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blog

The Irony of WordPress Themes

Most of WordPress bloggers know that there are hundreds of themes to make your blog different from others. Some bloggers create lists, contests and other blog theme promotion events. Of course, the presentation is important, there is no doubt about it.

What is, actually, puzzles me is that while we, bloggers, spend tremendous amounts of time tweaking and twisting quite a number of themes – most of the people read blogs through subscriptions – RSS or e-mail. All the beauty of
tweaked theme with endless hours invested is lost on the most loyal part of the audience.

Most people aren’t attracted by the theme the blog is using. They aren’t here to watch how masterfully blogger managed to blend AdSense with content with couple of banners and with affiliate links. They are here for content. They see the blog for a minute or two, or maybe even five, to determine if the blog is worth subscribing for.Then they proceed to subscribe to the feed. That’s about all the time that the theme is watched.

Sometimes the blog’s theme is so cumbersome, overloaded with ads that the content is almost lost. Yet, we can see quite a number of subscribers. They read the blog through the RSS or e-mail. They have something to say.

Strange, isn’t it? Bloggers overall make a hefty sum (that includes those who makes six figures and those who make six cents) off of the ads and affiliate links posted in the blog itself. Maybe, subconsciously, we reward loyal bloggers with absence of ads-in-your-face. Just as a way of saying thank you.

So, if you already reading this blog via any kind of subscription – thank you 🙂

Categories
software

Protecting WordPress

In order to protect your WordPress installation the following steps are mandatory.

Step 1: Read this post from Matt Cutts on protecting your WordPress installation. If you don’t know what the .htaccess file is or does – read this or this.

Step 2: If you have access t0 cPanel or any other hosting management script installed – login to your hosting management console and turn off indexes for your web directory. If you don’t know what I am talking about – make sure you repeat step 2 from the article mentioned above for all folders where no index.php file exists.

Step 3: Instead of denying IPs you can simply password-protect the /wp-admin/ directory. On my installations it has weird effect of redirecting straight to index page instead of asking for login/password. Even better – no password to remember and you still can use one of the blog editors to upload content.

Categories
software

Qumana Blog Editor

Qumana Blog Editor Review - iStudioWeb BlogFor the second round of blog editor software reviews I decided to go with Qumana Blog editor. Available at Qumana.com, this free software is available for both Windows and Mac OS platforms. Current version as of writing this post is 3.0.1. The software is written in Java. Not that there’s anything wrong with it, but it forced me to install Java run-time on my laptop in order to even proceed with install.

SEE IMPORTANT UPDATE at the end of the post!

Externally, Qumana Editor is not really different from Zoundry. The interface looks more contemporary and buttons even have bubbly glow. However, editor allows same basic WYSIWYG functionality. Two tabs below the editing window let you flip between editor and source view.Tags for WordPress are inserted in the actual text of the post. I am no WordPress guru, but I am sure it’s done a little different. Default Times New Roman font for WYSIWYG editor looks horrible and there is no chance of changing it without changing the actual post.