

Premium themes are the one that are a step above free themes. They are paid themes that will never be released for free. Most Premium Themes are better than free ones, but there are some which are not. Check out Balkhis list of Excellent Free and Premium Wordpress Themes.

Pros

1. Less people use it, so you will have a semi-noticable design.
2. Most Premium Themes come with support from the designer.
3. They are more advanced than the free themes. (Not all but most)
4. Cost effective because you get a theme for only $40 – $90 which works like a custom theme.
5. Some don’t even require a designer link.

Cons

1. They are still not unique! So you will see blogs that use those.
2. Popular themes like Revolution are used by alot of bloggers.
3. Some are not similar but RIP OFFs of a popular site..

Custom Theme

Custom themes are the ones that are created just for your blog. Providing your blog a unique touch and more. Get your Custom Themes from Uzzz Productions.

Pros

1. Your site looks UNIQUE. No other site will look exactly like yours unless they rip your design off. Most Designers are honorable and they don’t create the same theme more than once.
2. You get Support – Depends on each designer and the contract.
3. You attract alot of readers. Excellent way of Branding.
4. Usually custom themes look better than the rest, and they are customized DUh.

Cons

1. They are usually more expensive. A custom blog theme can range from $250 to $4000. It depends on what style of theme. It depends on who is the designer, and more factors determine the price of a theme.
2. Can’t really think of another Con for a custom theme. Can you?

Above are my thoughts on the options that you have when selecting a Blog Design. Personally, I believe that when a blogger starting a new blog they should try to invest about $300 in getting a custom theme because that will give your blog a cool look, and it will attract readers. But each blogger have their own opinion.

Which option do you think is the best? and WHY?

I don’t know if you guys have been noticing, I have been writing a whole lot about wordpress. The reason why I was doing that because I wanted to write a post about How to make a Magazine Style Theme for Wordpress. The post would get so big If I try to make it one, therefore I put it in different peices, so I can put it all together when I think I have enough peices. In this post I will show you how to make a Magazine Style Theme for Wordpress. I will also tell you some of the advantages of it.

Wait a Minute – Surprise, I have written an E-Book which is available for free. Which covers basically all the stuff below. Available both in .rtf and .pdf format. Download it now

**This tutorial is an intermediate level tutorial. I am assuming you can already design, and code in html. **

First you need to have a simple blog design in place. Make it very simple. Header, Footer, Sidebar and Content.

First thing you would need to do is Create a Custom Page in wordpress and make it your homepage. If you read I have already showed you both ways in the post above. Now you would also need to make a separate blog page. I have showed one way to make a blog page in the post above.

The Raw Code Method to make a custom blog page is here. It is if you use the Raw Code method to make a home page.

Next thing you want to decide what to put on your home page to make it a magazine style theme. Few advices:

Display Recent Posts on the homepage and in the sidebar of the blog pages.

Display the Most Recent Posts from your main categories making it like a column so it looks like a magazine or newspaper.

Use my tutorial about How to Add a Dynamic Sidebar in Wordpress, so you can use your widgets anywhere on the template other than the sidebar.

That way you can display The Most Popular Posts on the homepage as well.

Make an Archive Page for your Wordpress.

Add a Contact form in Wordpress

You can Create as many custom pages in wordpress for different purposes.

You Now have a general Idea to setup a Magazine style Wordpress Theme. If you need anything else feel free to ask your question in the comment box and I will try to answer the question in the comment or in my future posts.

Next thing you want to consider is the SEO Friendly URLs for Wordpress also known as Permalink structures.

Don’t forget to give your Website it’s Identity. In other words, add a Fav Icon. The post explains how to add one.

When you are working on your comment area don’t forget that I have written a post about how to Pimp Your Comment Area. It have some great plugins that relates to comments.

I have made a list of the top 5 Wordpress plugins in my list as of July 2008, so get those.

If you are going to add advertisers, I haven’t seen a better plugin then OIOPublishers to Manage my Advertisers.

Keep the site simple and clean. I have written about How to Optimize your Blog Page to Attract Readers. Read that.

Once you have everything done, don’t forget to Check on your W3C Validation. I have written a guide with tips on w3c validation for your site. Read those.

The advantages of having a magazine style theme is that your blog looks more then a blog. You can make it more like a portal with other things going on. It becomes more of a community. Your page views increases. That is one of the future trends that I have been seeing in the designs.

These tips are not just for blogs. These also help when you are using wordpress to set up custom websites other than blogs.

Hopefully this helps. Like I said this is a intermediate level tutorial. If you have any questions feel free to ask.

Alright I don’t know if I look like a Wordpress Guru or something, but I get questions regarding wordpress alot in the email and often times via Direct Message on my twitter account. Well this was a question that was asked to me in email in response to the new design of Balkhis. How do I display a post from a specific category in wordpress.

Before I tell you how you can do this, I want to share what you can use this for. This can be used to make a custom homepage for your blog. If you want to show your posts on some other pages in the blog from a specific category this is the way you would do it.

Add this code where you want to display the post

<?php
query_posts(‘showposts=1&cat=3′);
while(have_posts()) : the_post();
?>
<ul>
<li><h3><a href="<?php the_permalink() ?>" rel="bookmark"><?php the_title(); ?></a></h3>

<ul><li><?php the_content_limit(520); ?></li>
</ul>
</li>
</ul>
<?php endwhile; ?>

At the top where I say showpost= change the number to how many posts you want to display, and cat=3 is the id of the category, so change the ID of the category to pick which category will you be displaying.

I am using a limit post plugin for wordpress to limit the content. You can download one for yourself also.

Now you can display the most recent post from a specific category