I spent much of last week with my head inside a Mediawiki skin (when I probably should have been working on another project). I’m not entirely sure what it is, but I sometimes get fixated by technical problems I can’t seem to solve. I first customized the FraternalRelief Mediawiki skin to match my organization’s home page. My customization wasn’t too bad, but I saw a … more »

12/9/09 update: I changed it back. I recently decided to change my blog theme. I know that people are interested in content more than design, but it’s worth a post explaining why I changed this theme. I’ve had the Limau Orange theme on my blog for about two years now. I grew tired of looking at it, and the design seemed a little out of … more »

When choosing a blog platform, you have a variety of options: Drupal, Movable Type, Typepad, Blogger, Joomla, Expression Engine, WordPress.com, self-hosted WordPress, and others. But when you start researching the options, WordPress seems to have at least 10 main strengths over its competitors:

30+ WordPress Theme Releases for May 2009 (part 2) – WPZOOM.

WordPress Theme Development Frameworks | Developer’s Toolbox | Smashing Magazine.

100 Amazing Free WordPress Themes for 2009 | Developer’s Toolbox | Smashing Magazine.

The Future of WordPress Themes 2009.

How To Create Your Own WordPress Theme – Jonathan Wold.

Free WordPress Themes | Shanghai Tech Writer.

My WordPress consulting side business has been getting a lot of attention lately. In fact, I’ve been struggling to keep up. (I do this, by the way, mainly on the weekends.) Over the last several projects, I’ve noticed a common trend of questions about WordPress and blogging. Here’s what everyone asks. I already have a site. How can I add a WordPress blog to it? … more »

I integrated a WordPress blog into another website this weekend. The original site, pictured below, was http://tamarabonet.com. Here’s the WordPress blog I customized (http://tamarabonet.com/blog) to look identical to the existing site: This is my third blog design in which I ported over an existing html site into a WordPress theme. I’m getting better at it, but it still takes me a full day to do … more »

Last weekend I was asked by someone to set up a WordPress blog that would integrate well with his existing site, familyinnewyork.com. I looked at the site and asked why he didn’t just migrate his existing content into a blog, one with a professional design? He said no — he wanted to keep his existing site. When starting blogs, many people have the same dilemma. … more »

Sapphire writes, I had a small question about your blog’s template. I really liked the template as soon as I saw it and went ahead and downloaded it. Could you let me know how you added the navigation tabs on the top? I am not much of a programmer but I can work with php and css to an extent. I’d be highly obliged if … more »

Tibu Puiu from the Lost Art of Blogging asked me to check out his post on the “7 Blogging Beginning Mistakes and How to Avoid Them.” Although I agree with much of what he says, I’ve decided to play devil’s advocate here and see what counterarguments I can find against his points. I’ve listed Puiu’s headings below followed by my counterarguments.

The OneClick installer plugin from Anirudh Sanjeev won the recent WordPress plugin competition. It may seem hard to believe, but after you install the plugin and its associated Firefox extension, installing a plugin only requires you to right-click the plugin’s download link and select OneClick Install > Plugin. Then voila, OneClick automatically installs the plugin and only needs activation from your plugin page. It works … more »