(UPDATE 12/16/2009 = due to some legal technicalities, I changed the domain and revamped my business site.)

Engipress is my professional output for anything and everything related to WordPress. I designed the WordPress Theme, designed the vBulletin forum skin, and I even went out of my way to find great mods to enhance the forum posting experience, all done by myself (to assist in showcasing my skills).

The designs are intertwined to give a great overall similar feel for the new website structure (The vBulletin forum sits atop the WP Theme forum), so the forum doesn’t impair the blog’s CSS layout or font stylings.

Perhaps the main attraction of this new website for me will be to contract freelance website work for those using WordPress as either a Blog or Content Management System. Just visit my hire page to see what services I offer. I’m very flexible with the pricing as I realize different people will require different needs for what they want to accomplish.

Also as a FYI, any posts relating to WordPress or blogging will probably be made on my Engipress Blog from now on. This doesn’t mean I’ll be neglecting Lightning Shock, it just represents the fact that my personal website will be shifting directions in a sense.

I feel I’m doing everyone a favor by providing this great resource to anyone who uses wordpress or plans to.

This will allow you to easily display things like “Recent Posts”, Text inserts, and even Google Adsense Ads on your homepage. My website’s front page was created using this process, so I will specifically teach you how two create a two column page layout. Any text editor will do, I used Notepad++, which works great.

First, you have to register the widgets and create two new custom sidebars for your theme. I named each sidebar “col-left” and “col-right”, so, if you wish to name them something differently, then replace the phrase within the code appropriately. To do this, open your functions.php file in your theme’s folder and insert the following code (It works fine for me right at the top of the file):

<?php
if ( function_exists('register_sidebar') )
register_sidebar(array('name'=>'col-left',
'before_widget' => '',
'after_widget' => '',
'before_title' => '<h2>',
'after_title' => '</h2>',
));
register_sidebar(array('name'=>'col-right',
'before_widget' => '',
'after_widget' => '',
'before_title' => '<h2>',
'after_title' => '</h2>',
));
?>

Assuming your theme is already using widgets, you’ll want to find the specific section of code in functions.php where the widgets are already registered. For my theme, this is where it was:

<?php
if (function_exists('register_sidebar')) {
register_sidebar();
register_sidebar();
register_sidebar(array('name'=>'Royale Top'));
register_sidebar(array('name'=>'Royale Bottom'));
}

And then I added the newly defined sidebars to it, like this:

<?php
if (function_exists('register_sidebar')) {
register_sidebar();
register_sidebar();
register_sidebar();
register_sidebar();
register_sidebar(array('name'=>'col-left'));
register_sidebar(array('name'=>'col-right'));
register_sidebar(array('name'=>'Royale Top'));
register_sidebar(array('name'=>'Royale Bottom'));
}

Now that we’ve got the functions out of the way, we need to create a Page Template. For my homepage, I decided to include a header, footer, and the new widget sidebars we just defined.

Open a new text document and save the file, I decided to call it welcome.php. To be sure that wordpress reads this appropriately, we need to include the template name in the file, like so:

<?php

/*
Template Name: Welcome Page
*/
?>

And to include the sidebars and everything else in this specific template, insert the following:

<?php get_header(); ?>

<div id="widecontent">
<div id="col-left">
<?php if ( !function_exists('dynamic_sidebar')
|| !dynamic_sidebar('col-left') ) : ?>
<?php endif; ?>
</div>
<div id="col-right">
<?php if ( !function_exists('dynamic_sidebar')
|| !dynamic_sidebar('col-right') ) : ?>
<?php endif; ?>
</div>

</div>

<?php get_footer(); ?>

Then you can upload the welcome.php we just created to your theme’s root folder (the same folder that contains your functions.php file). To actually apply this template is fairly easy, just go to “Write > Page”, scroll down to “Page Template” and select the appropriate file you just created (Welcome Page, in my case). Then go to “Design > Widgets” and select which features you want to appear in each sidebar (col-left and col-right).

Woohoo! The sidebars are now showing up on the main page. But, it looks pretty bad, just one underneath the other. To adjust where and how these widgets look, we must apply styles to the newly created sidebars. If you’ve noticed, when we coded the template, we applied some divisional IDs to the sidebars, so we have to open up style.css and insert them somewhere (preferably a section where you’ll be able to find them easily) and float the sidebars and add margins to the content, for example:

#widecontent {
font-size: 1.9em;
width: 45%;
list-style: none;
margin-left: 100px;
}

#col-left {
float: left;
}

#col-right {
float: left;
}

It’s really up to you how you want to style the sidebars, so have fun and play around with them for a little bit. Adjust them to your personal tastes and likings. I was able to include many things on my homepage now that I wasn’t able to before.

(UPDATE = 6/21/2009) I made a few style changes to the homepage, so it doesn’t look exactly like the code written above, however the basic premise of the concept is still the same. The Homepage still uses a widgetized page.

The Plugin

First I want to say that the SRG Clean Archives Plugin is the BEST Archive plugin for wordpress out there. If you don’t have it installed, I’d highly recommend you do.

The Problem

When you download the plugin, everything should be working fine, display-wise. You can still create the page and have a list of all your blog posts in one place.

However, in the administration control panel, you’ll notice that the plugin will NOT allow you to update options. After you check a few off and click “Update Options” It takes you to a completely blank, white screen.

The Solution

The fix for this error is actually pretty simple. Just open up the srg_clean_archives.php file in a text editor, scroll down to approximately line 240 or so. Look for this highlighted portion of the code:

function srg_admin_page() {
if (isset($_POST['srg_submit'])) {

check_admin_referer( '$myplugin_nonce', $myplugin_nonce );

if (isset($_POST['srg_show-comments'])) {
update_option('srg-clean_comment-display', 'true');
} else {
update_option('srg-clean_comment-display', 'false');
}

And add two forward slashes in front of that line, so you’ll end up with this:

function srg_admin_page() {
if (isset($_POST['srg_submit'])) {

// check_admin_referer( '$myplugin_nonce', $myplugin_nonce );

if (isset($_POST['srg_show-comments'])) {
update_option('srg-clean_comment-display', 'true');
} else {
update_option('srg-clean_comment-display', 'false');
}

Now you can change and edit all the plugin options you wish to make.

Lastly, I have to give credit to clowny for finding the error.

Blogging requires a great amount of time and effort to write great article posts and market it effectively. If you want to take the money path, you have to treat it as a business.

Take this Pavlina post for example, he tells his story of how he was able to make a living of of his blog, and provides some tips to newbies at blogging. He didn’t start out with just a couple of ideas and hoped for the best, he offers a unique perspective on life and writes about something he is passionate about, Personal Development.

Most people are probably thinking that you could write maybe about 15 or 20 posts for their site, place some ads on their site, and expect the income to just roll right in, however this is certainly not the case, it doesn’t work that way. How do I know this? It’s because I had a similar mindset when I was first starting out.

Take my first site I ever created as a prime example, Toptenlisted.com. I started out thinking that if I wrote a few Top 10 Lists that were mildly interesting, my income opportunities would roll right in and I’d be flowing with the cash. Not necessarily scamming people or anything, I just thought I originally had a great idea, only to learn that there were already at least 5 or 10 other competing sites (another lesson to learn here, make sure you do your research properly beforehand).

I first started out with my ideas back in the Fall of 2006. I figured I’d purchase some Website designing software (Dreamweaver), use a common template without knowing much about HTML or CMS systems, slap some content together, and I’d be on my way. This was before I really knew how wonderful WordPress can be.

I completed everything I mentioned around February of ’07, and I can honestly say my first site attempts were awful. Take a look at the site archives of Toptenlisted to get a few screenshots of what it looked like.

After I realized just how awful my designs were, I thought that I couldn’t create something great. But then I decided to look around at WordPress.org and played with a few designs until I finally rested on my current theme, which looks pretty good to me at this moment, in my opinion, miles better than what I first started out with.

Although I felt my design was OK, and I had a fair amount of content written for it, it was too restricting for me. I feel that my mind is always racing with ideas and always writing a “Top 10 Reasons…..” or a “Top 10 Ways…..” was just holding me back, thus the reasoning for this blog’s creation was born.

You have to keep it at and not give up so easily, even now with my current blog, I’ve made about a grand total of $10 via adsense. However, money is not my primary concern at this moment, you have to build a traffic base and network with others who have similar interests as yours. If monetizing and writing for money is your primary reason for getting into blogging, you probably won’t be very happy with the results you receive.

Vangogh gave me some great advice a while back (over 6 months ago) on the Webmaster Talk Thread “How do you build Quality Links?” (among others, such as St0x and Seolman, etc. not to discredit the advice everyone else also gave, but Steven’s really hit me). I’d recommend reading this thread if you’re just starting out and would like to receive some great insight on blogging and internet networking, or to find out just how much of a n00b I was back then (Not saying I’m not a n00b anymore, that’s still up for debate ).

Your Content Sucks

You don’t want to admit it, but this is likely a reason why you’re not doing to well. While you may think you have just written a great blog post, many of us are highly biased in favor of our own content, and in turn have a subjective viewpoint on what we write about.

In order to whether what you are writing is truly “good” or not, depends on who reads it, and what comments hey may make on your site. Other bloggers will definitely link to your site if they like it well enough.

You’re Not Marketing Properly

See an earlier post I made about how to effectively network with those that have similar-minded interests as yours to gain some more insight.

Instead of using strategies like “link building” or SEO, if you decide to just have something other bloggers want to link to, the marketing aspect should take care of itself. Remember, hyperlinks are there to navigate through the web, not for whatever “perceived” SEO benefits you *think* they may have.

Your Site Design Sucks

Whether its due to the colors you choose or just usability issues, Website design can turn away up to half of your potential visitors.

One other point to keep in mind here is that your site may also have a wide variety of visitor-types. For example, there is a large percentage of the elderly population online, thus considering things like text size, flashing lights, etc. may turn some of them off, because they may have trouble viewing the screen, or controlling the mouse effectively.

You’re just being Lazy

This is the probably the biggest reason. You know you want to write that extra blog post, or comment on a few other blogs, but deep down, you realize you just don’t feel like taking care of the problem.

You’d probably rather be doing something like playing online games, or chatting with friends all night. But remember, in order to have a great, high-quality-traffic site, it takes a great amount of time and dedication. It reminds me of the 10/90 quote:

“Everything in life is 10 percent inspiration and 90 percent perspiration.”

That’s what I’m currently going through at the time I’m writing this. Seriously I have no idea what I’m currently writing about at this time, I’m just going with my flow.

Some would probably say that this is crazy, or that I’m just extremely bored (may be true, to some extent) I thought I’d try this experimentation that could help me get past this mind detour.

Right now I’m listening to Metallica’s Orion, I’m sitting in front of my computer typing this blog post (obviously), and I’m eating some Dove chocolates (Yeah, I know, real exciting).I wonder what my future holds in store for me tomorrow, maybe something fun and different will happen or an interesting event will occur…….. OK, probably not.

Hmmmmm…….
Maybe now would be a good time to create a homework chart, (for my college classes), so I can keep track of all my assignments and make sure none are late. I’ll probably use excel or something and make sure I include all my classes, and get some work done ahead of time.

To put it plainly……………….No

What’s the point in trying to *get* a good ranking, worrying about SERP’s every other moment, how many links I can get, or whether or not someone like Google is going to “penalize” my website for whatever reason?

Like I really want to waste my time writing content for search engines that *might * rank my pages high one day and low the next. A search engine, such as Google, is NOT the boss of my blog, and they can’t tell me what I should or shouldn’t do with it.

I want to strongly emphasize that *I* choose what *I* want to write about, and I do it to either please or inform my readers, or on occasion inflate my ego. And if the Search Engines don’t like it, well then ……………………….tough break, they can go to Hell.

I’ve already made over $40 from the program. Whether anyone else likes’em or hates them, doesn’t make much difference to me. Sure, some may say it is immoral to place ads on blogs, or holds a personal grudge against sites with ads, but I just don’t care. If you wish for the ads in general to disappear, go find information somewhere else, because my ads are here to stay, baby!