The Blog World has just purchased the new Revolution theme which I am working on and should hopefully release soon. The organization of this theme is what I’m after. I love the setup and the organization that comes from using this theme. If you haven’t heard of it before, check out the Revolution demo.

This is the first Wordpress theme I’ve ever paid for, and really, the first one I’ve ever considered paying for. It starts out at $59.95 and I don’t mind buying Revolution and leaving the footer credit. I definitely think this is a wonderful theme and all credit should be given.

Small Potato over at WPDesigner has had very little to say about this theme in comparison to others he has reviewed, and that could be a good thing. I value his word because every theme he’s ever made has been easily customized and worked perfectly for me, I think he’s extremely talented.

It’s going to take me a long time to customize, but when it’s ready I think it’s going to be spectacular!

To make a blog all you need is a host with Fantastico, the rest is pretty much done for you. Fantastico will install the script for you and there are hundreds (thousands?) of free Wordpress themes created by others that you can use. One of the traditions of this blog is to always use these free themes to show you what can be accomplished with them.

I think there are a lot of great themes out there that are so close to being wonderful. Usually when you get a theme you’ll need to tweak it to make it work for you, this is a given. Not everyone wants to put the same information out there so it’s important to make sure you spend some time on that. But you can do more.

I don’t understand Wordpress as well as some of the great designers out there, so when I find that they’ve made a great design I try and fix it up to my tastes. I found a design made by WP Designer that was perfect for what I needed, but the design had a half naked woman on it. Naturally, I couldn’t use that image, so I bought one from iStock for $1 which I also modified before putting into the layout.

I set this up back in February and it stuck with me for a while. I usually get tired of designs before they’re even finished, but I was so happy with this one, and so proud of how the template turned out. Just a minor change and very little cost made this theme very personal and it looked great! Around summer I decided it was time to change up and I set out to find a new theme.

My needs were basic, I needed a 3 column theme that looked nice. After trying quite a few nice, but poorly coded themes,  I gave up and went back to my last one. But it really was time for a change, so I searched through iStock again for something I might be able to use.

The next image I found changed the entire face of my site, litterally. This image wouldn’t allow me to simply change the image, I needed to change the entire layout to suit the colors, which were completely different. I used Paint Shop Pro 7 to colorize the images and asked Jenny to help me color the words. But because the layout was the same, for the most part, and I loved the Hearts so much, I decided to install the Theme Switcher plugin that was suggested on another blog. Now you can view either theme while reading my wonderfully interesting personal blog.

I’ve been working on my consulting services and I decided to offer people an option to my customers make it easier and for everyone else. I now sell templates! I wanted to let everyone know because I hope those who wish to purchase templates go through me and offer my clients a little more variety.

I purchased one of the themes for my client, and it worked beautifully.

TEMPLATESCENE.COM

If you like a theme and say hey I am going to buy it and maybe some more.. Sign up for the affiliate program you’ll make about 10 dollars off the layout!

It’s a new resource I’m offering. Once I make a certain amount of sales I can discount the price so I hope I make enough sales to offer a cheaper price! I offer an affiliate program, so you guys can make money as well!

This is for wordpress users! ONLY

During research on what plugins I should at to TBW I decided to create the must have plugins I’ve seen around the web and wanted for my sites. You may see more than one version since there are so many for everything I included different ones I also enjoyed.

Show Top Commentators - this is a great tool to boost commenting! Automatically links the person in a top # list and shows how many comments they have left!

Del.icio.us Bookmark this! - auto adds bookmark this into every post!

Aggregate - for networks and news sites it allows you to aggregate from your RSS feeds

coComment Enhancer - allows you to integrate your coComments into your blog

digg Integrator for wordpress 2.0+ - incorporates the digg buttons right into your site

Incoming Links show the latest incoming links in your menu!

Alexa Button Generator - put a button on your site to monitor your alexa ratings

Permalink Migration when you update your perma link settings you lose a lot of readers but this gives it a 301 redirect.

Random Blogroll for those who have a ridiculously long blogroll, this randomizes your blogroll links and allows each the opportunity to be seen!

Word Cloud automatically generates clouds with words based on your blog content

Wp-Members - Create a members only site.

Ultimate Tag Warrior create a list of tags for your site

Digg It allow people to “digg” your posts!

Meta SE - allows you to include your keywords and description in your head section.