Web Logging My Blogging

WP-Footnotes is a plugin for WordPress that I have been using a lot lately. It makes it really easy to put in Footnotes or Endnotes.

I installed it when I was doing an artist interview and the picture was of a mushroom. I found some great information on the mushroom and the mushroom website even had how he wanted his site credited. Since I am talking about one of my blog postings, I will use the footnote at the end of this paragraph. If you want to see the Orange Mushroom post, click the little 1 after the period.¹

I found a web reference to footnotes which shows some of the accepted styles if you were writing a paper for a college course, thesis, dissertation or were submitting to a journal. The sites author, Robert Radford, provides numerous examples. He also has posted the answers to questions that people have written in. I would put the link if a footnote if I was referencing it but since I am telling you about it, I will give the link here.²

How to write footnotes, endnotes and electronic references. by Robert Radfort

Here is how I use WP-Footnotes. After you have installed the plugin go to Settings on your Dashboard. Click on Footnotes.

From here, you can change how you want your identifier to appear. I keep mine simple so I do not add anything before or after it. I also leave it in the 1,2,3 style. I do change the css style, I take out his color choice and let my css control the color. I also check the box next to “Combine identical notes?“.

The best thing about this plugin is how fast it is to type in the footnote. All you have to do is put double(( at the beginning and )) at the end. I made the(( show by putting it without a space next to another word. If I put it in as a space it would not be here.³

1. Retrieved from Top Orange Blog Website: http://toporangeblog.com/archives/63 [↩]
2. No footnote here, just testing. [↩]
3. but it would be down here [↩]

If you are looking for the best theme for WordPress then look no futher. This blog was designed using the Theses theme and WordPress. I run six (6) other blogs that have been easily modified that use the Thesis theme for WordPress, it is the best.

Main reasons why you want to use the best Thesis Theme:

• Thesis code is kept updated
• The layout is easy to read
• The layout is easy to change
• Very active user forum (Get Help)
• Easy WordPress Upgrades .custom CSS
• Integrated SEO techniques
• Dashboard Control Panel with a “Big Ass Save Button”

Thesis Demo Page
Check out the Thesis live demo here.

Chris Pearson leads the Thesis WordPress Theme team. Chris is well known in the theme community with thousands using his Cutline WordPress Theme. He is also well known for his knowledge of SEO or search engine optimization.

Plugins you will NOT need with the best theme for WordPress, Thesis. Thesis does this for you.

• SEO title changers
• Switch RSS to Feedburner
• Mint Analytics
• Google Analytics

Customize Your Thesis Design

One of the reasons that Thesis is the best theme for WordPress is the use of the Custom Stylesheet. Thesis is set up for you to make all your CSS changes here. CSS stands for cascading style sheets. The .custom stylesheet is the last in the cascade and thus has best design control.

I have 6 color blogs. I changed the CSS extensively but it was easy by using the User Manual and reading in the forum. This is another reason that this is the best Theme for Wordpress. Also if  you make a mistake while learning the css, you don’t mess up the theme’s core code. This makes playing with css easy and fun.

Thesis Showcase Gallery

Multimedia Box

The Multimedia Box is at the top of the page, above the two right columns. You can change this to:

• Rotating Images
• Show a Video
• Show Ads
• Use Your Own Code

Navigation Menu

Once you own Thesis go to the WordPress Dashboard and click on “Design” then “Thesis Options.” This is where you can control what users see in your Navigational Menu.

From here you can easily change:

• What Pages to Include in the Navigational Menu
• What Category Pages to Include in the Navigational Menu
• What Links to Include in the Navigational Menu

User Group Forum - Get Help - Help Others

If you are thinking about purchasing the Thesis theme for WordPress and are not quite sure yet, the knowledge of the user group could put you over the top. The people who purchase Thesis are varied from the absolute beginner to blogging experts. Some people know little about CSS, others know quite a lot.

We all get together in the Forums and share our knowledge of WordPress and Thesis. There is a post where you can announce your blog when it is ready.

Searching the Forum can provide a wealth of information on how to make Thesis just right for you.

Thesis Testimonials

I recommend Thesis

I have been working on my six color blogs and this blog for awhile now. I found that using the Thesis theme made my WordPress experience a pleasurable one. In this blog I have outlined the steps I have taken with WordPress, plugins, and Thesis. Click around and see how I have changed Thesis to make it easy for WordPress. Then click the link at the bottom of the page and purchase Thesis for yourself.

Better yet, follow one of these best links right now and purchase the Thesis them. After you have played with it and seen how powerful it is you will be giggling just like the rest of us. Get Thesis Today!

About Thesis

I recommend Thesis as the easiest and best theme for WordPress.

Widgets

WordPress has the main post area that this text in is right now. The two columns, called “Sidebars,” are on the right are there because of the Thesis theme template. The information in the two columns is controlled by the use of Widgets.

Widgets can be a calendar, recent posts, categories, links, archives, plain text and several others. I used the plain “Text” Widget which is a container for text including html. In the middle column, I am using two Text Widgets and the Google Custom Search Widget.

Sidebar 1

1. “Text” - Links to other blogs
2. “Text” - Code for Google Adsense
3. “Google Custom Search” - Google search

Sidebar 2

1. “NextGEN Slideshow” - Transitions through pics in Gallery
2. “Text” - Links to Gallery and About Artists
3. “Search” - Searches the site
4. “Recent Posts” - Shows the most recent posts

There will be others in the future, these are what are there now.

Advertisements

I’m initially going to use Google Adsense because I am comfortable with it. In the future, I will be doing some comparative testing with other networks. I have assigned a Google “Channel” to each area that I put an ad. The Top Blue Blog’s header ad has a Channel called “Header Blue.” If someone clicks on an ad in the header, because I have a Channel associated with it, I will know they ad click came from the header on the Top Blue Blog. The Channel tags the ad space with an unique identifier.

Google allows three ad units as well as three link units on a page. Right now I just have one link unit and an ad unit in the header and the body.

Colored Buttons

At the top of the middle column was a great place to but links between the different colored blogs. Instead of text links, buttons would fill the space nicely. These are the pastel colored thus candy looking buttons that I made. I used the background color from each of the blogs.

I spent over eight hours looking at different image plugins and testing them to see what they could do. The NextGEN Gallery stood out above the rest for me.

There are several companion plugins, some of which I will use and others did not work for me.

NextGEN-ImageFlow

NextGEN-FlashViewer

NextGEN-Gallery Widget

Galleria WP

NextGEN Smooth Gallery

There was a NextGEN Gallery Add-ons plugin but I tried to go to the Plugin Homepage but it was 404. I do not try any plugins that are neglegted by the author.

For my uses, I’m going to use the sidebar widget with the slideshow. You can see the slideshow in action to the right on this page.

I’m going to use the tilt viewer for excitement, you can see it by clicking the “Gallery” at the top of this page. I also like the Image Browser.

I’m going to use the Image Browser because the image description appears below the image. In the description I am going to put a link to the artists blog posting.

Plugins 9, 10 and 11.

Yippie Yellow Yowlzer Yiolee

With the addition of Yellow, I now have all the Welcome pages done for the Top Color Blogs.

Yellow was fun and it went really quickly. Top Yellow Blog

Now I can start adding content as it flows in.

These Welcome pages are the start of my “pillar” pages.

I still have some changes I want to make but I know that I can get caught up in the changes and not stay on the content. For that reason, I’ll make changes along the way as we start bringing in content.

Red was the hardest color for me with the Welcome pages but I’ve now got it finished.

Well, almost finished, I am still tweaking the colors but the wording is in place.

I went with red graphics that I created on this one.

The Welcome page for the Top Red Blog is ready.

This one was just for myself. I enjoy going to the COLOURlovers web site and I saw that Ozh had created a plugin that connects with COLOURlovers API.

This is for the backend or support area of WordPress, for use in the Dashboard. Ozh’s COLOURlovers’ Admin CSS Designer allows you to change the colors of the admin area. You can choose from 12 color palettes.

I have been flipping between 8 different blogs and I’m always looking at the address to make sure I’m making the right changes on the right blog. I’ve now color coded each blog so the Top Red Blog is now red, Blue is blue, etc.

Not for the users, not for security, just for me. Plugin number 8.

If you are ever stuck on color, visit the COLOURlovers site for creative inspiration.

My friend Rockie had me get on Plaxo. Plaxo is a mashup catcher that you can set up to watch the blogs, photo sites, social networking sites, and the micoblogs of those you care about.

If you have friends or family who use different web sites then this will pull it all together.

For example if you have 3 siblings but they use Picasa, flickr, and MySpace to post their photos, then you can see when each of them updates in Plaxo.

There are many little microblogs including Twitter. With Plaxo you can watch them all. [click to continue...]

Cool, I got my first comment. I feel like I have been playing guitar on the street corner and someone has just tossed some cash into my guitar case.

Lisa Firke, a fellow blogger, was the first to leave a comment. Quick short and sweet the simple “Glad you liked it!” made my day. I had mentioned how she had helped me in this blog post and she commented on the post.

Lisa is a website designer who runs the website Hit Those Keys and blogs along at Wild Keys. She uses the Thesis theme and you can see by her blog, she knows how to modify it. She often posts in the Thesis forum which not only helps the person she is responding to, but lurkers who are reading, like me.

Lisa started the biggest thread on the Thesis forum with “Introduce yourself and share your Thesis-themed URL.” This gave Thesis users a place to boast and talk about their site without feeling like they were spamming. A lot of these people have spent a lot of time working on their sites and getting to announce it here shows they are ready to face the world, or at least their fellow Thesosiums.