The theme is a highly customised two-column WordPress theme. It has several extras such as the three boxes along the bottom, customised 404 pages, article pages, archives, and so on. It has an ecommerce module on it too, allowing donations to Helping People to Help Themselves, and it

There is an attached flickr module too, allowing the owners of the site to post new photos of the orphans and their building project, to let donors see the progress.

This was a three column theme and designed to emulate but not copy the website that the blog is housed under.

The Screen Biz Blog is definately a blog to keep your eye on, good reviews, intelligently laid out and engaging in conversation if you want to comment.

Now let’s add some pictures. This is actually straightforward.

First image is of a post half written and ready to add an image. First off make sure that you click in the message box where you want the image to go. Then you can see the red circled area, click that little icon to add a picture. You’ll notice when you move your mouse over it, the help box appears entitled “Add an image”:

Right, clicking it brings up this, click on the encircled red area:

It brings up this a window asking what file you want to upload. Locate the file on your computer that you want to insert, using the standard file navigation. Once you’ve clicked ‘Open’ then you’ll see this:

You’ll see you have a variety of options to choose from. You can add a caption to the image, a description, you can alter the link url (the images are automatically linked to their full size version on the blog), the alignment on the page (none, left, center, or right), and the size (small, medium, or large).

Once you’re happy, click the ‘Insert into post’ button. Hey presto it gets inserted into the post!

One last thing - the media library:

You may have uploaded many images to the blog over a period of months or even years, and they get saved. You can go back through them by clicking on the ‘Media Library’ link instead of uploading a file from your computer. As you see from the screenshot there are a few there - just click on the ‘Show’ button and then it’s the same procedure as before.

This particular wordpress theme was created for the Sinus Hotline site - the design is sturdy and very beautiful. I can’t claim kudos for the design, that was provided to me in PSD format, I only transformed it into the wordpress theme.

Working with them isn’t a hassle and getting involved with projects like компютри втора употребаPSD to html is a cinch when you can chat with the staff and work online with them. Talk about ordering to design, this is it!

First rule: The people who made WordPress have made it really easy to use, that’s one of the greatest things about it. Once you’ve had a play with it for a few days you’ll see how really straightforward it is to use.

So here goes, the first post about WordPress 2.5 will be about Writing Posts. It will take you from start to finish, from the dashboard entrance to the posting, a nice easy first tutorial to follow. As you can see from this graphic (below) this is similar to what you’ll see when you access your blog’s admin panel (http://www.yourblog.com/wp-admin/index.php):

Starting to Write your Post

So clicking on the ‘Write’ button leads you to this page:

Editing the Title

The first thing you’ll notice are the two most important parts to your upcoming WordPress post - the title and the post itself. Choose your title carefully, it reflects the post, and ultimately this is what the search engines will store in their databases. So I’ll fill one title in and start writing a quick post, here is a start:

As you can see I’ve highlighted two areas. The first one, roughly in the middle of the image, shows how as you write the title and the post, WordPress creates a url for the post. That’s why it’s so important to choose your title correctly - if you’re writing about a film you’ve seen include it in the title so when the search engines find your post people searching for that film will see your post in the search results.

On the right side I highlighted a second section that you may want to use. It has the Save, Publish, and Delete buttons in it. If you’re writing a long post and you might want to come back to it - using the Save button really helps you out. Remember that WordPress will also auto-save your posts as well (and tell you when, in that second highlighted section).

Tags

Labelling your post is important for search engines. Tags however, are not categories - they are not a way to group similar posts. One way of describing them is to say they are subjects. This post for example, has these tags: blog article, blog post, wordpress, writing post.

Scroll down from the main message input box and you’ll see some more options for your post. Generally these are closed, so open them all up by clicking on the title itself (click on ‘Excerpt’ for example and it opens up). Clicking on the title again closes it.

In the image below you can see I’ve labelled this post with a few select tags (highlighted by the first red outline), related subject matter to the post itself. If you’re sincere about blogging and want to make a good effort, especially for readers to find your blog then be careful what you tag your posts with.

The second red outline shows the categories - select (and add, if necessary) the categories you want this post to belong to. Don’t worry, you can edit the post later on if you want to add more categories or move it entirely to others.

One bit I mentioned there that you might want to consider putting some text into is the ‘Excerpt’ section. This is the place where you can put a teaser text. If your blog theme does not use the WordPress tag ‘the_excerpt()’ in it’s theme, it will print out the entire post in your main index (the blog homepage). Lots of people with heavy traffic blogs will tend to use it as it cuts down on the amount of text shown, and lets you draw readers in. If you have an article of 2500 words, you might want to put a taster in for say, 100 words, to attract a reader.

Trackbacks

Assuming you have done a bit of blogging, or at least read several blogs and think you want to get your feet wet, then you might of heard of trackbacks.

Trackbacks are those wonderful mechanisms that allow a reader/potential blogger, to give credit to a source - it notifies them that a link has been made to them from a new article. You might say it’s a style of compliment.

In the image below you’ll see the input box where you can input the trackback url (that you have obtained from the article you want to reference).

There are several other sections in the image above that you may want to know about:

• Custom Fields - not exactly for the fainthearted. This lets the blogger put in information that will be handled in a unique way in the theme’s page - this is not for the new blogger.
• Comments & Pings - at the bottom of the image above - these are on by default, and I strongly suggest you leave them on!
• Password Protect this Post - you can’t see it on that image above, but it’s just below that last option. It’s rather obvious, don’t you think?

So you’re ready to publish, everything is as you want it (for now). Take the plunge - go on, scroll back up and hit the ‘Publish’ button! You’re about to become a blogger!

That’s about it for this little tutorial - more to come delving into the media library, images, flash and more!

Update: New post released, Using WordPress 2.5 - Adding Images to Posts.

It’s a two column theme, sidebar on the right as you can see from the screenshot above - click the screenshot to go to one of my test blogs with the theme in action.

The theme has been tested with WordPress 2.5.1 and WordPress 2.3.3 - and is of course, widget ready and SEO ready.

The theme comes pre-packaged with one main background, a black and white version of the grunge image. There are however, three other images, colour versions of the same image - red, blue, and green. Simply change the class on the body to red, blue or green, and the background changes. Obviously, make your own colour or your own background if you wish, to substitute.

If you like this wordpress theme, or others, please consider making a donation.

Update:There is also now an associated login file with the theme (see the example here), included with the theme.

My first example is keeping most of the default login page intact. I only altered the login box itself - you can find it on my own personal blog. As you can see the box is altered and the image from the famous painting ‘The Son of Man‘ (which is part of my blog’s theme) is there; note that this isn’t there on IE versions of 6 and below. Example below (click to go to the actual login page):

This only required a little alteration - making the form fit inside a restraining div I had added to the default wp-login.php page.

The second example is a bit more complex, but shows how easily the wordpress login page can be configured.

The theme itself is a four column theme, and so to keep the general feeling the theme was extended to the login page over at Balanced News Blog (the link is to the login page). The standard login page (wp-login.php) was modified by adding the header, menu, and sidebars so it fits in with the theme. As you can see though, the message part that is common to all login pages, giving a link back to the main page, has been removed. Example below (click to go to the actual login page):

So as you can see, given the two examples, customising a login page for WordPress isn’t beyond a designer’s grasp. If you are interested in having your blog’s login page customised, drop me a line and let’s talk!

It actually surprises me, and will probably surprise you, but they still get people trying to access Paypal using Internet Explorer 3! I thought that had gone the way of the dinosaur long ago but apparently not - here’s some of what the BBC had to say:

Web payment firm Paypal has said it will block “unsafe browsers” from using its service as part of wider anti-phishing efforts.

I should note for the tech-unsavvy, they’re basically concentrating on Internet Explorer…

Paypal said it was “an alarming fact that there is a significant set of users who use very old and vulnerable browsers such as Internet Explorer 4″.

Phishing attacks trick users into handing over sensitive data.

Paypal said some users were still using Internet Explorer 3 , released more than 10 years ago. It lacks many of the security and safety features needed to protect users from phishing and other online attacks.

“Vulnerable” browsers? That’s an understatement.

Here’s a good explanation of what a keylogger is:

A good software key logger should use very little memory and very few CPU cycles, so as not to attract attention to itself. A good key logger should also hide itself from the Task List and from the Uninstall List. A good key logger should be invisible to the person being monitored. A better key logger will support remote installation and the ability to remotely retrieve keystroke logs. A better key logger should also be able to log only user-defined types of data, such as usernames and passwords.

Many software keystroke loggers are integrated with other surreptitious recording software, such as screen capture software, remote control software, or audio and video recorders.

So getting back to keyloggers, there are ways to defeat them, and be secure even if you don’t have one. The best way of course is to make sure you never get one - get a good firewall such as Outpost Pro - get a good anti-spyware anti-adware program such as one of those listed below.

• Panda; this is one of the better anti-spyware, anti-adware, security products available.
• Block viruses and spyware with advanced protection from Norton Antivirus 2008; although not one of my favourite companies, or products, they are used by a lot of people, and a lot of people swear by it.
• NOD32 Antivirus System; NOD32 is a good system, I used it for about 6 months and didn’t have any complaints.

But being realistic, it could happen to you. Maybe a suspicious spouse, or an overbearing boss, but whatever the reason, keyloggers can be used without your knowledge. Here is what you do to defeat them.

1. Open up a notepad.
2. Hit the keyboard like you’re a chimpanzee on crack. For about two minutes.
3. Now you have a notepad full of characters, all kinds of them. Now, knowing your own password(s), drag and place characters at the beginning or end of all of this text, until you have made your password.
4. Save this file.
5. Every time you want to put a password in, open up your file, copy your selected password from the nonsensical text, and paste it into the password box wherever you need it.

This gets around a keylogger since they log keystrokes - copying and pasting a bit of text into a password box is not a keystroke.