Wordpress Theme Paperback Writer Theme – How I Made a Wordpress Theme From Scratch

I just started a personal site at http://jeffbarr.com to showcase my pulp fiction type writing (science fiction fantasy horror et al), and also some of my personal projects. I needed a theme, so I decided to do a little experiment and learn how to make a Wordpress theme from scratch. It’s called Paperback Writer Theme - if you like the theme, you can download it and use it freely. I will rite a short how-to on the way I chose to make a Wordpress theme from scratch, as it turned out to be easier than I thought it would be. This is from my personal site, JeffBarr.com:

… I couldn’t find anything much to suit me at the Wordpress Theme Repository, so I decided to learn to make a WP theme, as despite several years of hacking themes and general WP tomfoolery, I had never sat down and tried to make a theme. The result: Paperback Writer Theme – my first and most likely last foray into making a Wordpress theme. Please note that if you want to use it, you will want to add a good deal of functionality – right now it is very bare boned.

Wordpress 2.8 Released

Wordpress 2.8 is now out, and the changes are fairly minor. There have been changes to the XML-RPC code, which could affect you or application you use to remotely post to Wordpress.
From Blog Herlad

Matt Mullenweg has announced the release of WordPress 2.8, available for download from wordpress.org as always, but also in your up to date WordPress install by automatic update. If you haven’t followed the beta talk, you’ll note that it is visually the same as the previous version, but a lot faster thanks to code improvement. It also featured a new widget interface that greatly improves the usage, as well as giving themes the same update and install treatment as plugins. Speaking of themes, if you’re one of those mad people who edit them right in the browser, you’ll like the code syntax added to these things. There is also new screen options on a per page basis, and a ton of bugs are ironed out.

My Newest Web Venture – Learn Investing For Beginners @ LateInvestor.com

I am launching a new blog on a subject that I have been dying to get into for some time. That is, investing for complete beginners. It’s a very challenging subject for me, as I am not exactly a whiz with money. Circumstances came up that made it the perfect time for me to launch LateInvestor.com, an idea I’ve had for some time. The idea is to learn about investing for beginners, but from the perspective of a total beginner, not a jaded expert. Easy enough, since I am a total beginner! But, I thought, being a total beginner gives me a somewhat unique perspective on investing, and investing strategy for beginners. If I’m going to learn something, many times it helps me a lot to explain it to someone else while I’m learning it. So if I want to learn how to invest as a beginner, then I’ve got to do the research, and then post about what I’m learning as I learn it. It also serves other purposes, such as keeping me on task with learning how to invest, making me some money for the future, keeping track of what I learn and my mistakes, and last but not least, making some money for the future and for my family’s futures while I’m at it!

So check out my new investor blog at http://lateinvestor.com!. You can follow the LateInvestor Twitter stream here. I will of course be posting her at Blerz as well. I am working on a new social application that combines Twitter with a couple other applications and other social streams, and it could be a killer!

5 Free Business Applications You Need To Do Business On The Web

1. Wordpress - It’s almost impossible, and very inadvisable to have any kind of public business without a blog. Wordpress is the easiest blogging/CMS there is, and also the most feature-packed. The plugins directory is huge, and with the number of developers working on plugins, themes, and improvements to the Wordpress base, you need to use Wordpress.

2. Google Analytics – You’ll never know how much traffic you’re getting, where they are coming from, where they are going, without an traffic analytics tool. Google Analytics is free and has tons of features – the interface can be a bit puzzling at first, but my advice is to figure out one report/feature at a time (say, 1 per week). Pretty soon you’ll be a Google Analytics pro and can actually use the information to make more traffic (and more money).

3. Freshbooks – I use this for all my freelance invoicing – it really is a snap to set up and use, I promise. And I hate invoicing!

4. Twitter – Use Twitter. And a blog. Combine. Repeat. USE TWITTER.

5. Google Webmaster Tools – Can’t tell you how many times this has answered many questions about Google Page Rank algorithms, and where to improve my SEO.  Invaluable.

6. Delicious – I work on several different computers, and I am always using google to search for solutions to tricky programming problems, or graphics resources for projects, etc – so Delicious is one of my most used applications – being able to store bookmarks on the web and access them from anywhere is beyond useful – it’s necessary.