Taking On The Feedburner Big Boys

Or not.

The above image is a graphical comparison of the feedburner subscription numbers of four awesome websites;

1. Mashable
2. 43Folders
3. SmashingMagazine
4. and erm., Third World Geek (hehehe)

There’s no competition really, I just want to share this cool little Feedburner comparison tool called Feed Compare. This baby does not just to show how you stack against your competitors, it can also be used to call the bluff of those shady sites who claim to have oodles of subscribers.

Free Beautiful Wordpress Templates

I wasn’t able to update this blog as much as I wanted to because of some whatever reason. But now that I’ve finally gotten around to doing what’s supposed to be done, I came face to face with a rather daunting task for a wordpress newbie– modifying my free wordpress template so it won’t look like one of those cookie-cutter themes.

Because I used to be a Blogger fan boy (I think I still am except that I’ve migrated my blogs to wordpress), I am somewhat perplexed as to what to do first. Since I have a self-hosted wordpress installation, I had to deal with changing permissions and making sense out of all the wordpress .php files. I guess all that practice in modifying blogger templates did pay-off. Still I managed to make a decent (still not perfect) job I guess. Although, man, Internet Explorer likes to make a mess of things.

How I Came Up With My Gorgeous Wordpress Template

Let’s see, I started with a whole lot of searching in the internet for the template that would suit my needs perfectly. I wasn’t really sure what I want exactly but I know I want a widget-ready wordpress template, and it has to have 3 columns. I also wanted a template that would allow me to display ads in the sidebar, and something that’s adsense ready as well.

The good thing and the bad thing about Wordpress is that it has a lot of beautiful templates that are offered absolutely for free. It’s a good thing because you have a lot of choices but at the same time it’s a bad thing as well because without a clear template in mind, you could be overwhelmed by the choices in display.

After several days of searching for the perfect wordpress template, I finally stumbled on Dezzain Studio where I got to see the Timeline Theme for the first time. I was instantly drawn to the color combination and the features embedded in the theme. So I worked on putting all the necessary wordpress plugins and widgets and did a little template tweaking until I was satisfied. Now it still retains its proud form but somehow I’ve managed to insert a little of me here and there.

And then I came across this wordpress template collection at WPZoom. Holy guacamole, I may have to change my template again. Gah.

Next up, I’ll be compiling my ten best free wordpress templates.