Antbag.com

The Wordpress Theme Viewer went under an administration change last month around the time they made the decision to stop supporting sponsored themes. Since then, I’ve been unable to upload new themes, or even update the ones I currently have on the site. I’m under the impression that the site is still not accepting new themes until they get all the changes they’re making worked out. (whenever that will be)

If a reader is interested in a theme, they can check it out right here rather than going to a different website.

Since I haven’t had access to that site, I’m looking into what type of set-up I’ll need here on Antbag.com to offer my themes for download and preview. I have a little collection of completed themes that are now ready, but I haven’t offered them due to my reliance on the Theme Viewer. I think this will be a positive change. If a reader is interested in a theme, they can check it out right here rather than going to a different website. Hopefully, the Theme Viewer will be back up to full functionality before long. I would like to offer themes both here and there. The Theme Viewer is great exposure.

On another note, I believe I read that they were having trouble with the “10 most downloaded themes” section. Whether they’re having issues or not, my NetWorker theme is one of the themes listed in the top 10……….so I consider that to be good exposure!

Tags: Web, Wordpress by Anthony ∗ 6 Comments »

I’m very pleased to introduce a new website called Freelance Folder. The project belongs to Jonathan Phillips, and knowing Jon, the site is destined for some big things! Freelance Folder is not just another blog for Jon, but it’s a site with multiple authors which came out on launch day with several impressive articles. Several things I really like about Freelance Folder:

1. The site focuses on entrepreneurship and freelancing……subjects that are always interesting to read and learn about.
2. There appears to be some great talent lined up for the writing. Jon is still taking submissions if you would like to contribute.
3. The site’s design is built on my Networker theme. That’s right, my latest Wordpress theme. Jonathan did an awesome job customizing it to meet his vision.

Be sure to visit the site, leave a comment or two, and subscribe to the feed.

Tags: Business, Web by Anthony ∗ 8 Comments »

I was reading an article on North x East recently, written by Leo Babauta, that suggests periodically going through your archives and getting rid of old posts that don’t add a lot of value for your readers. I’m not saying there’s anything wrong with that, yet it surprised me when I read it. Since becoming more aquainted with blogging and what seems to be the overall consensus of the blogosphere, I’ve been under the impression that a post was to be left alone once it was published. Under certain circumstances, I’ve seen bloggers remove posts that generated some very heated debate and/or posts that were confrontational, but that’s a rare exception. I know there aren’t any rules, but thats been my impression.

While optimizing the “Signal-to-Noise Ratio” of your blog, Leo suggests:

Every month or two, you should go back over your archives. This is a daunting task for many bloggers, but it helps tremendously. You might have had a bunch of posts that talked about site updates, or your daily life, that most people don’t find interesting when they go over your archives. They want to find the amazing posts. If a post didn’t do well, perhaps it’s time to toss it. Cut out the noise.

The more I think about this, it really does make a lot of sense. Especially posts that announce site updates, etc. I’m not sure exactly what he means by posts that didn’t do well……..posts that didn’t generate many comments, perhaps? Mmmm, I’m not sure that would be a good way to decide how useful a post is.

What about you? What do you think about deleting older posts that don’t necessarily give the reader any benefit? How do you decide which ones stay and which ones go? I’m genuinely interested…

Tags: Business, Web by Anthony ∗ 19 Comments »

Yesterday was one of the better days I’ve had on this blog as far as traffic. The inclusion of my latest theme, Darkwater, on sites such as Weblog Tools Collection, Planet Wordpress, and a few others, really drove more than my normal visitors to the site. The spike in traffic was evident no matter which statistics you look at. The experience has left me wondering how accurate these statistics are however. Basically, out of four or five different statistics providers, none of them matched.

Pretty soon after I set this site up in February, I uploaded the WP Shortstat Plug-in, which makes it real easy to glance at your stats whenever your in the Wordpress Dashboard. I really like it, and that is what I usually check. Last night it was reporting to me that my site had taken 2,398 hits with 1,202 unique visitors. At the same time, I logged into MyBlogLog, which showed 1,153 page views with 801 unique visitors. hmm. I know I’m not the first person to ever raise the question, but to be off by that much had me scratching my head.

Several other places I decided to look at my stats after realizing this, was Statcounter.com and the statistics provided by my web host, 1 and 1. This is where it gets really interesting. 1 and 1 Hosting reports that I had 3,434 page views with 1,695 unique visitors. That sounds like a lot to me. Well when I checked StatCounter.com, they report that I only had 89 pageviews with 44 unique visitors.

Huh???

Now that’s a big difference! So, I’m wondering, where would I get the most accurate statistics? Regardless of which is right, I at least know that I had a lot more visitors than normal.

Tags: Web by Anthony ∗ 15 Comments »

I read a post at Daily Blog Tips that gave some internet statistics, and I thought it was interesting. Being fairly new at building Wordpress themes, I especially took notice of the percentage of internet users still using Internet Explorer 6. While I’m more of a Firefox man myself, I can understand why a Windows user would just use Internet Explorer. If you are an IE user, please UPDATE TO VERSION 7.

Internet Explorer 6 is one of the biggest thorns in the side for a web designer. You can have a design complete and looking awesome……..until you test it out in IE6. Internet Explorer displays things differently than what is considered a more standards compliant browser. I’m sure IE5 and older are probably even worse. So the question is, why not update? It won’t cost you anything.

I’m not one of these people who are hostile towards Microsoft, but I think if you gave Firefox a try, you certainly wouldn’t miss IE. I’m sure no browser is perfect, but Internet Explorer 7 is leaps and bounds better than version 6 in every way. It looks better, it’s faster, and it’s much more likely to display a web page like it’s suppose to be.

*Statistics were compiled by W3Counter.

Tags: Design, Web by Anthony ∗ 20 Comments »

Have you tried AJAX lately?

AJAX?….as in that cleaning product?

Of course not. I’m talking AJAX….as in….web application language. Or Asynchronous JavaScript and XML to be more specific. Mike Smullin has created this super cool plug-in that, through the use of AJAX, your page doesn’t have to re-load when someone leaves a comment. There are two options:

1. You can download the plug-in here, and upload to your Wordpress plug-ins directory, or
2. follow Mike’s instructions on manually integrating the code in your comments.php file

It’s really smooth. If you want to see how it works, just……leave a comment on this post.

Now that’s low huh? Will I do anything to get comments?

Tags: Blogging, Web, Wordpress by Anthony ∗ 16 Comments »