Last week I joined the ElegantThemes theme club.

It is a steal at $19.95 per year. You get immediate access to 14 WordPress themes. The theme you are seeing on this blog is one of these 14 themes. As Nick summarizes:

Each WordPress theme comes expertly coded in valid XHTML and CSS, and all are made compatible with the latest version of WordPress. I make sure that each template performs flawlessly in each of the most widely used browsers to insure maximum functionality. Furthermore, all sidebars are made widget ready for your convenience.

Elegant Themes also has a very reasonable licensing agreement. You are allowed to make modifications and remove credit links. As long as you don't claim to own the themes and/or try tell or distribute them and use them on the websites you own you won't be violating terms of use.

Why I did I decide to join the Elegant Themes?

There are hundreds maybe thousands of free WordPress themes available online. Some of them are great themes and supported and updated by the authors who should be praised for their contributions. During the past year and a half as I started using WordPress, I found great free themes I still use.

I also dabbled in modifying these themes and even making my own theme by reading "WordPress Theme Design: A complete guide to creating professional WordPress themes" by Tessa Blakeley Silver. I recommed the book to anyone who wants to create his/her own theme.

WordPress Theme Design

Tessa Blakeley Silver. Packt Publishing 2008, Paperback, 224 pages, $30.90

I found that it is a lot easier and faster to start with a theme and then modify it to my needs and desires. This is the number one reason I joined the Elegant Themes. I got an immediate access to 14 themes to do just that.

Even if you are not interested in doing any modifications, having 14 different themes to choose for your website / blog for only $19,95 is a steal. There are premium WordPress themes available for $79 plus. Yes that is $79 + for one theme. Most themes you get at Elegant Themes have options to change color scheme and look easily. This is great for newbies who still want to have a blog with a unique look.

Its been a long time since we had any contests on Blog Oh! Blog. To add to your winter happiness, I am announcing a mega contest where everyone gets a chance to win not one, not two, but 10 Super Premium WordPress themes made by the coolest theme designers from all over the Internet.

Mega Contest - Win 10 Premium Themes worth $700

Those are pretty cool WordPress themes.

Even if you do not win, a visit to jai's blog is well worth it. He has great looking free WordPress themes available for download.

I rather have the total control of how my sidebars look. Although the WordPress widgets are easy to use and great time savers, they don't always work well with all the themes.

I like the Tag Cloud but I noticed that a big Tag Cloud on a sidebar does not look good. So I decided to put the Tag Cloud on a separate page:

http://blog.nonstopsites.us/tags/

Here are the instructions to do it:

If you have tons of tags and you want to display them all in one place, but not on the main page of your blog, you can create a tag archive page. Here's how.

1. Make a copy of your single.php or index.php template, and name it something like "tag-archive.php"
2. At the top of your tag archive template, insert this:
   <?php
/*
Template Name: Tag Archive
*/
?>
3. Replace everything from
   <?php if (have_posts()) : ?>
   to
   <?php endif; ?>
   (aka The Loop) with the <?php wp_tag_cloud(); ?> function. You can download a Kubrick-compatible tag archive template here.
4. Upload the new template file tag-archive.php to your theme folder.
5. Create a new page and call it something like "Tag Archives". Under Page Template in the sidebar, select the new template you created. Leave the body of the page blank, and publish it.
6. Make sure you link to the new page in your navbar or sidebar so people can find the tag archive page

Displaying Tags on a Tag Archive Page

 

Last week I had to put together a site in a few hours that would contain videos, mp3 files and a simple contact form.  Considering the lack of time I decided to use WordPress to put this site together.

Step One was to pick a theme that I can quickly make it look distinct without spending much time. I found the Options theme by Justin Tadlock was perfect for the job. I have not studied the documentation and not even using most of the options available but it was a good choice since it fit the project.

Step Two was to add some static pages. One was a location page where I wanted to use Google Maps Plugin for WordPress I mentioned here before. Unfortunately it only displayed the map as a gray rectangle. Figuring that it was due to style sheet issues and not having time to go through it, I opted to use the iframe embed of the Google Map which worked perfectly.

I also wanted to have some documents available on this site. I like scribd and the ipaper format so I went ahead and got the WP IPaper Plugin. It did not work at first. Since I really wanted to have the IPaper version of documents on this site, I decided to spend a little more time to troubleshoot which led me to discover that the plugin works only if you do not put the access key in quotes. Cool!

It is time for the videos and I realize what a hassle to embed videos in WordPress... Well, after a quick search online I came across FLV-Embed Plugin. Since I already had FLV copies of videos available this plugin was a perfect choice.

To have the mp3 files embedded, the clear choice was Audio Player WordPress Plugin.

When it came to deciding on the contact form, I quickly scanned and tried a few plugins promising to accomplish this task effortlessly. Finally I decided to use cforms II. It is easy to understand, install, use and customize. It does the job!

In less than three hours Swift299Gas.com was up and running thanks to WordPress and all these theme and plugin authors who make them available.

I had imported Brian Gardner's one of free themes -- Blue Zinfandel -- to NucleusCMS for one of my blogs. Now I am thinking about switching to WordPress for that blog also, I may use his Blue Zinfandel theme for the WordPress blog. It is a clean and elegant theme.

There are quite a selection of WordPress themes available online for free. I have not purchased one yet but if I were to purchase one Brian Gardner's Revolution Themes will be on the top of my shopping list.