Modifying My Blog’s Theme

Many things have already been changed and added to this blog since I posted the Know Your Way Around “Owning A Café“ where I discussed the different sections and categories contained on this weblog. This site utilizes the many  features of the free Mimbo theme on a WordPress blog platform. Those of you who have followed this blog since its start in early January this year may have noticed the changes it has undergone. A recent addition that I have written about recently was the blog toolbar which I changed the color from blue to white.

You might have also noticed the reposting of some articles from the various sections which were done to facilitate the modification of the contents in the page-navigation bar (topmost part) of this site. Now, you will not see any dropdown in it anymore. You will have to click the section or page title to open a summary page where the links to articles can be seen. The modification was done to reduce the links in the homepage in order to comply to Google’s 100-links rule.

Aside from the above, the following are the changes and additions made on this site to facilitate navigation, put some reader come-on (add to traffic) and help in my effort to monetize this blog:

• Comment Box – added the “subscribe to comment” plugin to give a commenter the choice to receive an email notification if a reply is posted after his comment. The CommentLuv widget that parses and posts the commenter’s latest blog topic was also added. I also made the author’s link a do-follow after he makes five (5) comments in the site.

• Top Commenters Honor Roll – added at the site’s footer to show the names of the top five (5) readers who make the most number of comments.

• Recent Comments – normally added as a sidebar widget, I have it placed at the footer to maximize space utilization. Only five (5) of the most recent comments are shown.

• Link Chicklets – also found in the footer, these are actually 80 x 15 banners of web directories and site monitors where my blog is registered.

• Recent Viewers Box – this can be seen at the right sidebar and contains the icons of my recent readers who are registered members of Blog Catalog.

• WP 125 Ad Widget – located at the topmost portion of the right sidebar, I can place here four (4) local advertisement should there be interested parties.

• Blog Advertising Box – using the regular text widget, I have this also on the right sidebar to accommodate blog adverts which help increase web traffic plus a little income from it.

Lastly and I wish to emphasize this one is the Email Subscription Bar located in the rightmost part of the category navigation bar in the site’s header. Here is where a reader can put his email address in order to receive a copy of my latest blog post on his Inbox. Subscribing to the site’s Google FeedBurner would facilitate reading my blogs without the need to open them on a web browser.

The other standard blog features or contents like Google Adsense and RSS Reader can also be found on this site. Some other forms of advertising like page peel, inline text and exit ads are also installed here. I shall discuss about them when I get to the topic of monetizing a blog in the future.

So you may ask, what else do I need to modify, add or change on this weblog? I tell you one which I really want to do soon and that is to change my title’s masthead. What I have now is the default text format and I wish to have some graphics in it. I would appreciate any more modifications that you can suggest. I will consider them as long as they will not lengthen my homepage nor add more links that would me exceed the 100 limit.