I’ve noticed a certain behavior with me in the last 3 month or so. I hardly ever visit many blogs in person anymore. Why - it’s simple really. At least for me it is. I’m a busy freelance professional and I find it increasingly more challenging to keep up with my feed reader, let alone with my favorite blogs.

Therefore I hardly ever click through to go to the actual blog. One way we can circumnavigate this as a blog owner is to only publish partial feeds.

Partial feeds or full feeds?

This has been discussed before and I don’t really want to mention this for the purpose of arguing what’s better. From a readers point of view, I want full feeds because it saves me time. I can read my favorite blogs conveniently in the one place and then go about my work.

As a blog owner however I don’t like the idea on losing my readers to their feed readers. It sucks and the only way I could stop this from happening is to stop publishing full feeds.

But then I might have another issue. My readers might actually get peeved if I was to do this and unsubscribe at once.

Oh the thought

For a new blogger this would be worrisome enough, since they are actively building their readership. But what does it really mean? Should we just go about our business and do what feels right for us, or shall we consider the emotional involvement of our readers and do what’s right for them?

I’ll let you be the judge of that.

Please let me know what you personally prefer, looking at this from both angles and why?

Right! Finally it is here. Having been subjected for tons of criticism, speculation and what not, WordPress 2.5 has officially opened their doors today.

Some changes to the layout have been explained on the WordPress site today and here is some pointers for you.

WordPress 2.5 Dashboard:

The focus of the new dashboard is on the relevant tasks at hand rather than distracting with unnecessary clutter. You can quickly see a summary for:

• what’s published
• what’s scheduled for publication
• latest comments
• incoming links
• blog stats
• WordPress updates
• WordPress news
• it is also customizable by you to add your own RSS feeds and change the way things are being presented to you, according to your own tastes.

WordPress 2.5 Navigation Face Lift:

The new navigation panel has received a sophisticated face lift. Some navigation options have been cut in half to separate the primary functions like

• writing
• managing posts
• managing pages
• editing the blog design
• managing comments

This leaves secondary functions hidden and leaving a much more clean interface for navigation purposes.

WordPress 2.5 Writing Screen:

The new writing screen only displays information we most often use. This will simplify posting. If you need the other options you can easily get them from their little hideaway.

The cool part about the new writing screen is that it anticipates the natural flow in which we write and will remember the way we leave it. So next time we come back, the same environment welcomes us.

WordPress 2.5 Manage:

The new interfaces to manage our admin have gotten a new design and are incorporated with everything else on the new release. WordPress believes that these changes will help us to become more faster and efficient when we blog.

The dashboard is presenting itself in a spring like manner. Ideal for those poor souls buried in the deepest snow over in the U.S and Canada. I’m sure they’ll warm right up to it.

But wait, there is good news. The folks must have heard a bunch of us winging when we blogged about this a little while back and now they have added the option to actually revert back to the old “boring” blue interface.

Plus for the really groovy designers out there, it is also pluggable, whatever that means.

WordPress 2.5 RC 1 Is Ready for Download:

Now, before you fall over each other trying to get hold of the new theme I advise you to wait - unless of course you are a designer or coder or simply feel like playing with the bubble wrap.

Excerpt from WordPress: If you make frequent backups and you’re interested in helping us out with development by testing the new code, download and install Release Candidate 1 of WordPress 2.5, and join our testers mailing list to report any bugs you find in the code.

If you want to play you can direct your feedback here:

2.5-feedback@wordpress.org.

So when is it happening - for real? Give it a few days guys and you will be good to go.

This should be fun.

While hunting down some groovy looking WordPress themes I came across Milo’s site and was pleasantly surprised. Milo is a graphic designer based in Munich, Germany and she has created some 100 that are available for download on her site.

Milo is a master at flash and many of her themes look rather groovy. They are certainly less conventional than most of the free WordPress themes we see on the market and would suit an artist perfectly. While her themes are all available for show, none of the demo links actually seem to work. From what I have seen, there is no other way to demo the themes than to see them on the sample page.

I kept going round and round until eventually I just gave up. Below is a screen shot of the sample page where all the themes are listed. If you click on it, it will lead you to the same page.

Milo focuses heavily on magazine style themes, which make them perfect for a zesty theme that looks artistic, stylish and clean. She is obviously a very talented lady.

Blogbard is a newish kind of service that currently runs in Beta. They offer a way out for busy professionals who don’t have the time to read their favourite blogs and feel that unless they keep up with it, they will miss out.

Blogbard allows anybody to stay in touch by simply tuning into any blog via audio. Presently Blogbard is setup to function while logged into reader and Bloglines. Alternatively you can simply insert your favorite blog URL into their search box on the Blogbard site and it will return posts to listen to with:

• iTunes
• Bloglines
• Google Reader

This is what happens when you do a search on a blog. In our case I searched for this blog Easy WordPress. Once the page reloads, it opens up with the black player in the middle and a voice starts reading the actual last blog post as seen below in regards to the Probama Theme.

While I like the idea of having the freedom to listen to blogs to save time (for example while traveling on the bus, train or even in the car) I really didn’t like the voice at all.

It is far to metallic and to me reading is like telling a story, therefore when I hear a blog post read out without the emotions that went into it I quickly lose interest.

Another problem in my eyes is the fact that the “voice” just keeps reading after the posts ends. It even reads the excerpts of related posts which I find really annoying.

I suppose the whole setup could be a little more intuitive to be considered attractive by the masses.

I think the idea to develop a service like this is great, but needs some more improvement in regards to the tone of voice. Blog owners can also insert a player into their blog to allow readers directly to listen to their posts.

The code for this is available on the same site as seen on the second screen shot above to the right.

A brand new theme that has just been released a few days ago comes just in time for all the Senator Barrack Obama supporters. It is called the Probama Theme and has been conjured up by Darren Hoyt and Matt Dawson. Darren has sent me a very nice email asking whether I was willing to showcase this theme for you guys.

Since it is timely, I figured why not. Now all you Obama friends can take this free theme and run with it. Shout your political voice to the world and let everybody know how you really feel.

The Probama WordPress Theme looks great and has many features. Control panel options include support for:

• Feedburner
• Flickr
• Youtube

And there is also a handy Subcategory drop down menu. Other highlights include.

• Custom archive pages
• Author highlighting
• Gravatars in comment section
• Latest post highlighting on home page
• Dynamic subpage menus
• RSS integration with BarackObama.com
• Additional print.css stylesheet

Here is how the bottom half of the Probama WordPress Theme looks like.

As you can see while looking at the demo page, there is video, podcast and images all nicely displayed on the blog. It looks great and I can’t see why it couldn’t also be used for non political uses by eliminating the Obama header graphic and replacing with something else.

Below is a view of a single post page.

All in all the theme is awesome and looks very neat. Hope some of you will grab this with both hands and have plenty of fun. I’m sure Darren would be delighted.

For more screen shots and feedback head over to Darren’s site now

Today I kicked the BlogRush widget in the ass (i.e removed it completely from this blog) and instead replaced it with something that can really increase my profit: the new PayDotCom widget.

No mumbo-jumbo promises or hype. It’s really simple to understand:

1. You put the widget on your blog - works on any blog platform
2. The widget rotates the top products based on the categories you’ve selected
3. All the links are embedded with your Paydotcom ID
4. When someone clicks and buys a product, you get a commission
5. Comes in a dozen or so colors to match any blog

You can signup with PayDotCom for free, and start using this widget right away.

What are you currently servicing? Are you one of thousands who desperately tries to become the next Problogger and earn a bucket load with his blog, or have you finally seen the light and moved onto greener pastures?

Successful niches have one thing in common. They often involve us having to write about things we hate. So why bother you might ask?

Here is the thing - it is those niches that will eventually make you ! Especially if you have done your research right.

Anybody can build a niche and with all the information available out there, you can learn everything you need to know. Even if you are a brand new beginner.

The secret of doing it right starts with your research. It is the means to an end and if you scamper on this, your niche won’t make you enough money to pay for a movie ticket.

The flavors of niche sites

Niche sites do come in many flavors, perhaps the most popular being niche sites made for Adsense and niche sites.

You don’t even need money to create your very first niche. You can use a Blogger blog and start building right away. A friend of mine makes insane amounts of money using Blogger blogs. He has tons of niche sites and the last time he mentioned his income it was around $9,000/month.

Not bad for no down cost is it?

Here is one way to build a great niche site

You want to know the secret and how he does it? It’s simple really, all he does is score the Internet for the latest news clips and then quickly creates a new blog pertaining to this subject.

As news hit the mainstream Google searches increase and by getting in early using proper SEO he manages to land on Google’s front page every single time. Guess on which link people click when they see his site amongst the top three with the relevant keyword thrown in?

He then monetizes them by using affiliate programs and sometimes

• Use The Blogging Experiment Theme To Showcase What You’ve Got | Leave a Comment
  

  The Blogging Experiment Theme has been released by its owner Ben Cooke to help him become a self sufficient blogger within one year. The theme is nicely setup and ready for widgets and those popular 125 x 125 banner ads. It contains a wide sidebar as well as featured sections above the main text and below.

  Personally I do like the setup of the as it allows blog owners to feature their best content as well as provide advertisers with enough room to showcase their products.

  

  For those of you who wonder whether this is free, no it isn’t. It will cost $ 75 and is not refundable! Ben is also planning eventual updates and states that:

  If updates are offered to an existing theme, existing users will be offered the updates free of charge. However, if a theme is released as a new theme with significant design changes and/or significant new features, there will be a charge.

  If you have a look around the more popular blogs on the web you’ll see this kind of design layout everywhere. In my humble opinion it is a great price for a great layout if you are willing to pay a little money to have a “” theme.

  If you are a bit of a wiz with coding, you can even customize the colors as seen in the following blogs. Just click on each image to go directly to the blogs shown.

  

  

  

  To install the Blogging Experiment WordPress Theme you will need to be familiar to some degree with customization, widgets, Plugins and themes. There is also some help provided in the comment section, but it states that they won’t do a full term custom install.

  The theme was released in December 2007 so it isn’t brand new either. But definitely worth a mention I think.

  Here is how the bottom of the theme looks. As you can see, you have 3 div’s in which to place content.

  

  You could use this for your:

  • recent comments
  • widget
  • Bumpzee widget
  • Top commenter’s
  • Your image
  • related links
  • etc.