Ever want to create your own unique blog themes, but don’t know where to start?  I know I did.  I’d spend hours hunting for themes with just the right header size or the columns on the left instead of on the right.  Then when I finally found something, I’d be stuck with the author’s choice of gaudy colors or lame font style because I didn’t know how to edit the CSS. 

Stop Messing Up Your Theme’s PHP Code

Best programming standards dictate that end users should never be forced to tinker with code to make minor adjustments.  Instead, they should be given a properly design GUI interface to make modifications simple and easy.  That’s what Artisteer does. 

Artisteer already does the programming for you in the background.  All you do is select a layout, move the elements around, assign colors, images, textures, gradients, menu styling and more.  Artisteer also has a powerful Suggestion Tool.  Just click the button to generate a random version of any of the design elements. 

Easily Create Themes For Blogs and CMS Applications

• Blogger
• WordPress
• Drupal
• DotNetNuke
• Joomla

Easily Create Website Templates

• HTML
• ASP.net
• Code Charge Studio

If you can click on buttons and links in a GUI interface like those found in just about any software or word processing program, then you can easily create your own themes for WordPress, Joomla, Blogger (Blogspot), Drupal, DotNetNuke, and even straight HTML templates.

The theme you’re looking at right now was created with a program called Artisteer.  I wanted something simple and clean and it only took me a few minutes to create.  Then I uploaded to my web server and activated it.

Artisteer goes hand-in-hand perfectly with affiliate marketers.  It’s easy to build a new theme for each project, or create a master theme then just modify colors and headers to compliment any niche market with ease.

Download Artisteer for free and try it out before you buy it

I have a song [mp3 file] and i want it to automatically play when you enter my wordpress blog. On all the pages if possible but preferably just on the homepage if simpler. I’m new to wordpress so it might be tough but if anyone can confirm it’s possible and perhaps tell me how it would be greatly appreciated.

Also i installed firebug if that’s any help.

Answer:

Firebug has nothing to do with it. Why do you want to torture you visitors with music? Use the WP-Music Player plugin.

What are the most effective WordPress plugins to attract the most relevant traffic, the most relevant traffic and maximize website sales?

I am thinking maybe:
1. RSS feed plugins,
2. Cost Per Action (CPA) plugins or code snippets,
3. Affiliate plugins and/or links

Can you provide links to the tools that you think are the best, and let me know why you think they are the best?

Answer:

Plugins can’t attract relevant traffic. You can put the Pope himself on your website and nothing will happen unless your site is properly SEO’d and you have content that people are actually looking for. RELEVANT content. Click here to learn how to build authority websites. It can be used for Adsense of any affiliate program.

When Someone googles something that relates to one of my wordpress blogs how can I get it to appear on the first page of their serach results? Thanks!

Answer:

The answer you are looking for is search engine optimization. This is optimizing everything in your website to show up in search results better. The first thing you’ll want to do is submit your site to the search engines so they can crawl and index your site. If they haven’t seen it yet, it will never show up.

Next you want to determine what keywords you want to rank for. Example, if you want to show up in search results for dog training. You’ll want those words in the title of the post, in the url of the post and several other times throughout the post. You want to have it bold in a couple places and underlined in others. Sometimes you’ll want it in h1,h2 and h3 size text. All of these help rank higher.

Those are all very important aspects of getting your WordPress blog to get to page 1 of the SERPS, but another one is content. You have to be a writer, a content publisher. I don’t mean that in a professional sense, but rather, what you write is what’s going to drive your blog. The articles you write must be for things the user is searching for. If you have your own self-hosted WordPress blog on your own web hosting, logged into your control panel and check your AWStats to see the keyword phrases that people are using to find your blog. If nothing’s there, you’re not being found.

Getting Found On Google

It’s all about being an authority site. There is an excellent course for building niche market websites that I bought a while back. It’s geared around writing GOOD content so you can profit by placing Adsense on your site. However, you don’t need to monetize your site at all. I highly recommend it because it will teach you EXACTLY with step-by-step instructions on how to select a niche, how to write for that niche and how to get to page 1 of the search engines. Click here for this authority site niche market course.

I want to be able to customize a wordpress themes to make them look a bit more origional. I know you can change the colors, etc. But i want to be able to change the size of the boxes and such. I like iblog and am looking for something similar but the free version is very limited and i cant afford to buy the full version. Does anyone know of any good free themes to install?

Answer:

There is no plugin that allows you to edit a WordPress theme. Either the author of the theme allows edits via theme widgets or you have to change the theme’s code.

However, you can make your own WordPress themes with a program called Artisteer. Then you can design the layout and colors any way you like. Click here to download Artisteer for free to try it out.

I found the service http://themespress.com but $ 10 per theme becomes really expensive when I want to convert like 20 HTML templates to WordPress themes. Is there an easy way to do the same thing as the site does? (use custom tags to define WordPress sections)

I’ve been told time and again that you just have to do it all manually and with PHP, but it seems like there must be an easier way. And the theme tutorials I’ve found seem great for simple themes, not something exceptional. I need like a “beginners guild to professional themes” or something.

Thanks for any help. And WordPress 3 is almost up to 2.5 million downloads! =)

Here’s my site if anyone is curious http://viperamped.com

Answer:

There is no plug n play webpage template to WordPress theme converter program. However, you can make WordPress themes with a program called Artisteer. When I find a website I like, I do a print screen and save it in a binder. Then when I need a new WordPress theme, I crack open Artisteer and make a new theme to look almost identical to the screen print. Download it for free and try it out.

Hi i currently have a blog (blogger.com) and i decided to create a new blog under my previous accout. however i realised that i could not edit the HTML of the new account and i am not sure why, anyone knows?

when i click “save template” it says:
Your template could not be parsed as it is not well-formed. Please make sure all XML elements are closed properly.
XML error message: Attribute name “selected” associated with an element type “option” must be followed by the ‘ = ‘ character.

Does anyone know what that means?

Also, I realised when I edit my HTML, I click “Template” on my previous blog, yet on my new one, I have to click “Layout”, is there any difference?

Answer:

Did you you know that you can make your own  Blogger template without all that coding using a program called Artisteer? Click here to see a demo of how to create a Blogger template with Artisteer.

The new blogger.com has a slightly differently interface to the previous one. They have also changed the template part. They use XML now.

The error that you got has to do with the xml elements that are not closed or written properly. it’s like syntax error thingy.

With regards to “selected”, you must change it to
selected=”selected”
because that’s what we call proper xml.

hope it helps

Hi,
I have a question that I hope will have a simple answer. I have a wordpress blog and right now my side navigation menu is on the right side. I would like for the menu to be on the left side. Can someone please tell me how I would go about doing this, in simple terms, please?

Or point me in the direction of a resource that tells me how to do it?

Thanks so much ya’ll!

Answer:

Unless your theme supports sidebar movement with some type of theme configuration widget in the Dashboard, you’ll have to dig into the sidebar1.php, sidebar2.php and style.css files for starters and edit them. Be sure to make backup copies before you start. Don’t know if there are any other files to edit. Probably not. There shouldn’t be if the theme is written correctly.

But you see, therein lies the same problem I was always having. I was never 100% satisfied with the layout of a theme. I got fed up with it and finally bought a copy of Artisteer and started making my own WordPress themes. It’s also got a regular website designer/publisher and it can make themes for Blogger, Joomla, Drupal and more. I only use the WordPress option, though.

Artisteer is really easy to use. You can download a free copy of it to check it out. Believe me, you’ll get hooked. I did and I’ve been using it for years. They’ve got both a Windows and Mac version.

I have a website that has been up and running for some time now, and for numerous reasons I want to replace it with a WordPress site.

So, how do I start building the WordPress site – in a seperate folder from the “public_html” folder? Then when you are ready to move it into the public_html folder, do you have to correct whatever file-paths and link errors?

Answer:

Answer by AIT-pro.com

Hello I am a professional WordPress website designer and developer – AITpro.com so you can verify that I know what I’m talking about. The website development method you are planning to do is a standard website development method that I use and probably most professional developers use so you are right on the money there. I’m assuming you already know the basics, but I’ll add this info for someone else who may not know that info.
Best basic website development practices and planning
1). Create the folder first that you want to install WordPress to either with FTP or with your CP File Manager
2). Very Important! Add an entry in your Robots.txt file to block indexing of the new folder you just created – you don’t want your new folder indexed until you are ready to launch your new website. And in your case you don’t want the folder indexed at all since you will be migrating your WordPress site to the root of your domain. If you don’t have a robots.txt file then create one. Trust me if you don’t do this it will cost you a lot of headaches.
3). Do the WordPress installation at this point – Pretty much all hosts offer the WordPress Application for free with anywhere from 10 to 25 free SQL DB’s.
4). After you have completed all your WordPress design work, customization, plugin installations and configurations then you are just about ready to do the WordPress migration – SEE the Source link I have provided below for complete WP migration instructions – WP migration is very easy and simple, but be careful to follow the instructions EXACTLY.
5). DEACTIVATE ALL OF YOUR PLUGINS BEFORE DOING THE ACTUAL MIGRATION!!!
6). Since you have installed WP in another directory / folder you have a backup of all your work.
7). Make a backup of your existing website files in the root of your domain.
8). Copy (NOT MOVE) all your WordPress files and folders to the your domain root
9). Reactivate all your plugins and start testing them and reconfiguring them if necessary. (you can reactivate all of them at once or do them one by one – doesn’t matter).

To answer your question about post migration corrections to file paths. Yes, you will have to modify several paths. Since I’m very familiar with this whole process and especially the WP plugin configurations, I don’t install certain plugins until after the WordPress migration is done. And I don’t do certain WordPress configurations until I’ve after I’ve done the migration. If you are not very familiar with WP plugin configurations then i recommend you install and configure everything in your “development” folder and then make the file path changes after you have done the migration. Anytime you are doing a migration you should do it during “off business hours” meaning in the middle of the night. If you have a totally new website it doesn’t really matter when you do the migration, but if you have an existing website that is getting visitors and making money you obviously don’t want to interrupt the flow of $ $ $ .

So to give you some specifics on the WordPress files that will need to be modified / corrected after the migration:
If you configure WordPress with Pretty Permalinks you will need to update this first thing right after the migration is done. Personally I recommend that you don’t configure Pretty Permalinks until your WordPress site is migrated. Pretty Permalinks generates your .htaccess file so by updating PP from the WP Dashboard Admin panel at any point you are updating your .htaccess file.

Common WP plugins that will need path corrections:
WP-DBManager – change DB Options > path to backup. Will need to logout and maybe clear cache too to see the new changes.
Theme My Login – Theme my login Redirection URL and Theme my login Links need to be corrected
Cforms – check abspath.php and /cforms/js/cforms.js for correct file paths

Common WP files that will need to be corrected
Theme templates and specifically your header.php file.
The rest of the information you will need is contained in the WordPress migration instructions below and all over the Internet. WordPress answers are everywhere.

I have been told to go and open a WordPress blog account to make web mini sites (web presence) and I am wanting to know if you have better ideas or simply more ideas? Advise for WordPress would be great as well!

Answer:

Impossible to answer because you don’t give enough information. If it’s for your business, you can’t use WordPress.com because they don’t allow ANY commercial content or monetization of any type.

What type of mini-sites do you want to make? WordPress is hella easy for building an online presence. If you want, you can create a free WordPress.com site just to play around with. Publish your posts as Private so no one else can see them.

Then when you’re ready to make a real site, get a web hosting account and install WordPress from your control panel.