No, NOT ME… I can tweak a WordPress theme a bit but there is no way I could even begin thinking about doing a custom theme for anyone.  I leave that up to the experts and one of those experts is Jai over at blogohblog.com who is running a contest for a custom theme giveaway. (This post is my shameless plug so I can get an entry into the contest.)

I’ve always liked the themes that blogohblog creates – see my other review here…  At one point just prior to settling in on my current theme I was going to use their Xplosivetheme and discussed a bit of a tweak with them which was later incorporated into the second release of Xplosive called Xplosive Reloaded.  Their themes as you can see from the links are quite clean, crisp, and really enhance rather than detract from the content.

Anyhow… I would love to be able to have a “custom” theme built for Projects Possible so I am entering the contest.  If you are a WordPress blogger I would recommend you take a look at the offer and get entered into the contest.

Every blogger is different and they way they manager their blog is different as well.  One of the great things about WordPress is just how easy it is to extend base functionality by adding and activating a plug-in.  Plugins fit into a ton of different categories and there are literally hundreds of them.  If you don’t believe me all you have to do is take a peek at the WordPress Plugin Directory.

I’ve included here some of those that I use on my blog – Projects Possible - They are in no particular order.

CoolPlayer - This is the plugin that I use to add the audio and video content into posts.  It does all of the under the covers stuff so that it is real easy for me to add an Xtube video or a MP3 file for your viewing pleasure.  Integrated right into the WYSIWYG post editor, adding media content couldn’t be easier.

FireStats- I am a stats geek and I really like the interface attached to FireStats.   There are a lot of different statistics programs out there.  I tried quite a few of them and liked the stats I got from FireStats so it has been my choice now for quite sometime.

NextGEN Gallery- For those of you that know me from my Big Brother past you know that I have galleries and galleries of images.  I used to run a site that was on Coppermine but when I decided to start a blog I didn’t want to integrate my Coppermine with WordPress.  NetxGEN became my picture solution.  If any of you Big Brother fans want those images posted just let me know.  I still have most of them from the first 5 years of the show.

TinyMCE Advanced- Lets me add some functionality to the WordPress Editor that I like or was used to when editing including Font Families, Styles and Formats, Rule Lines, Non Breaking Spaces, and Full Screen.  It just makes the writing of the posts much easier for me.

Dagon Design Sitemap Generator- I have always liked sites that had site maps where I could see content organized in some fashion and all on a single page.  Dagon’s Sitemap Generator does that anywhere you would like to put the tag to have it work it’s magic.  I chose to put it on it’s own page but you could realistically put it anywhere.  I may actually decide to change the page name to something like Archive since that is what it is.

Stray Quotes – I’ve always like short inspirational quotes.  The small little “blurbs” of wisdom that you see on calendars and posters or in the inspiration or motivation books.  Stray Quotes allows me to collect some of my favorites and to share them with you.  I currently display them in the sidebar.

Different Posts Per Page- Max Blog Press has a few nifty little utilities that you have to jump through hoops to download but once you get the link to them they offer some nice extended functionality.  I use a couple of them but the one I want to point out here is Different Posts Per Page.  When you are on my main page I want to specifically only show you the most relevant content.   When you display a category or search I want to you to see a lot more.  With this plugin I can tell WordPress how many posts to show you in these different situations.

As I said before I have many different plugins that I use and I will surely add to this list in the future.  If you are a WordPress blogger I would love to hear about your favorites. 

The 3 WordPress theme designers that I really like are:

Jai at Blog Oh Blog.  In particular there are a couple of themes there that I started using prior to Jai becoming owner of the site.  One of them is Big Blue and the other is Bob.   I liked Big Blue’s coloring, but I liked Bob’s use of excerpts on the main page.  I eventually mashed the two of them together and played around with a version of Big Blue that had the excerpt feature of Bob that I enjoyed.  I almost settled on using Xplosive but I wasn’t willing to give up the excerpt feature and as much as I tried my expertise did not allow me to get that functionality to work.

Small Potato at WPDesginer is another designer that I really like.   When I first started looking at WordPress it was Small Potato’s designs that I latched onto.  I ran his theme called Pride for a short while but I struggled getting my plugins to display properly in the sidebars.  I also played around with his Cold Blue theme for awhile when I first started.   What I really like about Small Potato and WPDesigner is that he shares his knowledge.   He has a tutorial section that has helped me tremendously in learning how all of this WordPress theme “stuff” works.  (Keep in mind to run WordPress you don’t need to do any “tweaking”… you can run literally thousands of different themes just as they are with no modifications at all.)

The final designer and the one that I settled on is Javier Garcia and the 1 Blog Theme with a “tweak”.  This is the theme that you are seeing on Projects Possible right now.   The tweak which will be coming soon is the excerpt capability that I like so well in Bob.   I chose this theme because it is so feature rich and configured from the WordPress Presentation dashboard.  It integrates some great features like the Socal Networking functionality, Related Posts, Email this Post and dual sidebars and an information rich footer.   I am going to create a brief tutorial on functionality that I will post in the future to help you get the most out of Projects Possible.

There were many other themes that I tried and many that I struggled to get working the way that I wanted them to work.  Now that I’ve chosen one, I can move on to getting it to display everything I want and to really focus in on the content.

WordPress and other blogs have these great things called permalinks.   They were invented by makers of the blogs to be permanent links to the postings that are found on the blog.   The idea was to always make a post available even months or years later. 

When I started ProjectsPossible I used WordPress right out of the box and then played around a little bit with the permalinks.  What I didn’t realize – and this was a newbie error that others just starting with blogging should take into consideration early – is that your permalink structure should NOT be changed once it has been established.  Doing so will break all of the links and all of the indexing that may have occurred at the various search engines and blogs indexing services.

I changed my permalink structure to something that is a little more friendly.   You will now notice that instead of getting a number for the post in the browser address you will get an actual post name.  Overall more friendly, overall better for indexing.  For the few of you that I knew I had sent a permalink I apologize for the change but it is a change that I felt strongly enough about needing to change even after the blog had been established. 

You can still find what you are looking for.  Use the Search located at the top of the sidebars, or you can look at the categories, or even the tags to find your article.   I apologize for the inconvenience.

If you are a regular reader you have probably seen many things changing and then changing back again… Since I like to tinker with things I don’t expect this will go away… What I do hope to accomplish soon are the following…

• Settle in on a theme… WordPress is my blog of choice… now I just need to make sure I know how I want it to look.   (I’m thinking it is going to be K2 but I am struggling getting the sidebars to work the way that I want them to work.)
• Fine tune the sidebars to include some dynamic changing content as well as some standard fare and navigation
• Build a Deep Lake page… Deep lake for those of you that do not know is the location of our Lake home… Some items I want to include on this PAGE would be the webcam images – 2 webcams now,  an image gallery or two of lake related things, and the weather station data.
• A Yellowstone page…or more specifically a Geysers of Yellowstone page.  I want to put the single cam image there as well as the streaming image so that they are quick and easy to get to.  I will also include the image gallery and a few links.  (A great book that I’ve carried around (and read and referenced as well) for years is The Geysers of Yellowstone by T. Scott Bryan.)
• More regular blog postings… Since this blog covers the things I work on, ponder and enjoy there should be no lack of content… 

Keep your eyes posted… and if you have any K2 “tweaking” experience let me know… I have quite a few questions.