Green Flamingobecause I said so: a blog of blogging tips, reviews, making money online, technology, and new things and ideas

I have some sad truth for you all, and it is that you will never find the perfect wordpress theme. There are many reasons to this, hopefully I will be able to make my point and explain why it’s true. Also, I would like to acknowledge Chelle for indirectly giving me this idea.

There are so many out there!

One, on actually finding the perfect wordpress theme, there are so many available that it is difficult to sift through what you have. I am not sure of the number that have been made, but I know it is higher than you can search through in 2 days, 2 weeks, 2 months, or maybe even 2 years.

Problems Arise

I have seen thumbnails of what I think will be a great theme, and when I take a closer look it turns out to be pretty crappy. Sometimes you have your hopes up high from a demo, thinking that it may look great on your site. That is only 1 of 3 problems that can arise. The second problem is that when you upload and use the theme, you are tired of it and don’t like the look. This has happened to me many times, and I mostly download them because they look interesting and not always because I think they are perfect for my site. The third problem that might strike is that of having technical difficulties, saying something doesn’t display right, things aren’t aligned as they were in the demo, words overlap, things like that. I hate these things that happen, and wish I could get rid of them with a click of a button. So, unless you are a professional theme designer or it is your theme then trash that theme, it has no use to you if it’s “broken.”

Interests Change

Because your interests in theme can change, and will change, then you may have the perfect theme but it will never be perfect forever. Even if you have a high-quality custom job done you will not always love the theme the same way, though you may keep it for months, years, however long. I am just saying that your theme interests will change just as your love interests do.

Those are my reasons, I could add a few more, but they are the most obvious and the ones that standout the most. I have a few small updates for you, and a little notice, so don’t hop off to another water pool yet.

Updates

I think I am going to re-brand this blog, though I will continue to dish out blogging tips. Mostly I would like to add a little niche, and there is no word for it really, because it is a new niche. Since it is new, I might be able to dominate it easily, who knows. It is just “about blogging,” just little things that happen, tendencies, news, and just a general about blogging blog. This is not considered a category in most options, so I will continue to officially brand this as blogging tips or young entrepreneur. If I have to, I might say it is MMO, but I have learned to stay away from that path.

I may be changing the theme soon, I am on the lookout, and Rajaie is coming out with one that I might be able to use. I advised him in the making, and added some things that I like, and I am going to be happy to promote it and use it.

I have started to think or branding “flamingo” a bit more, and trying to go with a green flamingo feel. This is why I mentioned the water pool, and in contest I might play on words with “flamingo” and “flaming.” If you have any ideas as to how to make this have a more “Green Flamingo” feel, they will be highly appreciated.

Note

Tomorrow I assume I will be heading off to an amusement park, and I will most likely  staying the night in the region. I may not be back for a day or two, so just look out for me, I won’t be gone long.

Over the weekend, I may go on another trip to Dallas Forth Worth, flight training does allow you I think to bring family along, so I might tag along there a few days. If there are any bloggers I know in Dallas, I would love to meet, though I am not sure it is possible. I will open this option in a few years, as I get older it will seem more professional. Going to Dallas I hope to bring my computer with me, maybe write an article on the flight and publish it at the hotel. I will have Internet access, so I will probably be blogging.

I am sure you have heard that you need to create a “user friendly” blog, so here we will expand on that idea. Of course, you do want to make your blog friendly to all visitors (excepting spammers) so that they will like the blog and come back. This will be part of a series here, and this is part one, the theme.

A theme distinguishes the look of a site, including colors, pictures, and layout can come with theme. If you look at my blog, the cover that you see is the theme, or if you are noticing how the design is constructed.

There are different types of themes, for different people and for different platforms.

• Probably the most common theme is the Wordpress theme. Since many, many, many blogs are using wordpress as a platform, then wordpress themes are all over. Now there are three main types of wordpress themes, which are:

Free themes - there are many free wordpress themes that you can find, and they really have a great look. The theme I am using is a free wordpress theme, but I have other plans for this blog and it’s theme. The only problem with the free themes are that there are so many out there, and so many good ones too, that it is hard t find the perfect one. I am not going to refer any free wordpress theme sites to you yet, because I think you should search on your own.

Premium themes - premium themes are made by very experienced theme designers. Premium themes cost you a bit, but they can be worth it. One thing notorious for premium themes is that they have a lot of features, meaning there will be places you can easily edit, such as banner ads, featured posts, RSS details, and many other things that can be much easier than going into your code and editing it.

Custom Themes - custom themes seem so great to me. Every blog that I come across with a custom theme really seems to have a nice feel. Custom themes are themes that you pay someone to make for you, it is custom for you, having whatever you need with it, and also is used for only you. It will not be sold to anyone else.

Now we move on to the second kind or type of theme, and these are Blogger Themes. These themes are for people joining Blogger, where it is yourdomain@blogspot.com. There can be some great blogger themes, but I see nothing special about them, maybe the reason being I am not a Blogger user.

Our last type of theme introduced is the plain html template, or CSS or xhtml, but basically it is just code making this template. I have started a site using just code, but that was a practice of Green Flamingo Designs and I have decided not to mess with code so much anymore, it just cannot do the same things as Green Flamingo › Edit — WordPressthe themes can. I do not recommend this type, for it is hard to deal with and a bit of a pain.

Choosing and creating your design

You should always combine certain aspects of a basic theme design into what your site looks like. Those will be introduced here, as well as some guidance on choosing or creating a theme.

• Creative
• Semi unique (not a hugely common theme)
• unique graphics
• friendly graphics
• accessible and usable
• not overwhelming or scrambled
• black on white text, not white on black

Creative - be yourself, be creative. Make the look something that is you.

Semi unique - if you have a free theme, choose one that is not too common, you do not want to be the same as everyone else! Same thing applies to the premium themes, so you might want to move on from the John Chow or Cow “Milk It” theme.

Unique Graphics - you want to have unique graphics, so you should probably get your own header, logo, maybe even RSS button.

Friendly Graphics - you want to keep your graphics friendly, mostly to the eyes, but in general as well. You want to have everything neat and friendly, with fun but professional graphics.

Accessible and usable - we want your visitors to be able to use the theme functions, so make sure they can do that!

Not overwhelming - you want to keep it short and sweet. Do not load up and graphics and pics, ads, or anything else disturbing to the eyes. If if hurts you to look at your blog, it’ll kill others.

Black on white text - I think you should keep it so that your text is black and background white. I have heard complaints from the white text/dark background thing. It does not have to stay completely black and white, you can add some variation, just have dark text on light background.

This was day 1 of the tips! Expect to see more tomorrow! I will be updating all of this, and I may put much of this into separate posts. We do not want too much in one post! I am not sure exactly how I will balance out all the information, I think I will just turn it into a long series of post, each one being about half this length. If you like it all in one, then let me know.

I think that this was a great post and would be very grateful if you submitted this to any sites. Thank you!

There are many methods that people use to write, many methods they use to concentrate on writing, many things to persuade or even force them to write. As I have said before, forcing yourself to write is not a good thing, and I think that is you make yourself write then the writing will not have the love in it that your more natural writing has. Even if you are writing an article or promotional blurb for a company or business, you can still write that in a natural way.

This post is another of my endless series on writing tips, for I want you to become the best writer you can be. I cannot bring out everything for you, to find your real soul in writing you must discover that flame on your own. I have moved away from anything personal, though I am dying to talk of my troubles I have had lately online, for I am afraid when  have a traffic rush one of my worst posts will be up. So here I present to you some methods to concentrate on your writing, getting it done on time while still enjoying life.

Have what you want in mind - you should have an idea of what you want to write, usually before I step up to the plate I have a few paragraphs in my head - which sadly are forgotten by the time I can write. This is why I should carry a notepad in my ear, pants, shirt, etc. Basically you should have a topic, maybe a starting sentence, maybe a little map of what you are going to write in your head. This cannot always be done, I know I hate what teachers call “writing mapping” or the “web planning.” Don’t do that or it’ll kill me, but have an idea.

Get comfortable - make sure you are fairly comfortable with where you are, having a soft seat and good posture. You don’t want to be sitting on a stone bench, forar to me, that is not all that comfortable. I could spend a few hundred dollars on a nice soft, squishy, leather chair but I guess I will stick with what I have.

Don’t slouch - when I said get comfortable I did not mean you should slouch. This has two meanings: (1.) sit up straight in a healthy position (2.) Do not get too comfortable such as lying in bed or in a chair/couch where you are not in a good position to type or write with mind.

Stay professional - You want to keep your job by writing a good advertising article write? Then stay professional. For blogging you should be as you are at work - having ok clothes and keeping fresh. Unless you are writing about the “adult jammy party extravaganza” I suggest you stay out of sleep wear and other unprofessional clothing while you write (unless you are known as “the nude blogger” of course). We want to keep the articles professional with the air of knowledge around.

Use willpower - sometimes you have to be strong enough inside to stop yourself from wondering off on the internet, but it can be very difficult. Try it out for a bit and see if you are any good. If you want to make it more fun reward yourself from keeping away from your inbox or facebook. Choose either small or big rewards!

Deprive yourself - when willpower isn’t enough to keep you away from your gmail inbox or myspace, you will have to start depriving yourself of these dreaded time vacuums. I do not usually do this, but I suffer the consequences from not disconnecting. A lot say to disconnect from the internet all together, which I guess if the best plan. You also have to worry about offline games, things off the computer and so on. Just deprive yourself of the right amount so you can post what you need.

I hope these tips have helped you concentrate on your writing! Happy blogging!

Maybe the title should be “successful blogging is not easy,” but we do need to cut down on words in a title.

As most of you know, blogging is not that easy to maintain. There  is so much to do in so little time and people can become overwhelmed with it. If maintaining a blog seems to stressful to you, I advise you don’t keep a blog.

First of all, you have to have the motivation to start a blog. You all should start a blog by the way, and if you are all newbies, I will write a small guide like everybody else does to get you started. Now mind you, this is the niche “blogging tips” which deals with tips for blogging, not starting a blog :). Some people start off thinking it will be hard to maintain a blog, which can be right, but also blogging continuously could be easy for them, and they miss out on their chance.

Once you have a domain, hosting, theme, and every other little piece to get that website off the ground, then you have to deal with content and promotion.

Content - content can be very hard to think of at times. The content you find and choose and write will develop your niche, or you will specifically have a niche in mind while starting the blog. Content can be the biggest trouble of some bloggers, especially if in a niche with not much to talk about.

Promotion - it doesn’t matter if “content is king” but the bottom line is you have to promote. There are many ways to promote your blog, such as blog commenting, guest posting, forum posting, advertising, contest sponsoring,  and social sites. Any of these work, and there are many more beyond. Some people get tired of promoting, but they have to keep going, just like they have to keep the content flowing.

The hardest part of it all, balancing time.

Balancing offline - Besides just balancing the time you have on the net, then you have to balance that in with other things you do in your day. If you have a day job offline, then you have to be at that and only have so much time to be working n your blog. If you are lugged around by your family all day, the same thing applies.

Balancing online - you also have to manage your time online, which can be just as difficult as offline. You do have to create a balance between writing and promoting, and we will count blog reading as promoting because essentially it is. You also have other things to do I’m assuming, and those of course take time. If you spend a lot of time on social networks you might have to give those up if you want to blog.

In the next few articles, I will talk about how you can manage and balance time, so stay tuned!