If you have installed Wordpress, you are presented with couple of themes.  They are not particularly exciting, and most people want something that looks a little more individual.

There are literally thousands of free themes out there.  If you are running the latest version of Wordpress (and I hope you are) then downloading these themes to your site is simplicity itself.  You can have a preview of the new theme and if you like what you see, you can activate it.

However, this is still not enough for most people.  They want something that is individual to themselves, whether it is a personalised header graphic or an entirely new colour scheme.

Customising a Wordpress theme can be quite simple.  The only requirement is that you should have a rudimentary knowledge of HTML and CSS.

My own personal method of creating a scheme that I like is to browse the Web for a theme that has all the rudiments that I require.  I will then set about customising it.

In the majority of cases, themes follow a similar pattern in that the basic files are common to most themes.

The main files which require moderation are usually

• header.php
• Footer.php
• sidebar.php
• style.css

These are found in the folder wp-content/themes/yourtheme where ‘yourtheme’ is the name of the theme you are modifying.

Probably the most important of these is the file ‘style.css’.

Say for example, you wish to change the banner on the site.

The simplest method is to right-click on the current image.  It is usually a background image so you select ‘View Background Image’ or ‘Save Background Image’, depending on your browser.  One way or another, this will give you the name of the file – usually something like ‘banner.jpg’ or ‘header.jpg’.

Having retrieved the name, (you needn’t save the file or anything else), you then search through ‘style.css’ until you find a mention of that file.

For example, the top image on this site is ‘header-bg.jpg’ and it is located in the ‘images’ directory.  If I search through the ‘style.css’ file (which is pretty large) I find the following:

#head {position:relative; width:990px; height:250px; margin:0 auto; text-align:left; background: url(images/top-right-bg-repeat.jpg) 90px 0px repeat-x;}
.crack {position:absolute; left:0px; top:0px; width:990px; height:51px; background: url(images/crack.jpg) 627px 0px no-repeat;}
.header {width:627px; height:250px; background: url(images/header-bg.jpg) no-repeat;}
.logo {position:absolute; left:0px; top:115px; width:627px;}
.logo h1 {font: bold 26px/120% Georgia; color:#602600; padding:0 0 10px 20px; margin-right:16px;}

I can therefore change that line to use a different file, though it should be noted that the alternative image must have dimensions of 627 pixels wide and 250 pixel high, otherwise there may be problems.

Essentially any image in the scheme can be changed this way.  Of course another method is to just rename your new file to that of the existing one, and then overwrite it (So I would rename my personal file as ‘header-bg.jpg’ and overwrite the existing file).

Colours are slightly harder to change.

Colours in CSS files are invariably written in the form #112233.  This is in the format Red-Green-Blue so that the 11 refers to the level of red (on a scale of 0 to 255), 22 refers to green and 33 to blue.  However, it uses what’s called hexadecimal notation which means that 255 becomes FF.  Without going into too much detail, counting in Hexadecimal follows the following pattern:

1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, A, B, C, D, E, F, 10, 11 …..  19, 1A, 1B … 1F, 20 …

In other words, F in Hexadecimal is 16 in denary (decimal), and 10 (in H) is 17.

So your colour should always consist of six characters ranging from 0 to 9 and A to F.

As an example of the two limits, Black is #000000, and White is #FFFFFF.

Examples of that notation will crop up throughout your ‘style.css’ and any of these can be changed to provide your desired colours.  The biggest problem is determining a) the code for the number you require, and b) which bit of code refers to the colour you wish to change.  Sometimes it can be obvious – in the code extract above, the font in the header (logo) is set to #602600, so changing this will change the colour of the words “The Other Fellow”.

Customising a theme initially can be a case of trial and error, but if you become familiar with a particular theme, you will soon learn which elements are which and what colour refers to what.

Initially it can be a case of pot luck, but with a bit of practice, you should soon be able to tweak your theme to the style you wish.

Good luck!

I really am my own worst enemy.

I announced a while ago that I was going to try to boost this site a bit, and then what do I do?  I go and leave it unattended for weeks on end.

Maybe I chose a bad time.  The old medications are fucking up the head a bit, so writing isn’t as easy these days.  Maybe a trip to the old Horse Doctor is the answer to my ranking problems? 

I wrote a few months ago about RLS.  This has become progressively worse over the last while.  I am taking medication to suppress the symptoms, and that medication is doing a grand job.  I am getting a good nights sleep, and the symptoms during the day are bearable.  However that same medication has the side effect of slowing the brain to a crawl, so that the simple act of writing a short post like this becomes quite a task. 

It may seem reasonable, that if a medication is having deleterious side effects, that I should come off it.  However, you can take it from me – I would rather the side effects to the incessant RLS!!

So it is time to make an effort.  It is time to squint my brain and try to update this a bit more.

Time will tell.

Alexa ranking is a very strange thing.

I wrote about efforts to improve the ranking of this site a few weeks ago.  So far I have been marginally successful in that the ranking has risen from 1,627,533 to 1,275,521.  It’s not much, but it’s in the right direction.

What is surprising about the above figures is that traffic has not increased at all in the period between then and now.  In fact, it shows a downward trend.

In contrast, traffic to the other site has remained remarkably constant over the same period, yet its ranking has dropped from 195,510 to 203,289.

I am aware that Alexa is not the best yardstick for the measurement of site traffic, as it depends on the viewer having the plugin installed, but I find the above figures somewhat bemusing.

The one unfortunate thing about Alexa though is that it tends to be used by advertising companies to determine a site’s popularity.  As advertising is contained in both sites, Alexa ranking is fairly important to me.

The only thing I can think of is that this site tend to have more technical content, and therefore is more likely to be visited by people with the plugin.

If you wish to set up a blog, the simplest solution is to make yourself a free one.

There are many sites out there that offer free blog hosting, such as Wordpress or Blogger.  A Google search for ‘free blog hosting’ currently brings up over 28 million results, though the majority of those aren’t necessarily quite what you are looking for.

I have a personal fondness for Wordpress.  It is the software that I use, and is obviously the software used on Wordpress.com, so the latter would be my personal recommendation. 

Signing up is easy.  Probably the most difficult part is thinking up a name for your blog.  If you have sniffed around the blogging world at all ( and I presume you have?) you will be aware that names are virtually limitless in their range.  A lot depends, of course on the nature of your blog.  If you are writing to promote your company for example, then the name should reflect the company name.  Basically it is just a matter of common sense and personal taste.

Once you have chosen your name, it is simply a matter of entering that name and a couple of other simple items, such as a password of your choice and your email address, and you are off.  It is that simple.

So why isn’t every blog in the world on Wordpress or one of the others?  The answer is that a heck of a lot of them are.  The bigger free hosts offer plenty facilities to customise your site, whether it is the look or the functionality.

Many however opt to go down the paid route. 

Why should anyone want to pay for a blog, if you can get one for nothing?

While the free hosts provide a lot of facilities, they are limited.  You may want a design that isn’t available of the free platforms or you may require some functionality that requires some simple tweaking.  Having tried both, I would not go back to free hosting as I like the limitless possibilities that self-hosting provides.  I am my own master, and if I want to do something quirky to my site, I can do it.

So how much does paid hosting cost?

The answer to that is of course down to you.  It is not as expensive these days as many would think.  A quick search on the Internet brings up providers who will provide hosting for between €50 and €80 a year.

One thing you need to note is that if you go down the self hosted route, you will need a domain name ( www.whatever.com )  which is usually obtainable through the hosting provider.  .COM domains are extremely simple to obtain, so the drawback is that most of the good names are already gone, but with a bit of imagination, you should be able to find an available one.  That can all be explained and arranged by your provider.

One disadvantage to self hosting is that you may have to get your hands dirty and do some software installation.  Some hosts provide the software pre-installed, and others don’t.  Installation is usually a pretty straightforward job anyway and help is easy to find, either from your hoster or from countless forums.

So what are you waiting for?

Come on in – the water is lovely.

I have been approached quite a few times by people who would like to start a blog.

Of course there are many blogs out there giving advice on this subject, so why should I be any better qualified to give advice than the next person?  I suppose the short answer to that is that I’m not.  However, I have been running a blog for a couple of years now that not only won a couple of prestigious awards, provides me with a nice income stream but has also landed me a little book deal.  So maybe I am better qualified?  I don’t know.  It’s up to you.

So you want to write a blog?

First of all, you have to ask yourself what kind of blog do you want?

There are many forms of blog out there.

The personal blog.

This is more or less an online diary, where you can write freeform on just about any topic that takes your fancy.  This is probably the easiest form to write, but because of that you are up against very stiff competition.

The business blog.

This is one where you can showcase your business.  You can provide a friendlier approach than is possible through a standard website.  However, this type of writing requires fairly constant updating, or else it gives the impression that your business is stagnant too.  If done properly, it is a great way of reaching your clients [or new clients?] on a much mre personal level.

The art blog.

The art blog can showcase photography, paintings or even music.  Why not?  This is ideal for the amateur or the professional alike.  Your talent can be put on line for the world to see, and who knows?  You could be the world’s next big discovery!

The specialist blog.

This is written by someone with an interest in some particular hobby or skill.  It can cover a multitude, such as your favourite football team, cookery, knitting, beekeeping or whatever takes your fancy.  The only suggestion I would make is that you should be passionate enough about your subject to devote a lot of time to it.

There are many other types of blog out there, but the above covers the bulk.

Having a subject to write about is not enough though.  You must like writing.  That may seem obvious, but it is very easy to become bored with the whole process and give up after the first couple of weeks. 

The next question you have to ask yourself is why you want to blog at all.

If you see it as a way to make money, then forget it.  Blogs rarely make much money, and then only when they are popular and have already broken into the mainstream.  The passion for writing must come first, and money is just the possible bonus in the future.

If you are starting because you have been told it is the right thing to do, or because your friends do it, then you are probably doomed to failure.  You must have the desire to dedicate yourself to it.  The passion must come before the blog.

Having said that, starting a blog is easy.  Starting a successful blog is a little more difficult, but don’t let that put you off.

To summarise -

• Do you enjoy writing?
• Do you have something to say?
• Is it going to be of interest to other people?
• Are you prepared to keep it up possibly for a very long time?

If the answer to all the above is ‘yes’ then there is no reason why you shouldn’t write a successful blog that isn’t doomed to failure in the backwaters of the Internet.

I will write about setting one up next time around.

I often come across strange things on the Internet.

I found a site today that I hadn’t seen before.  It’s quite a nice site and takes an interesting approach to site listings -

http://www.gimmedat.ie/

What really intrigues me about it is their ‘Top 5 Sites this Week’.

There, right at the top is Head Rambles!

And what is intriguing about that?

Well, I don’t think Head Rambles was ever submitted to that directory.

They don’t seem to list blogs.

If you do a search within the site, Head Rambles isn’t to be found.

And finally, where did they get the little logo?  I never made it.

I’m not complaining.  In fact I like the logo and am flattered.

I’d like to know how it came about though…

Two of the most ofetn asked questions in the blogging world are “how to I start a blog” and “how do I get people to read it”.

The latter is one question I would like to experiment with.

This site has been ticking over since the beginning of last December.  As an eperiment, I would like to see if I can improve its performance from the point of view of visitors and ranking.

Determining a site’s popularity is not easy.  Some people go by the number of visitors within a time period [say, a week or a month] while others go by page views.  Another method is by ranking.

There are three generally accepted ranking figures – Technorati, Google and Alexa.

Measuring visitors to a site is not easy.  On the Head Rambles site, I currently use Ice Rocket, Google Analytics, Woopra and raw log files.  These all give wildly different figures for the same period, so effectively, I ignore them and use them for trending purposes only.

Ranking is a different matter.

I have just registered this site with Technorati, and it apparently has a ranking of 13.  This is roughly what I would expect for a relatively new and unexciting site.  Head Rambles used to have a ranking in excess of 200, but this has dropped off dramatically as the figures are recycled and existing links are discounted and only new links are measured.  Head Rambles currently stands at 93.

Google Ranking is deemed to be important if you are interested in search engine ranking.  Personally, I have not found this to be the case, as Head Rambles consistently shoots to the top of Google within minutes of a post being published.  Head Rambles used to have a ranking of 5 with Google, which was excellent.  However that dropped to 3, presumably when they discovered I was advertising with a non-Google affiliate?  Ranking for this site is currently 4, which I think is pretty good.

Alexa ranking is a strange one.  It is widely used as a benchmark for advertising sales, yet is notoriously difficult to predict as it seems to result from counting the number of visits from people who have the Alexa plug-in installed on their browser.   If this is the case [and Alexa is not that popular as a plug-in] then it is an extremely bad method of quantifying a site’s value.  However, this is the metric chosen by the industry, and who am I to argue?

The Alexa ranking for this site is currently 1,627,533 and it will be interesting to see if I can improve on this figure.

Over the next while, I am going to try various techniques to improve the traffic to this site.  I will of course write about my efforts, and post the corresponding rise or fall in traffic.

It would indeed be nice if I could get this site’s Alexa ranking up close to that of Head Rambles which is currently at 195,510.

We shall see?

I sometimes wonder why I started writing this blog.

I never seem to have that much to say, as the life of a retiree is not exactly full of parties and hectic socialising.  In fact, life is quite quiet, and that is the way we like it.

I started it originally as a counterpoint to Head Rambles, as a way of clearing my name and trying to prove my sanity to those who have read the other site.

However, since I started it, posting has been very sporadic.  The big question is – is it worth it?  Is it worth any time and effort, or should I just let it die the peaceful death?

Decisions.

Decisions.

In 2001 when I was thrown out of left RTE, I decided to set up a little business doing web design.

The intention was to run it as a paid hobby, doing little sites for local businesses and the like.

It didn’t work out that way.

For reasons that I still can’t quite understand, the business took off in a big way, and within a year, I had major contracts with Lily O’Brien’s Chocolates to rebuild their small brochure site into a major e-commerce site, and with a subsidiary of O2 to build a major virtual private network linking all mobile phone shops to head office.  There were also numerous smaller sites and the business rapidly got out of hand.

I expanded the business to include hosting simply because it made sense to be able to provide an all in one package and to have complete control over the servers.

In the years since, I have never been short of work.  On the contrary, I frequently found myself juggling contracts to keep all the clients happy.

Over the last couple of years however, the CFS has taken hold, and I have found the design and development side to be more and more of a strain.  As this was supposed to be a hobby, not a chore, I decided to quit that side of the business and to just continue with the hosting.

Over the last couple of months, I have been doing the figures.  I have decided that the income from hosting alone does not warrant the hassle and responsibility of looking after fifty or so websites, and I made the final decision.

I am quitting.

Ending a lucrative business is not a light decision.  I have responsibilities to my clients, and they all have to be taken care of.  I have arranged that in such a way that no one should be inconvenienced in any way, and they will maybe even find life to be a bit cheaper!  From my own perspective, I will have a lot more time to concentrate on enjoying life.  I will have a lot more time for writing, both online and off.

I’ll miss the money though.