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Design A Website With Iweb And Have Alternate Themes To Choose From

sans — Sat, 24 Apr 2010 15:33:36 +0000

Have you have ever wondered about creating a website but were afraid that it was too complicated? You would like to explore the possibility of having an online presence but don’t want to spend a fortune? Well you might want to try iWeb if you have a Mac computer. Apple’s iWeb software makes it very easy to set up a website – even for the non-techie!

With iWeb there are included themes built into the program. There are twenty-eight in iWeb ’09. These are great to get you started but eventually you may want to explore other options to make your site look different and stand out from the rest.

The iWeb themes are templates that are stylized pages that coordinate the designs to look professional even when used by non-designers. You can modify the iWeb themes but it is tedious and time consuming and not really for amateurs. But, if you are not a programmer and want a different look to your iWeb theme you are in luck!

Designers offer alternative themes and they are available for sell. You may even find alternate iWeb themes for free if you look. The themes that you purchase work within iWeb seamlessly.

Themes for iWeb have the following pages: Welcome, About Me, Photos, My Albums, Movies, Blog, Podcast and Blank. You have a great deal of flexibility using any of these theme pages.

To make your iWeb pages look different from the standard you can move around the text and picture boxes and change the fonts and colors. This can get you a little different look but if you want something really different you have to modify the theme code to use your background photos which is not that easy to do.

Several sites are out there that provide additional designs for you to use.

IPresentee has more than fifty themes to choose from. There are themes that are appropriate for business or casual use. You might find some of the themes garish or lackluster but with so many to choose from you should find something you like. In addition to the standard pages that are offered in iWeb themes they offer pages that include “My Hobbies” and “News” and even some Flash-animated title bars. You can even find themes that are flash site-welcome movies and animated GIF clip art. They even offer a great looking free theme called Treasure.

11Mystics offer only eleven themes that are attractive and have harmonious colors with balanced layouts. Some are available with extra clip art that you can customize your pages with and some have multiple color schemes.

Miamiou have twenty-one themes that are generally understated and bland but may actually appeal to you if you like a grayscale moody feel. They have a few that offer vivid colors. You can be sure that their themes will not clash with your content and will not appear at all cutesy.

Jumsoft offers twenty-one themes that are as good as the built-in ones in iWeb. Some have a simplistic and boxy feel but have a style that is hip and sets them above some of the rest.

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10 Modern WordPress Portfolio Themes

sans — Thu, 22 Apr 2010 03:07:46 +0000

The Web is a great place for freelancers to pitch their skills and their wares. If you’re a writer or an artist and don’t have your portfolio online, you are missing a great opportunity to promote your work and your brand. One of the best platforms available on the Internet today is WordPress. Although it is primarily thought of as a blogging platform, it is a powerful content management system that can easily be adapted for use by independent professionals. The following are ten modern WordPress portfolio themes that will give you a fast, professional presence online.

1. Gallerific ($35)

This WordPress theme is perfect for photographers who need to have their portfolio available online for potential customers to view. This JQuery-powered theme has powerful pagination and animation features that make the site easy to navigate. A real time Flickr feed streams new work into the sight so visitors are always up to date with your latest material.

2. Briefcase ($27)

This is a serious but fun theme that offers an attractive way to display your talent. JavaScript is used to present a billboard style front page that allows you to showcase a featured piece. The tableless CSS-based layout gives your work a modern look and feel. A unique floating comments area makes it easy for guests to leave feedback.

3. Portfolio WPESP Theme(Free)

A minimalist theme based on the ‘Golden Ratio’ for visual appeal. CSS functionality removes the use of tabs and tables, providing for a sleek, technologically savvy ambience that complements your work.

4. Unique Portfolio ($27)

Perfect for freelancers and other people involved in creative business, this powerful theme showcases your work, in a tasteful, user friendly manner that draws attention to you rather than to the fundamentals of your site. Use the homepage portfolio slider and its custom fields to launch a powerful display of your work.

5. Forward Thinking ($70)

A modern, three-column design gives this portfolio theme a magazine feel, perfect for those marketing to print clients. A moveable sidebar accents the section used for posts and ten styles allow you options for customization.

6. Portfolio Press (Free)

Show off your written and visual art with this easy to use free theme from BlogOh! Blog. The elegance of the dark theme combines with a unique, trendy layout that is appealing to the eye, making it easy to promote your work.

7. Smart Portfolio ($27)

For a unique modern look, Smart Portfolio could be your preferred portfolio theme for WordPress. No plugins or custom fields are necessary to get your presence on the Web up and running. This theme features a blog page, a portfolio page, and a contact page.

8. Geometric ($70)

Hailed as hybrid blog/portfolio, Geometric lets you have the best of both worlds. A widgetized front page sets the tone for a high-tech look that highlights the artist and the art. The flexibility of Geometric allows you to switch the sidebar from left to right with ease.

9. Monochrome (Free)

This widgetized theme can feature your portfolio in an AJAX-powered slide show while categorizing your artwork with thumbnails directly on the home page. The CSS framework provides smooth navigation and helps the artist have full control over the look and feel of the site.

10. Big Header Folio ($27)

A modern look and feel make Big Header Folio an outstanding WordPress theme to use when showcasing your work. Five built-in color schemes, portfolio slider, extensive theme options and three widgetized side bars make this a perfect platform to display your work.

Tom Walker works as the full time editor of the CreativeCloud design blog for an online specialist supplier of franking machine ink and other media supplies. He particularly enjoys writing about print media, old school advertising and cutting edge art.

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Different Web Themes Serve Different Purposes

sans — Tue, 20 Apr 2010 05:25:45 +0000

Having a proper web theme is something that will make a pretty good statement about you as well as what you are all about. There are so many pretty good reasons that you will want to choose a theme for your website and the information that you are attempting to convey. Chief among those reasons is the fact that having a good theme established is going to put the spotlight on you as well as on the information itself. Having that information really stand out is something that you want to do.

Once you have chosen the theme that you want you need to remember that you can change your theme as often as you like to suit your needs. There is nothing written in stone that states that you absolutely must stick with one particular theme once you have chosen it! How often have you been looking around online and have seen a theme or webpage design that absolutely struck you as something that would be absolutely PERFECT for your own website to emphasize what you are trying to showcase? This is basically what web themes are all about, and what we are talking about in the title statement.

Making your content stand out in a very unique way is the reason that web themes exist in the first place. These themes are there not only to create a focal point on and for the information that you are trying to convey. They can also be the very thing that brings people to your website in the first place. This could be simply because they like the colors and designing that you have chosen in a preview shot and want to see more. You might not have thought of this matter in this particular way though.

This is the way things go and that is also something that many of us really don’t think about at times. Hey, why in the world do you think that things like this even exist in the first place my friends? There are all sorts of web themes out there that you can choose in order to make your website stand out in a way that you would never have thought of before. It is in using web themes that you can catch people’s attention.

You can draw their attention a specific element of your website or written piece that you have just placed up on your website that spotlights something or someone specific or special. This is a very tangible and pretty specific way to make your point clearly known and/or understood. If you were to choose a theme that has some very fancy type settings in terms of Font settings you can then use some very fancy script to do the headings for the pages and/or articles that you want to draw the most attention to. This is only a small part of the many things that you can do when you have a web theme that you really like working with.

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Choosing the Appropriate Theme Makes Your Message Stand Out

sans — Thu, 15 Apr 2010 03:17:50 +0000

Have you ever been looking around the Internet for different web themes so that you can make your message stand out? Have you ever been completely frustrated when you could not find everything or anything that you want? Are you also aware that this is something that many businesspeople and Web-savvy people are all too aware of and have found ways to compensate for this. You are going to need to know which of the many web themes will make your message stand out the most.

Making your message stand out effectively is also something that you also need to be able to master and understand as much as you can about. If you are someone that really knows your way around a computer and the Internet you are likely to be able to make your point known pretty easily when you find the theme that makes you sit up and take notice yourself. However, there are many things that you are going to have to know when you are looking into the different types of web themes. You are going to need to know which type of Web theme will actually make the most difference to you and your website/business.

If you are wanting to use Articles in order to get your customer’s and reader’s attention you might want to take advantage of Article Marketing to make your point pretty clearly known and your presence felt. This strategy and web theme is something that people just like you have been doing pretty successfully for the past few years. Knowing what is going to work well for you is not something that is a hit-and-miss kind of thing, or so you think. It actually happens to be is a trial and error type thing.

If you are someone that always has a hard or difficult time making up your mind as to which web theme you want to use next you do have more than a few choices out there that you can work with. Are you looking for a web theme that is completely mainstream? Or do you happen to be looking for a theme that gives you a great deal of flexibility in terms of your color choices, theme options and other important things along these lines? You have a few choices available to you such as Mainstream WordPress Theme and Woo Themes.

These are pretty well known among the Internet community and have been seeing some pretty good success. Of course, the REAL name of the game here is to make your website and articles really stand out and look unique so that you will get more web traffic and attention to your website. This is exactly why you want to make sure that you choose the theme that will work best for you. Knowing what does NOT work is oftentimes as important as knowing what DOES work in terms of your advertising and web presence. You might want to remember that you need to choose your “battles” very carefully and know when to say enough.

How to Choose a Web Theme

sans — Fri, 09 Apr 2010 06:56:33 +0000

There are basically three types of themes: custom designed, premium and free. What are the advantages and disadvantages of the different categories?

You should look in to a free theme if you do not have a budget or much money to spend. If you don’t have any idea about what colors you want and you don’t have a logo or a brand identity already defined. If you don’t care about standing out from the crowd or don’t need to look unique – then you can go with most free themes. If you are pretty tech savvy or are willing to experiment and have the time more than money to spend then a free theme is the way to go.

If you have a small budget, less than say $150, and you don’t mind paying a little to look different then a premium theme is good for you. If you have a logo and are not that tech savvy and you are willing to pay a little for convenience and ease – go with a premium theme.

If you have several hundred dollars to spend to get exactly what you want and you have a very clear vision of the identity, including a logo and color scheme, and you want your site to look unique. You definitely want to go with a custom theme. Also if you prefer not to have to spend time and just want a quality-finished product – you will want a custom theme.

Other options do exist. You can get a ‘blank canvas’ theme that provides very little design but has the core functions. This type of theme will allow you to lay your design on top of the canvas without having to code. There is a dashboard or visual interface with admin options that you choose to get the look you want. Choose this type of theme ONLY if you know exactly how you want your site to look. If you don’t have a clear design in mind you will end up looking like everyone else and have a poorly designed theme. If you are tech savvy, and if you know what you want your site to look like you could use a free framework theme. These themes are not recommended for beginners, as they are overwhelming with the number of options you have to choose from.

Remember when choosing a theme there are trade offs in time, knowledge and money. If you have money restraints and are not tech savvy you may have to accept some compromises on the way your site looks or the way it works. But if money is no object and you are technically experienced you can generally get what you want your site to look like.

Designing a site can cost from as little as a no money to a few thousand dollars. You have to decide what is important to you and how much you want to spend. Usually you will have to spend time or money to get what you need or want.

Related Blogs

Basics of Choosing a Web Theme

sans — Thu, 08 Apr 2010 11:57:21 +0000

What do you need to do to get your newly installed theme looking more interesting? Try looking for a new theme for your site. Look for one that is SEO optimized, Adsense optimized or both if making money from your site is one of your goals. Remember that the themes are just a base from where to begin. It is up to you to mold it so that it has the look that you want. When you choose a layout that is close to what you need or want then you will have less work ahead of you. Only small customizations may be required for you to get your theme looking just like you want it.

If you like a theme that is not Adsense optimized, you don’t really have to worry about that. You will be able to manually insert or use plug-ins to make this happen. Themes come in different categories: 2- 3- column, Adsense Optimized, K2 Themes, SEO optimized and more. SEO optimization is important to get traffic to your site by Yahoo, Google and the big search engines.

After you have selected your base theme you will need to upload it and activate. Then you will want to get some plug-ins. There are some standard plug-ins that you should always use.

Wassup is a plug-in that will provide you with all the stats you will ever want. You will be able to view reports and everything is customizable. Their summaries are provided in your Admin Panel.

Privacy Policy for Adsense is a plug-in that combats Google’s TOS changes that forces you to have a “Privacy Policy” page on your site if you have Google Adsense ads. This plug-in will automatically create the policy.

Social networking bookmark plug-in – there are many of these out there and they all do basically the same things. They will let you add a social network bookmark and sets of icons after your posts.

All In One SEO Pack is a great plug-in to have. You are able to set Meta tags for your title, description and keywords.

Akismet is one of the best spam protection filter plug-ins out there. This plug-in has to be activated with an API key to use the full version.

There are a lot of other useful widgets and plug-ins available. There are video widgets, live chat, image galleries, event calendars and more.

After you upload a plug-in to your server you have to activate it. In the Admin Panel you go to the plug-ins tab and you will see the list of your available plug-ins. You can activate the ones you choose and then you can configure the plug-ins in the settings tab or they may have a tab of their own.

This is the basic information you need to get started on customizing your theme, as well as trying to think of ways to optimize it with plug-ins and widgets. You don’t want to choose your theme on just looks alone. You may end up frustrated if you are not able to get it to do what you need. Take time in the beginning to research your options and try to make a good first choice.

What are Theme’s for Web Sites?

sans — Wed, 07 Apr 2010 04:15:03 +0000

Your theme is basically your main idea or the topic of your site. Themes are important, as it is what makes your site relevant. Search engines and directory editors see if a site is focuses around one central topic and will boost its relevancy in the belief that every page of the site will be focused on the same topic. When your entire site focuses on a single main idea you can use variations of that idea through keyword phrases throughout the site.

Search engine spiders use a complicated mathematical formula to evaluate sites themes. This is something you really don’t need to concern yourself with as a sites theme is determined by its outgoing and incoming links. Keyword phrases also help to determine a sites theme. You should be sure that your keyword choices for your site are related to the same general theme.

A good way to identify your theme is to determine what service or products you are offering or what information you want to present. Try to name the theme of your site with a two or three word phrase that is general and expresses the main idea of the entire site. When you look at your site all of your products, services and information should be related to this general phrase that describes the main theme of your site.

If you can’t establish a theme then you need to re-think your strategy. You may have to many things going on or to many idea’s that a general phrase cannot describe your sites contents. You will not get high rankings in search engine results if this is true. What you need to do is determine what is important. What is it you want to promote on your website? When you determine what is important then you need to eliminate anything that is not related to that subject.

Then you need to develop content that surrounds the focus of your site. You should look at sites that gains top ranks in search engines. These sites contain a vast amount of information that is based on their main theme. You may want to consider developing additional sites if you don’t want to get rid of information that does not relate to your main theme. But, if in the end you still have a site that has a wide variety of ideas you should try to organize individual ideas onto separate sections of the site. You can have one section that promotes a set of general ideas and other sections that promote another set of ideas. This is not the best solution and your relevancy will be decreased.

In summary, on order for search engines to rank your site highly you need to have a focused idea and have a considerable amount of content related to your theme. All the content of your site should have keywords that focus on your theme. You want your site to gain attention of the search engines routines with focused ideas and keyword.

Customize Your Blog With A Theme

sans — Fri, 26 Mar 2010 15:19:08 +0000

When you consider monetizing your blog you should consider a self-host site and a theme that you can customize. It is advised that you don’t do this right away as it does cost money to obtain a good theme. After you have been blogging a while and are comfortable enough to want to invest more money choosing a good theme is a good investment. Themes can cost around $300 for good ones and full versions. But, you can quickly make that money back as you can optimize your ad placements. If you have programming skills you don’t actually have to buy a theme as you can customize any basic theme. Even if you know some HTML code you should consider a customizable theme. These themes allow you to control areas of the site and things you would not be able to do without the assistance of a programmer.

There are many theme sites out there and many are good. Prices range from $87 to $300. You should look for a good design, ease of customization, SEO optimization and support. Once you decide on a theme what are some ways to begin to make more money with your blog?

One way is to Guest Post. This is a good way to get quick traffic. Most blogs allow guest posting. Also, they tend to accept posts from anyone. This will give you a great opportunity to write an article that may be seen by 25,000 readers. There is really no easier way to get this much traffic in a short period of time. If you do this, be sure to write a really good article for your guest posts. Be sure the article is unpublished on any other site.

Sign up on blog communities. Some blog communities include: blogcatalog.com, mybloglog.com and technorati.com. Look for blogs in your niche and join those networks. Ask members to become their friends and network with other bloggers and ask if they would send visitors your way.

Sign up for blogcarnivals where you can submit articles that you wrote on your blog and have them included in a list of articles by the host. It is like “open mic night” at a comedy club, but for bloggers. If you submit a really good article with a good title you may get some really good traffic and links from other related sites.

Join directories by Googling {topic}+”directory” and you will see a list of the web directories in your topic. If you get added to these directories that will only help your site.

Another great way to get traffic is to comment on other blogs. When you make provocative and thoughtful responses will often send visitors your way. Blogging is a very social and community oriented activity and if you are an active member you will reap the rewards. Making forum comments on topics related to your blog and leaving a link to your blog in the signature line can also generate visitors to your site.

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BusinessCard WordPress Theme – Simple Yet Elegant Blog Theme

Admin — Mon, 08 Mar 2010 14:53:48 +0000

Business themes are getting more popular among those bloggers who aim to have a more corporate look and appeal. This WordPress Theme is designed to be a simple jQuery-powered, one-page theme which will allow you to provide your readers with a concise and clear information regarding your blog site. This WordPress Theme can truly transform your blog into a customizable website which is complete with much enhanced javascript which effects and is a fully functional gallery. Though this WordPress Theme has unconventional appearance, BusinessCard is very easy to set up and is very user friendly.

BusinessCard WordPress Theme include the following full features list:

* Opera compatible
* Netscape compatible
* Safari compatible
* WordPress 2.9 compatible
* Five Color Schemes
* Threaded Comments
* Fully functional gallery
* Gravatar ready
* Firefox compatible
* IE8 + IE7 + IE6 compatible
* Theme Options Page
* Custom thumbnail images
* PSD files
* Valid XHTML + CSS
* Smooth tabless design

Purchase

Elegant Themes is a WordPress Themes Club providing wordpress themes of quality and integrity. You get full access to their entire collection of premium wordpresstheme, as well as all themes added in the future, for the small price of $19.95.

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TheCorporation WordPress Theme – Professional Looking Blog Theme

Admin — Mon, 08 Mar 2010 14:50:24 +0000

If you are on the look for a more credible lay out for your blog, then this WordPress theme is the perfect one for you. TheCorporation has a professional and sleek theme which is sutable for business sites. You can easily attract attention from your readers because this theme has a flashy jQuert slider, prominent enoufg to let your visitors know that you are via the simple page-based design.With a sophisticated and user friendly appeal, TheCorporation can impress your potential clients.

Here is the full feature list for TheCorporation WordPress Theme:

* Opera compatible
* Netscape compatible
* Safari compatible
* WordPress 2.9 compatible
* Six Color Schemes
* Threaded Comments
* Optional Blog-style Structure
* Gravatar ready
* Firefox compatible
* IE8 + IE7 + IE6 compatible
* Advertisement Ready
* Widget ready sidebars
* Theme Options Page
* Custom thumbnail images
* PSD files
* Valid XHTML + CSS
* Smooth tabless design