Postcards from the Funny Farm

If you're new here, you may want to subscribe via -or-

A few people have asked me about my recent theme changes so I wanted to address it here in one place rather than in several emails and comments.  It’s been a very good thing.

Most people who read my blog know that I have been a theme changer since the beginning. Shelly Tucker even addressed it when she interviewed me. I have to experiment, it’s part of my nature. Ironically however, I have come full circle after literally hundreds of themes and am quite content with the best theme (for me) I could find: The Wordpress Default: Kubrick. Let me give you the top five reasons I have chosen to use this theme:

1. It is always updated state-of-the-art: When WordPress updates, they update 2 themes with the software: Default and classic (which you may see me use from time to time as well now for this reason).  Many other themes break and lose their look when you upgrade Wordpress.
2. It’s simple and clean.  Because I have tried so many themes and gotten carried away at times with graphics and layout, it is refreshing to return to my primary priority: content.  I want to write a daily column that works on all browsers and computers.  Default does that.  Writing was my motive to start doing this in December of 2006 and I think the scattered themes got in the way of that energy.  I may tweak here and there, but I have decided that clean is better and energy into the writing is best.
3. It has a big header for my wife to help me make Photoshop png’s on.  Do you like the one we made last weekend?  It is very special to me being my home town of Victorville (retro) and a postcard I used to have on my tumblelog.  Thanks to Sarah for the work she did.  I styled it somewhat after the “My Diary” theme I found a while back by Gecko and Fly.  It’s one worth checking out if for nothing else, graphic ideas.
4. Last, It’s familiar and what I started with.  Before I even knew how to change or upload a theme, I was writing ecolumns (as I affectionately call them) on Kubrick with the blue header.  To me, it feels like coming home.  I feel like I have so much going on now with this blog … I am right where I want to be.  I don’t want to get confused with flashy themes anymore.  I will limit my creative innovation to Photoshopped headers, sidebar features and links, and the artistry of writing these ecolumns, or articles, or posts … what have you.

My hope is that it will free my energies up to write even funnier, more creative and innovative stuff while presenting it to you in a dependable and accessible format.  In short: It’s a focus issue. I hope you guys like it and keep coming back often!  You won’t see much more messing with themes here, and if you do, my 12-step sponsor at Themeaholics Anonymous says I have to write a really long post to you explaining why every time ;)  What do you look for in a theme?

I wrote just days ago about how to choose Entrecard advertisers. It’s still valid except for one thing, cheap doesn’t mean what cheap used to mean. Here’s an excerpt from the article on their blog below:

Written on April 7th, 2008 by Graham
Today we release our long-awaited modification to the pricing system.

It’s going to go live within the next 24 hours. Just to be clear, we are talking about a complete change to the way everyone’s advertising prices are calculated.

Starting today, your ad price is determined solely by demand for your ad spot. Every time someone purchases, or applies to purchase an ad on your site, your price doubles. Every time an ad finishes running, your price halves.

Cheap ads now will mean that not enough people apply to advertise on them.  With my own blog costing in the 600’s per day now, it is going to cost a poor blogger 600 clicks for one day on my blog.  I wouldn’t wish that torture on anyone.  Still, we’ll have to see how it plays out.  It could be a positive and kick those really high pointer blogs that have very little value in their content off the top of the mountain.  If that happens, that will be very good.  I wrote about the actual system of Entrecard if you want to know more from a beginner standpoint.  You’ll find that article here.

This is an example of yet another company who has an idea and thinks every idea they will have after that will be just as good.  One thing I like about Blog Catalog is that they respect their users enough to ask their input repetitively.  That’s what Web 2.0 is all about.  I’d have liked to done a poll at least about this before it went live.  I’ll have to try it and see if it’s something I like or something I’m going to make new space for my own advertising on my sidebar with.

What do you think of Entrecard’s new pricing system?

FuelMyBlog is an awesome service I have been using for blog marketing and networking. They were kind enough to publish my guestblog today about widgets on their site. I have been studying and using widgets for over a year now and have learned a thing or two. I put that knowledge in this guestblog. There are a few widgets out there that everyone needs to have and some that definitely should have never seen the light of day. Then there are those that are custom suited to a particular blog type. It would be nice to get a discussion going about widgets. I know I could still learn a ton myself. If you are interested in reading my guestblog and joining the discussion at FuelMyBlog you can read it at the url below:

blog.fuelmyblog.com/2008/03/do-you-know-where-your...

If you are interested in having me guestblog for your blog for free, read the page explaining the process and contact me.  Thanks!  I hope to hear from you.