I think that it’s fair to say that despite it’s general awesomeness a few of you found some usability issues with Grace. So to resolve these, I’ve changed a few things and released version 1.2 of Grace.

Live Demo

We all like to try before we buy – even when things are totally free. So why not take a look at the live demo of Theme:

Demo

Download

Download the Grace Photoblog Theme

What’s New in 1.2

Cosmetically, nothing’s changed – Grace is still a stylish, minimalistic photoblog theme for WordPress and it’s still completely FREE!

Here’s what’s new in Grace Version 1.2:

• Easier way to display images – no more “copy into the Extract field”.
• The required Custom Fields are pre-installed with the theme – no more “create a Custom Field called ‘Thumbnail’” etc.
• Automatic thumbnail resizing – no more “Create a thumbnail that’s…”
• An option’s page that let’s you control the speed of the rotating gallery on the home page.

Ace.

Despite these changes, to get the most out of the theme you still have to change a few settings on your WordPress blog - but Grace will work “out of the box” so why not Download It Now!

Configuring Grace

As I mentioned above if you want to get the most out of the Grace WordPress Photoblog Theme there are a couple of set up steps that you have to go through. But don’t worry, they’re all really straight forward and they can all be done through your blog’s Admin area.

The set up steps are:

• Create a “Featured” category.
• Create “Home” & “Gallery” Pages.
• Adding Widgets.
• Set your theme options.

I strongly recommend that you’ve activated the Grace theme in the usual WordPress theme way before you complete these step.

Create a “Featured” Category

The rotating gallery on the Grace homepage displays only the images that have been assigned to a category called “Featured”. But, rather obviously, before it can do that you need to create the “Featured” category.

To do this:

1. Log in to your WordPress Dashboard.
2. Click Post to expand the Post Menu then click the Categories link.
3. Enter Featured into the Category Name field. It’s not necessary to complete the other fields on the Add Category page but you can if you want.
4. Click the Add Category button.

That’s it! Now whenever you assign a photo to the Featured category it will automatically be displayed in the rotating gallery on the home page.

Create “Home” & “Gallery” Pages

The “home” page on the Grace demo uses a Custom Page Template and WordPress’ static front page option to make it look a little differently from the usual chronological list of posts that you find on most blogs. After all, how many blogs have a rotating gallery on their home page? But by creating a custom home page you then need to tell WordPress where to display the chronological list of posts which – because this is a photoblog – I’ve called the Gallery page.

Note - For the Home and Gallery pages to work properly you must have Permalinks setup.

To create “Home” and “Gallery” pages:

1. Click the Pages menu option. This expands the Pages menu item.
2. Click the Add New link. This displays the Add New Page page.
3. Enter the text HomePage in the Page Title field. Don’t add any content of any custom fields.
4. Select Home Page from the Template drop-down list in the Attributes panel.
5. Click the Publish button.
6. Click the Add New link in the Pages menu item again.
7. Enter the text Gallery in the Page Title field. Don’t add any content of any custom fields.
8. Click the Publish button.
9. Click the Settings menu option. This expands the Settings menu item.
10. Click the Reading link. This displays the Reading Settings page.
11. Click the A static page (select below) radio button then select HomePage from the Front page drop-down list and Gallery from the Post page drop-down list.
12. Click the Save Changes button.

And with the click of the “Save Changes” button you’ve set up your Grace photoblog to work with the custom home page!

Adding Widgets

There are 2 widgetized areas in the theme – one the home page and on the archive sections.

To add a widget:

1. Click the Appearance menu option. This expands the Appearance menu item.
2. Click the Widgets link. This displays the Widgets page.
3. Select either Home Page – to add widgets to the home page – or Sidebar – to add widgets to the archives sections – from the Current Widgets drop-down list.
4. Drag the widgets across from the left to the right that you to display.
5. Click the Save Changes button.

Adding Photos to the Gallery

To add a photo to the gallery:

1. Resize your photo so that they’re a maximum of 900px wide.
2. If you’ve turned off the “auto thumbnails”, create a thumbnail that’s 280px wide by 140px high.
3. Upload both images to your WordPress Media Library.
4. Copy the file URL of the main image then paste it into the Main Photo Custom Field.
5. Again, only if you’ve turned off the “auto-thumbnails”, copy the file URL of the thumbnail into the Thumbnail Custom Field.
6. Enter a description of the photo into the Post Editing Area using the visual text editor.
7. If you want to the photo to appear in the rotating gallery on the home page assign the post to the Featured category.

Setting Your Grace Options

The new version of Grace comes with its own options page. This let’s you switch off the auto-generation of thumbnails and set the speed of the rotating gallery.

Note: By default thumbnail auto-generation is switched on and the gallery speed is set to “Normal”.

To set your theme options:

1. Expand the Appearance sub-menu panel.
2. Click the Grace Options link. This displays the Grace Theme Options page.
3. Change your settings as required.
4. Click the Update Options button.

Note: If you turn off the Automatic Thumbnails you’ll need to create then upload them yourself.

About the Project

This is the WordPress theme for a the official Web site of the Stafford Town Centre Partnership.

Run by Stafford Borough Council, the Town Centre Partnership aims to promote retailers in Stafford. To help them achieve that aim, the Council wanted a new Web site which included a retailers’ directory. WordPress offered a perfect solution to the Council’s requirements.

The Stafford Town Centre Partnership Web site is completely powered using WordPress as a Content Management System. I created a custom Theme that uses WordPress’ Categories functionality to produce a Web site with a fully searchable directory that is easy to administrate and update.

Retailers Directory Index

Retailer’s Individual Page

Project Role

• WordPress Theme design
• WordPress Theme build
• WordPress configuration

Visit the Site

View Project

Grace Version 1.2 has now been released – go check it out!

It’s been quite a while since I released my last (and, confusing, my first) WordPress theme – ThreeColumnsBlue – so here’s my next effort – Grace.

Grace is a stylish, minimalistic photoblog theme for WordPress and it’s completely FREE!

Grace’s muted colour scheme and big frame puts your photos right at the centre of the blog making colours seem even more vibrant and beautifully complementing those in black and white.

To get the most out of the theme you have to change a few settings on your WordPress blog – all of which I describe below – but Grace will also work out of the box so why not Download It Now!

Live Demo

Why not take a look at the live demo of Theme:

Demo

Download

Grace Version 1.2 has now been released – go check it out!

Download the Grace Photoblog Theme

Theme Features

Home page features:

• A lightweight jQuery powered rotating banner of featured photos (you select which photos you want to appear here just by adding them to the Featured category)
• A “widgetised” left hand column giving you the freedom to modify the text that appears on the home page.
• A mini-gallery of your 6 most recently added photos.

The individual photo pages features:

• A 900px wide main content area to really show off your photos.
• A wide frame to make your photos stand out.
• Optional description text controlled by a Custom Field.
• Threaded comments.

As I mentioned above if you want to get the most out of the Grace WordPress Photoblog Theme there are a couple of set up steps that you have to go through. But don’t worry, they’re all really straight forward and they can all be done through your blog’s Admin area.

The set up steps are:

• Create a “Featured” category.
• Create “Home” & “Gallery” Pages.
• Adding Widgets.

I strong recommend that you’ve activated the Grace Theme in the usual way before you complete these step.

Create a “Featured” Category

The rotating gallery on the Grace homepage displays only the images that have been assigned to a category called “Featured”. But, rather obviously, before it can do that you need to create the “Featured” category.

To do this:

1. Log in to your WordPress Dashboard.
2. Click Post to expand the Post Menu then click the Categories link.
3. Enter Featured into the Category Name field. It’s not necessary to complete the other fields on the Add Category page but you can if you want.
4. Click the Add Category button.

That’s it! Now whenever you assign a photo to the Featured category it will automatically be displayed in the rotating gallery on the home page.

Create “Home” & “Gallery” Pages

The “home” page on the Grace demo uses a Custom Page Template and WordPress’ static front page option to make it look a little differently from the usual chronological list of posts that you find on most blogs. After all, how many blogs have a rotating gallery on their home page? But by creating a custom home page you then need to tell WordPress where to display the chronological list of posts which – because this is a photoblog – I’ve called the Gallery page.

Note - For the Home and Gallery pages to work properly you must have Permalinks setup.

To create “Home” and “Gallery” pages:

1. Click the Pages menu option. This expands the Pages menu item.
2. Click the Add New link. This displays the Add New Page page.
3. Enter the text HomePage in the Page Title field. Don’t add any content of any custom fields.
4. Select Home Page from the Template drop-down list in the Attributes panel.
5. Click the Publish button.
6. Click the Add New link in the Pages menu item again.
7. Enter the text Gallery in the Page Title field. Don’t add any content of any custom fields.
8. Click the Publish button.
9. Click the Settings menu option. This expands the Settings menu item.
10. Click the Reading link. This displays the Reading Settings page.
11. Click the A static page (select below) radio button then select HomePage from the Front page drop-down list and Gallery from the Post page drop-down list.
12. Click the Save Changes button.

And with the click of the “Save Changes” button you’ve set up your Grace photoblog to work with the custom home page!

Adding Widgets

There are 2 widgetized areas in the theme – one the home page and on the archive sections.

To add a widget:

1. Click the Appearance menu option. This expands the Appearance menu item.
2. Click the Widgets link. This displays the Widgets page.
3. Select either Home Page – to add widgets to the home page – or Sidebar – to add widgets to the archives sections – from the Current Widgets drop-down list.
4. Drag the widgets across from the left to the right that you to display.
5. Click the Save Changes button.

Adding Photos to the Gallery

To add a photo to the gallery:

1. Resize your photo so that they’re a maximum of 900px wide.
2. Create a thumbnail that’s 280px wide by 140px high.
3. Upload both images to your WordPress Media Library.
4. Insert the main image into the content field.
5. If you want the picture to appear in the rotating gallery on the front page, copy the html code for the image (e.g. <img src=”http://example.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/05/example.jpg” ) into the Excerpt field.
6. Create a Custom Field called Thumbnail then copy the html code for the thumbnail image into the field.
7. Create another Custom Field called Description then enter any descriptive text you want to appear on the single page for the photo.
8. If you want to the photo to appear in the rotating gallery on the home page assign the post to the Featured category.

This change has been in the pipeline for some time now as – and this is a rather embarassing confession – I’ve only been using the .com domain name because of a ridiculous button clicking error I made when originally registered the domain. Yes, when I set up 7879 Designs 3 joyous years ago and purchased my Web hosting and domain, I accidentally clicked the .com check box rather than the .co.uk (which as I am based in the UK made far more sense to be on). So thanks to some dreadful hand-eye co-ordination I’ve been running under .com ever since. There you go, I said it was embarassing.

Any way, the .com domain has served me well, and made me quite a hit in the US (in comparisson to the UK any how). But seeing as I feel that Stafford is a bit *too* far from my home in Lichfield to go for a job, let alone all the way to America, I’ve decided it’s time to make the change.

There’s now a redirect on the .com domain to the .co.uk so I shouldn’t lose too much PR and hopefully I’ll find myself doing better in the google.co.uk SERPs.

What’s A Link Baiting Contest?

The premise of the contest is simple – a link to your blog counts as an entry into a prize draw.

The contests are supposed to be “win-win”: they stand the chance to win a top notch prize and you win some of that oh so precious link juice flowing to your blog.

At least that’s the plan but as the contest draws on (we’re up to 4 days now) I’m starting to doubt whether I’ll really be able to consider myself a “winner” at the end of it.

But What Is Success?

That’s a good question and one that’s difficult to give a “one answer fits all response” to.

Whatever your exact motivation behind running a link baiting contest, the overall aim is simple – get more links into your blog.

But when the dust settles after the contest is over and you’ve posted the prize off to the winner (as only the most dastardly swines don’t actually send the prize) judging whether the contest was a success for you is all about balance. Balancing up the number of link back that you’ve got  against the time (because it takes a lot of time and effort promoting the contest) and money (because you want a half decent prize right?) that you’ve spent running the thing.

But that’s easier said than done. If there’s a way of putting a price on each link back to your blog, I’ve not come across it. So deciding where the tipping point is on whether a link baiting contest was worth it or not is a bit of a “finger in the air” job.

Back at the Rate My Ride Blog contest the prize is an 8Gb Sony MP-4 Player. Yeah, fancy, I know. I selected this prize partly in the hope that it would be more of a carrot for potential entrants and partly because I hate iPods.

And after an hour or so with my damp finger trying to pick up any sign of a breeze, I’ve put a figure of 100 plus entries as making the contest worthwhile.

As I type this (regardless of when you read it), there are 13 entries into the contest.

Hmm, not great.

Quality > Quantity!

Of course, the number of links back is only part of the “good-SERPs” equation – it’s the quality too. And by quality that means, from reputible sitespreferable from within the same niche as your blog.

And it’s this – getting the quality of link back – that seems to be a major stumbling block so far for my contest and, I assume, just about every link baiting contest out there. As out of the 13 entries most are from hard core contest entrants – many of whom have their own dedicated contest entry blogs.

Which will all but negate the effect of the link in the first place.

Will The Rate My Ride Contest Be Worth It?

There are still 16 days until my contest closes (so if you want to stand the chance to win an 8Gb Sony MP 4 Player there’s still time!) and I select a winner, so I’ve not given up hope completely.

In fact, today has bought in the highest number of visitors to the blog since I launched the contest – it seems that the snowballing viral effect is starting to kick in – so there’s every chance that I will make it to that magical, if not slightly arbitrary, 100 entries I’m looking for.

I’ll report back to you at the end of the month with my thoughts after the contest closes.

Over to You

In the mean time, have you got any thoughts about running a similar contest then please do share them in the comments below.

Kroozr - I know, it is a horrible Web 2.0 name –  is something that I’ve been working on over the past couple of weeks and, if all goes well, it should be live come the middle of May.

That’s great, but what is Kroozr?

Well, it’s a Google Maps mash-up that enables people to find modified car cruises in the UK. It’s a pretty simple application and hopefully will give something that’s of a real benefit to the modified car scene.

I’ll keep you posted with progress.

About the Project

This is the WordPress blog theme for a UK blog about modified and performance cars.

The blog is part of a UK modified car gallery called that 7879 Designs has developed.

Project Role

• WordPress theme design
• WordPress theme build

Visit the Site

View Project

About the Project

This is the WordPress theme for a UK New Media, Web Video and Podcasting company Ten Horizon who are using WordPress as a content management system.

I heavily customized the WordPress template files to give the Ten Horizon site with a portal style home page displaying the latest information from the other various sections.

Project Role

• WordPress theme design
• WordPress theme build
• WordPress configuration

Visit the Site

View Project

As the economic downturn continues to hit businesses through out the world companies are looking for ways to stream line their expenditure and save money. Often this means that both advertising and marketing budgets are cut. But you still want trade to come your way so you still have to promote your products or services.

This is where a WordPress blog provides a perfect solution to your business’ marketing dilema – you can promote your products and services in a very cost effective way.

Here’s how:

A Blog Lets You Been Seen by a Potential Very Large Audience

Let’s imaging your store has a sale on.

If you place a “50% Off!” sign in your shop window it might be seen by a few hundred people that walk past your store each day.

Place an advert in your town’s local paper and it might be seen by a few thousand people in your town.

But write about your sale on your business’ blog and, depending on the popularity of your product or services, it could potentially be seen by 100’s of thousand internet users the world over! 

Now, those 100’s of thousand visitors to your blog aren’t guaranteed to come calling simply by having a blog – if you want to get even a decent chunk of them you have to work pretty hard, sorry. But by putting yourself out there on the internet you’re giving yourself access to that potential audience.

A Blog is a Cost Effective Marketing Solution

Compared to the cost of employing a marketing or advertising agency, of buying advertising space and running a marketing campaign, having a WordPress Specialist integrate a blog into your existing Web site is a very cost effective way to market your buseinss’ products or services.

Once you have made the initial investment having your blog installed and integrated into your Web site further costs are minimal.

You will have to spend some time promoting your blog on the internet and writing posts for your blog but that’s no bad thing because:

WordPress Blogs Are Easy to Use

WordPress is just so easy to use.

Once your new blog has been installed and set up adding posts to your blog is truly as easy as typing an email. Except, again depending on how hard you work to promote it, an e-mail that could be seen by 100’s of thousands of people.

Contact 7879 Designs Today

If you’d like to integrating a WordPress blog into your existing Web site then send me an e-mail and I’ll happily discuss how to make the most out of your investment in a WordPress blog.

Here’s a sneak peak, for you lucky souls, at the new 7879 Media logo:

As I said, the full site will be up and running in the next few weeks and, obviously, I’ll add a note when it’s finally live.

Don’t panic though, I’ll continue to offer the same range of WordPress services through 7879 Designs that I currently do. So if you’re looking for a WordPress Professional to help you integrate a blog into your existing Web site then drop me a note and I’ll be more than happy to help.